The persuasibleness [is] not of him that calls you.
Paul has just asked who cut in on the race the Galatians were running so well. Now he rules out one answer: their new conviction did not come from the God who calls them.
Paul uses one word three times in these few lines. One writer follows the word play from "obey" in verse 7, through "persuasion" here, to Paul's confidence in verse 10:
The word "obey" here could be translated "that you would not be persuaded by the truth." Then he says, "This persuasion is not from Him who calls you." There is a link between this lack of obedience and this new persuasion, this new conviction that marked them; and this persuasion was "not from Him who calls you." To finish this word play, in verse 10, "I have confidence" could be translated "I am persuaded as to you."
This changes what obedience means. It is not blind compliance:
A man does not obey until he is persuaded of the truth put before him.
Paul does not argue the case again here. He points them back to how they became Christians in the first place.
To be so easily persuaded by this law-keeping teaching, which was nothing but a fatal error, was not the work of Him who had called them. That is not how they had become Christians through grace. A little leaven corrupted the whole.
A second test looks at fruit. What had this teaching done to them?
The freshness had gone from these souls in Galatia. Their love had grown cold and their faith had grown weak. These were the results of the wrong efforts of the teachers among them who pressed the law. The movement was not of God. The work of His Spirit never leads to such sad results. He had called them in the grace of Christ; this persuasion came from a completely different source.
Paul says where the persuasion did not come from. The commentators name where it did, and it is more than human error.
The enemy has persuaded them to give up the truth they had learned from Paul. So Paul adds, "This persuasion is not from Him who calls you." It was not the Lord, it was not the Holy Spirit that had persuaded them to give up. It was the enemy's work. "An enemy has done this" (Matthew 13:28).
Paul's question does more than point at one teacher. It points to the mind behind him:
There is only one original enemy of the way of truth, though his methods and tricks are countless... The question asked here seems meant to remind them of their unseen spiritual enemy, and to wake them up to fresh watchfulness against this cunning and spiteful watcher of their peace.
The two persuasions start in different places. They also end in different places.
God had called them, and their early faith answered and led them into the way of peace. Since then, Satan's servants had persuaded them. They now wanted a path that promised to take them, as they wrongly thought, to a "higher Christianity." But that path leads everyone who follows it, in the end, into the darkness that God never lights... God's calling is salvation to the soul that listens to it with a steady mind. Every other persuasion comes from below, and leads people to ruin if they obey it.
Why could the false teachers stop them at all? One writer names the root, and what God's call does instead:
We may be sure that when believers are stopped from going on with the truth, a soul that is not subject to the truth lies at the root of it. The call of God carries the soul along in the faith of it. And here we learn the harmful effects of indifference to the truth. Not being subject to the truth leads to indifference.
- Persuasion first. "Obey" in verse 7 means "be persuaded." No one obeys until he is convinced. So whoever wins the conviction directs the steps.
- Test the caller. They did not become Christians by law-keeping. A teaching that demands it did not come from the God who called them.
- Test the fruit. Cold love and weak faith point to the source. The Spirit's work never leads to that.
- Name the enemy. Behind the teachers stands one enemy with countless methods. His promise of a "higher Christianity" ends in darkness.
- Guard the root. A soul that will not bow to the truth drifts into indifference. God's call, held with a steady mind, carries the believer along.
A little leaven leavens the whole lump.
Paul has just asked the Galatians who cut in on them while they were running well. Then he answers with a proverb from the kitchen: why is yeast in dough his reply to a debate about circumcision?
The force of the image lies in how yeast behaves. It needs no help, and it gives no warning.
Leaven works like this. Put a small particle of it into a mass of pure dough, and it always passes its special character on to the whole lump. This spreading action of leaven is automatic, and needs no human help. Silently and unnoticed, the subtle influence works until the hidden spreading and blending is complete. Then the result is visible.
The same words appear in 1 Corinthians 5, where the leaven is moral corruption. Here it is a teaching.
Leaven (yeast) always speaks of the corrupting action of sin. Because it is only a little, it may hardly be noticed at first. But deceitful men know how to slip in their false doctrines bit by bit, and soon corrupt the truth. Add only a little of the teaching of self-righteousness to Christianity, and it spoils the whole. It magnifies man and belittles Christ. But Christianity is Christ highly exalted and mankind humbled to the dust. The same words about leaven appear in 1 Corinthians 5:6. There the leaven is self-indulgence, which is moral corruption. In Galatians the leaven is self-confidence, which is doctrinal evil. In either case it is a mixture hated by God.
In Galatia the evil took a religious form:
In Galatia evil was taking what we may call a religious or legal form (Gal. 5:9). The Christians there were observing days, months, times, and years. They were praising circumcision as a desirable supplement to faith. This was the leaven of the Pharisees, as in Corinth it was the leaven of the Sadducees. The Sadducees' leaven was free thought and loose living. The Pharisees' leaven was strict legalism and human tradition.
Human instinct ranks a scandal in a church far above a debate over religious rules. Paul's choice of word reverses that ranking.
In 1 Corinthians the word "leaven" describes frightful moral corruption. In Galatians the same word describes bringing the legal system in among the children of God. Is that not solemn? God treats it as a most offensive thing. Indeed, the tone of the Holy Spirit in writing to the Galatians is even more severe than in addressing the Corinthians. The Corinthians were guilty of what men blame far more. But the Galatians had fallen into an error that struck deeper at the foundations of God's grace. A spiritual man always judges sin, not by what man thinks of it, but by what it is in the sight of God.
This leaven is hard to spot, because it can look admirable:
Wicked doctrine may go along with an outwardly blameless life; indeed, that is often the case... If people deny the truth of justification by faith, given freely by God's grace, or deny the need for new birth, we are facing an evil more dangerous than drunkenness or immorality, because it is more deceptive. A man may hold and teach blasphemous doctrines, and yet seem as pious in his language as the most devoted child of God.
The Galatians were only adding a few observances. That was the miscalculation.
They had been persuaded to take up these new ideas. Those ideas did not come from the God who had called them. And they had to remember that ideas and doctrines can work like leaven. They might flatter themselves that they had only taken on a few minor items of Judaism. Yet by that they might become wholly Jewish in their religion.
The warning reaches beyond Galatia:
Let us not forget that "a little leaven leavens the whole lump." Any departure from the truth, if unjudged, will lead to further decline, and the gradual deterioration of the whole body. Sadly, the state of Christendom, with its mixture of Judaism and Christianity, shows that it has become leavened with the Galatian evil.
Leaven spreads when no one stops it:
Scripture is most decided in dealing with evil doctrine. Some were undermining the truth of justification by faith. Of them the apostle says, "I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves!" (Gal. 5:12). Another apostle writes to an "elect lady and her children." They must not receive into the house, or even greet, anyone who does not bring "the teaching of Christ" (2 John 10).
(Scripture here follows the ESV; the commentator used an older translation.)
- Small. Leaven works on its own, unseen. No one helps it, yet its character passes into the whole lump.
- Sour. In Corinth the leaven was self-indulgence. In Galatia it was self-confidence: a teaching that magnifies man and belittles Christ.
- Serious. God counts the Galatian error heavier than the Corinthian scandal. It strikes deeper at the foundations of grace.
- Spreading. They thought they had taken on only a few minor items of Judaism. In fact they were on the way to a wholly Jewish religion, and Christendom shows where that ends.
- Stopped. Departure that goes unjudged only deepens. So Scripture is firm with false teaching: do not take it in, and do not greet it.
*I* have confidence as to you in [the] Lord, that ye will have no other mind; and he that is troubling you shall bear the guilt [of it], whosoever he may be.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.