Galatians 3:28

εἷς ἐστὲ ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ אBCD syrHarcl. ἔν ἐστὲ ἐν Χ. Ἰ. G 17 only. ἐστὲ Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ א*A (cf. Galatians 3:29) though א* originally had an ἐν before Χ. Ἰ.

28. οὐκ ἔνι, “there cannot be,” see Hort on James 1:17, p. 30. St Paul mentions differences of nation, social standing, and sex.

Ἰονδαῖος οὐδὲ Ἕλλην. In Colossians 3:11 καί, i.e. the peculiarities of both remain but are not reckoned; here peculiarities disappear in Christ.

οὐκ ἔνι, not repeated in Col.

δοῦλος οὐδὲ ἐλεύθερος. These form a more marked division than in Col., where δοῦλος, ἐλεύθερος occur only at the end of a list.

οὐκ ἔνι ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ, not in Col. He does not say οὐδέ, for these peculiarities must remain, but they are not regarded as forming separate entities, two of a series, when in relation to Christ. St Paul’s words strike at the root of that belief in the superiority of the male sex in religious privileges and powers which marks the lower types of religion, even Mohammadanism and popular Judaism down to our own day, included as it doubtless is under the well-known daily prayer of the Jew, “Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who hast not made me a woman” (Authorised Daily Prayer Book, ed. Singer, p. 6), where, as here, it follows the mention of heathen and slaves. This makes it unlikely that St Paul had in his mind the sayings current in the Greek schools, of gratitude for being a man rather than a woman. For there the mention of a dumb animal had come first. See quotations in C. Taylor’s Sayings of the Jewish Fathers, 2nd edit. pp. 26, 137 sqq.

Ramsay (pp. 389 sqq.) adduces these words in support of the South Galatian theory, stating that in that district the position of woman was unusually high, and that therefore St Paul could make this statement in writing to them, for his “allusion to the equality of the sexes in the perfect form which the Church must ultimately attain would not seem to the people of these Graeco-Phrygian cities to be so entirely revolutionary and destructive of existing social conditions as it must have seemed to the Greeks,” e.g. at Corinth. This seems fanciful, especially as it does not appear that there is any reason for thinking it would have been disliked at Colossae (see above).

πάντες γὰρ, emphatic repetition from Galatians 3:26.

ὑμεῖς, even you Galatians in all your various national, social, and even family relations.

εἷς ἐστὲ ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ. Apparently St Paul means “one man” as expressly in Ephesians 2:15, on which Dean Arm. Robinson writes (p. 65): “Henceforth God deals with man as a whole, as a single individual, in Christ. Not as Two Men, the privileged and unprivileged—Two, parted one from the other by a barrier in the most sacred of all the relations of life: but as One Man, united iu a peace, which is no mere alliance of elements naturally distinct, but a con-corporation, the common life of a single organism.” Wetstein has a remarkable quotation from Lucian, Toxaris 46 (§ 53), showing how others ought to treat us as though they formed one man with us, not professing gratitude to us any more than our left hand should profess gratitude to our right etc.

Chrysostom understands by it only that all believers have μίαν μορφήν, ἔνα τύπου, τὸν τοῦ Χριστοῦ; each, whether Jew or Gentile etc., walking with the form not of an angel or archangel, but of the Lord of all, showing Christ in himself. But, beautiful as this thought is, it comes short of St Paul’s meaning.