Galatians 2:14-15 But when I saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter before them all, If you, being a Jew… 1. The multitude of those who swerve from truth should not make truth seem less lovely to others, or damp their ardour in defending it against error. Though truth should be deserted by all except one only, yet is it worthy to be owned, stood to, and defended by that one, against all who oppose it. 2. It is the duty of all professors to walk so, both in the matter of opinion and practice, as is suitable to, and well agreeing with, the sincere truth of God held out in the gospel; holding nothing which is even indirectly contrary to it, and practising nothing which may reflect upon it. When they halt, or walk not with a straight foot in either of those, they are blameworthy. 3. When many are guilty of one and the same sin, the minister of Jesus Christ ought to reprove wisely and without respect of persons; making the weight of the reproof light upon them, as they have been more or less accessory to the sin. 4. Though private sins, which have not broken forth to a public scandal of many, are to be rebuked in private (Matthew 18:15), yet public sins are to receive public rebukes, that hereby the public scandal may be removed, and others may be scared from taking encouragement to do the like (1 Timothy 5:20). 5. Though the binding power of the ceremonial law was abrogated at Christ's death, and the practice thereof, in some things at least, left as a thing lawful and in itself indifferent unto all for a time after that, yet the observance thereof, even for that time, was dispensed with more for the Jews' sake, and was more tolerable in them who were born and educated under the binding power of that yoke, than in the Gentiles, to whom that law was never given, and so were to observe it, or any part of it, only in ease of scandalising the weak Jews by their neglect of it (Romans 14:20, 21). 6. A minister must not take liberty of practice to himself in things which he condemns in others. 7. It is no small sin for superiors to bind where the Lord has left free, by urging upon their inferiors the observing of a thing, in its own nature indifferent, as necessary; except it be in those cases wherein the Lord, by those circumstances which accompany it, points it out as necessary; e.g., cases of scandal (Acts 15:28, 29), and contempt (1 Corinthians 14:40). 8. In the primitive times of the Christian Church, the people of God did wonderfully subject themselves to the ministry of the Word in the head of His servants, and much more than people now do; for if the actions of the apostles compelled men to do this or that, as Peter's action did compel the Gentiles, what then did their doctrine and heavenly exhortations? (James Fergusson.) Parallel Verses KJV: But when I saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, I said unto Peter before them all, If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews? |
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