Matthew Henry’s Complete Commentary

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Matthew Henry Commentary on the Whole Bible (1721)

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Galatians

Completed by JOSHUA BAYES.

Chapter 1 Chapter 2

Chapter 3 Chapter 4

Chapter 5 Chapter 6

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AN

EXPOSITION,

W I T H   P R A C T I C A L   O B S E R V A T I O N S,

OF THE EPISTLE OF ST. PAUL TO

T H E   G A L A T I A N S.

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THIS

epistle of Paul is directed not to the church or churches of a single

city, as some others are, but of a country or province, for so Galatia

was. It is very probable that these Galatians were first converted to

the Christian faith by his ministry; or, if he was not the instrument

of planting, yet at least he had been employed in watering these

churches, as is evident from this epistle itself, and also from

Acts xviii. 23,

where we find him going over all the country of Galatia and Phrygia in

order, strengthening all the disciples. While he was with them, they

had expressed the greatest esteem and affection both for his person and

ministry; but he had not been long absent from them before some

judaizing teachers got in among them, by whose arts and insinuations

they were soon drawn into a meaner opinion both of the one and of the

other. That which these false teachers chiefly aimed at was to draw

them off from the truth as it is in Jesus, particularly in the great

doctrine of justification, which they grossly perverted, by asserting

the necessity of joining the observance of the law of Moses with faith

in Christ in order to it: and, the better to accomplish this their

design, they did all they could to lessen the character and reputation

of the apostle, and to raise up their own on the ruins of his,

representing him as one who, if he was to be owned as an apostle, yet

was much inferior to others, and particularly who deserved not such a

regard as Peter, James, and John, whose followers, it is likely, they

pretended to be: and in both these attempts they had but too great

success. This was the occasion of his writing this epistle, wherein he

expresses his great concern that they had suffered themselves to be so

soon turned aside from the faith of the gospel, vindicates his own

character and authority as an apostle against the aspersions of his

enemies, showing that his mission and doctrine were both divine, and

that he was not, upon any account, behind the very chief of the

apostles,
2 Cor. xi. 5.

He then sets himself to assert and maintain the great gospel doctrine

of justification by faith without the works of the law, and to obviate

some difficulties that might be apt to arise in their minds concerning

it: and, having established this important doctrine, he exhorts them to

stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ had made them free, cautions

them against the abuse of this liberty, gives them several very needful

counsels and directions and then concludes the epistle by giving them a

just description of those false teachers by whom they had been

ensnared, and, on the contrary, of his own temper and behaviour. In all

this his great scope and design were to recover those who had been

perverted, to settle those who might be wavering, and to confirm such

among them as had kept their integrity.

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Matthew Henry Commentary on the Whole Bible (1721)

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