Jesus sends His disciples to bear witness when they were still far from ready for such witness. Indeed, even after they...
Jesus sends His disciples to bear witness when they were still far from ready for such witness. Indeed, even after they return to Him rejoicing over their successes, many things happen that clearly show the apostles still did not understand very much. In essence, they still did not understand the main thing. They did not yet truly know what the Kingdom was, and still less did they know what price their Teacher would have to pay for this Kingdom to enter the world. They will understand some things after the Resurrection, but they will truly become inhabitants of the Kingdom only after Pentecost. And yet Jesus sends them when He sends them, at a time when their ideas about the Kingdom are still quite vague and indefinite, when in essence they are still not very different from the popular ideas widespread in those days.
Why, then, does Jesus act this way? One could, of course, suppose that in a certain sense this was a forced measure: witnesses of the Kingdom were needed; people had to hear about it even before His death and resurrection, at least in Palestine. And yet the matter is probably not only the need for witness. It is also that otherwise, apparently, the disciples would never have learned what the Kingdom is. Of course, while they were beside Jesus, they felt its power and its breath upon themselves. But the Kingdom is not limited to the range of Jesus' immediate visible presence. It is much greater; it exists wherever there are people who preserve their connection with Him, even at a distance.
Jesus, as we can see, wants to let the disciples feel that they too are inhabitants of the Kingdom, that being connected with Him does not mean always and necessarily following right on His heels, and that being His disciples and coworkers means a high degree of independence and, so to speak, spiritual autonomy. Of course, without relations with Christ there can be no question of remaining in the Kingdom. But this connection depends neither on physical space nor on physical time. The disciples absolutely had to feel this, to live through it in their own experience. And they understood it: they went out to preach on their own, without their Teacher, and the power of the Kingdom remained with them, accompanying them everywhere they went. Of course, this was only the first lesson, the first step in the Kingdom. Ahead of the apostles lay many other steps, far more difficult. But the beginning of the path had been made.
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2:21 Meantime I do not make void - In seeking to be justified by my own works. The grace of God - The free love of God in Christ Jesus. But they do, who seek justification by the law. For if righteousness is by the law - If men might be justified by their obedience to the law, moral or ceremonial. Then Christ died in vain - Without any necessity for it, since men might have been saved without his death; might by their own obedience have been both discharged from condemnation, and entitled to eternal life.
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3:1 O thoughtless Galatians - He breaks in upon them with a beautiful abruptness. Who hath bewitched you - Thus to contradict both your own reason and experience. Before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been as evidently set forth - By our preaching, as if he had been crucified among you.
3:2 This only would I learn of you - That is, this one argument might convince you. Did ye receive the witness and the fruit of the Spirit by performing the works of the law, or by hearing of and receiving faith?
3:3 Are ye so thoughtless - As not to consider what you have yourselves experienced? Having begun in the Spirit - Having set out under the light and power of the Spirit by faith, do ye now, when ye ought to be more spiritual, and more acquainted with the power of faith, expect to be made perfect by the flesh? Do you think to complete either your justification or sanctification, by giving up that faith, and depending on the law, which is a gross and carnal thing when opposed to the gospel?
3:4 Have ye suffered - Both from the zealous Jews and from the heathens. So many things - For adhering to the gospel. In vain - So as to lose all the blessings which ye might have obtained, by enduring to the end. If it be yet in vain - As if he had said, I hope better things, even that ye will endure to the end.
3:5 And, at the present time, Doth he that ministereth the gift of the Spirit to you, and worketh miracles among you, do it by the works of the law - That is, in confirmation of his preaching justification by works, or of his preaching justification by faith?
3:6 Doubtless in confirmation of that grand doctrine, that we are justified by faith, even as Abraham was. The Apostle, both in this and in the epistle to the Romans, makes great use of the instance of Abraham: the rather, because from Abraham the Jews drew their great argument, as they do this day, both for their own continuance in Judaism, and for denying the gentiles to be the church of God. Gen 15:6
3:7 Know then that they who are partakers of his faith, these, and these only, are the sons of Abraham, and therefore heirs of the promises made to him.