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Commentary on the Epistle of Paul to the Galatians
Commentary on the Epistle of Paul to the Galatians Author:Benjamin Wisner Bacon Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: APPENDED NOTES NOTE A. THE CONTENT OF PAUL'S GOSPEL NOTE B. THE JERUSALEM COMPACT, AND THE APOSTOLIC DECREES NOTE C. JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH, APART FROM ... more »WORKS OF LAW APPENDED NOTE A THE CONTENT OF PAUL'S GOSPEL In the note on 1 : 16 it has been intimated that the emphasis of Paul's message was otherwise placed than by those who had known Jesus "after the flesh." To him particular sayings and incidents of Jesus' earthly ministry were of value only as accessory to the great fact that the man of Nazareth had been " by the resurrection from the dead miraculously declared to be the Son of God promised in the holy scriptures" (Rom. 1 : 4; cf. Acts 17 : 31). Paul had come to recognize through a divinely wrought opening of the eyes of his soul this promised "Son of God." This gave him his "gospel." In the Being whom he thus designated Paul saw not so much the national Deliverer of Israel as the deliverer of humanity from the thraldom of "flesh" and its attendant doom. A larger sense attaching to the term Son of God was inevitable in a convert of larger experience, training, and mode of thought than the Galilean apostles. But Paul's Deliverer of humanity was no other than that Friend of Sinners whose independent attitude toward synagogue orthodoxy had erstwhile provoked his fanatical antagonism. The implications of the recognition were momentous. But to appreciate its significance one must enter a realm of thought scarcely touched in the Synoptic Gospels. As everyone realizes, the system of thought in which Christ appears as the Second Adam, rescuing a doomed race from the law of sin and death implanted in its members by the infusion of a higher dynamic, the " law of the Spirit of life," is widely different from that preached by Jesus in Galilee. Is it legitimate to ide...« less