_Then fourteen years after I went up again to Jerusalem._ Are these years to be reckoned from the date of Paul's conversion, or from the end of the three years spent in Arabia and Damascus? S. Jerome takes the latter, and so gets a date of seventeen years after the conversion, or A.D. 54, the twelft... [ Continue Reading ]
CHAPTER 2 SYNOPSIS OF THE CHAPTER i. Paul declares that he had compared his Gospel with Peter, James, and John, and that it had been approved of them so completely that there was nothing to be added to it or subtracted from it. II. He declares (ver. 7) that it had been mutually agreed between the... [ Continue Reading ]
_I communicated unto them that the Gospel which I preached._ I put it before Peter and the Apostles, making them as it were judges of my Gospel, that they might approve, disapprove, add, or take away as they saw fit in common council, and that I might receive it then at their hands to be believed an... [ Continue Reading ]
_The poor._ The Jews, who, for Christ's sake, had been spoiled of their goods by their fellows (Heb. x. 34 and Chrysostom). Jerome, however, understands the poor who became so voluntarily to be meant, those who had sold their possessions and had given the price to the Apostles, to be distributed amo... [ Continue Reading ]
_I withstood him to the face._ Erasmus and others interpret this to mean in appearance, outwardly, feignedly, and by previous arrangement. The literal meaning is better: I openly resisted Peter, in order that the public scandal caused by him might he removed by a public rebuke (Augustine, Ambrose, B... [ Continue Reading ]
_Sinners of the Gentiles._ So, according to Augustine and Anselm, the Jews contemptuously called the Gentiles, as being idolaters.... [ Continue Reading ]
_A man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ._ The English _but_ here exactly interprets the work that the Latin translates by _nisi._ There is an antithesis between _the works of the law and the faith of Jesus Christ_, and accordingly the Protestants are wrong i... [ Continue Reading ]
_But if while we seek to be justified by Christ we ourselves also are found sinners, is, therefore, Christ the minister of sin_? 1. If we are still in sin, and are looking to faith in Christ for forgiveness, while as a matter of fact it is not to be found there, but in the law, then does Christ supp... [ Continue Reading ]
_I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me._ By baptism I am crucified with Christ, and dead to sin and the law; I am cut off from the old tree, and grafted as a new branch into the new tree of the Cross of Christ, from which I draw a new life, so that it is... [ Continue Reading ]