Galatians 5:1

Galatians 5:1. Exhortation to stand fast in the Liberty of the Gospel

1. Many editors place this verse at the end of ch. 4, connecting it immediately with Galatians 4:31 of that chapter; -we are not children of a bondwoman, but of her who is free with that freedom wherewith Christ hath emancipated us. Stand fast therefore and be not again entangled with a yoke of bondage".

But the received arrangement of the Chapter s is better. Chapter 4 is didactic; chapter 5 is hortatory, and therefore properly begins with the injunction -stand fast".

It is however interesting to note that in the original the last word of ch. 4 is -free", and -the freedom" are the opening words of ch. 5. We have a similar instance of the repetition of a word in juxtaposition in Romans 15:12-13, -In Him shall the Gentiles hope. Now the God of hopefill you … that ye may abound in hope".

Here we may render, In the freedom then wherewith Christ made us free stand fast &c. The freedom thus bestowed is spiritual liberty which is quite independent of outward circumstances. St Paul in chains, a prisoner in Rome, exulted in it. Nero on his throne, the master of the world, with thirty legions at his back, was the miserable slave of his lusts. Luther beautifully remarks: -Let us learn to count this our freedom most noble, exalted, and precious, which no emperor, no prophet nor patriarch, no angel from heaven, but Christ, God's Son, hath obtained for us; not that He might relieve us from a bodily and temporal subjection, but from a spiritual and eternal imprisonment of the cruelest tyrants, namely the law, sin, death, the Devil".

Stand fast perhaps, -stand upright", not bowing your neck to the yoke of legal observances.

again They who had escaped from the thraldom of heathenism were not to submit to the slavery of Judaism. They who had once tasted freedom in Christ were not to be again entangled in the bondage of the law.