The life and work of St. Paul

T3E EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS. 433
deliver us from this present evil state of the world, according to the will of our Gbd
and 1
Father, to whom is His due glory for ever and ever. Amen." 8
This greeting is remarkable, not only for the emphatic assertion of his in-
dependent Apostleship, and for the skill with which he combines with, this
subject of his Epistle the great theologic truth of our free deliverance s by
the death of Christ, but also for the stern brevity of the terms with which he
greets those to whom he is writing. A seuso of wrong breathes through Uv
fulness of his personal designation, and the scantiness of the address to kis
converts. He had addressed the Thessalonians as " the Church of the
Thessalonians iu God our Eather and the Lord Jesus Christ," He
had written "to the Churdi of God which is in Corinth, to the
sanctified
he wrote
in Christ Jesus,
to the Romans
called to be saints."
'as "beloved of God,
About
called
this very time
to be saints."
To the Fhilippians,
Christ Jesus,'
Ephosians, Colossians, he adds the words "saints in
1
"
but to these Galatians
and " saints and faithful brethren ;
alone, in his impetuous desire to deal at once with their errors, he uses only
the brief, plain address, " To the Churches of Galatia."
And then without one word of that thanksgiving for their holiness, or
their gifts, or the grace of God bestowed on them, which is found iu every
one of his other general Epistles, he bursts at once into the subject of which
his mind is so indignantly full.
-.-'
" I am amazed that you are so quickly shifting from him who called you in the
grace of Christ into a different Gospel, which is not merely another,* only there are
some who are troubling you, and wanting to reverse the Gospel of Christ. But
even though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach contrary to what we
preached to you, let him be accursed.* As we have said before, so now again I ear
deliberately, If any one is preaching to you anything contrary to what ye received,
LET HIM BE ACCURSED. 6 Well, am I NOW trying to be plausible to men, or to conciliate
God Himself f Had I still been trying to ba a man-pleaser, I should not havs
been what I am a slave of Christ." 7
Such was the startling abruptness, such the passionate plainness with which
he showed them that the time for conciliation was past, Their Jewish teachers
said that Paul was shifty and complaisant, and that he did not preach the real
Gospel. He tells them that it is they who are perverters of the Gospel, and
that if they, or any one of thorn, or any one else, eten an artgel, preaches
.
..
l
4 Mi*, sub. &,,. Matt. vi. 13 ; 1 Pet. iv. 11.
* <
1. 1-5.
* i. 4, "Deliver strikes the
C^-'XJJTOI.
key-note of the Epistle" (Lightfoot). ev^rrwros,
'present,
Horn. vui. SS.
4 If is
pTaTt'0e3, we
might almost render it galatising. For Tpc>', "different,' and