ἡμεῖς. Paul here associates with himself the colleagues Barnabas, Silas, Timothy, who had combined with him to preach the Gospel. He desires to impress on his disciples that the controversy is not between one teacher and another, but between truth and falsehood: no minister of Christ, not even an angel, can alter the truth in Christ. ἀνάθεμα. The two derivatives, ἀνάθημα and ἀνάθεμα, are both employed in the LXX and N.T. in different senses. ἀνάθημα serves, as in other Greek authors, to denote a temple offering, statue, or ornament (cf. 2Ma 9:16, Luke 21:5), while ἀνάθεμα is restricted to the Hebrew conception of an offering devoted under a solemn vow to death or destruction (Leviticus 27:28; Joshua 7:1; Acts 23:14). The Epistles of Paul attach to the word the idea of spiritual death. The significant addition ἀπὸ τοῦ Χριστοῦ in Romans 9:3 associates with it the further idea of separation from Christ, and consequent loss of all Christian blessings and means of grace. It does not, like excommunication, pronounce a judicial sentence on particular convicted offenders, but solemnly affirms general laws of the spiritual kingdom, e.g., in 1 Corinthians 16:22, any who love not the Lord, here any who tamper with the truth of the Gospel, are pronounced outcasts from the faith, and dead to the Spirit of Christ.

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Old Testament