Galatians 4:6 - Exposition

And because ye are sons ( ὅτι δέ ἐστε υἱοί ). The apostle is adducing proof that God's people had actually received the adoption of sons; it was because it was so, that God had sent into their hearts the Holy Spirit, imparting that vivid consciousness of sonship which they enjoyed. The fact of the adoption must have been there, to qualify them to be recipients of this divinely inspired consciousness. The affirmation in Romans 8:16 , "The Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit that we are children of God," closely resembles our present passage; but it is not identical. We are not made sons (the apostle intimates) by the Spirit giving us the consciousness of sonship; but, having been previously made sons, the Spirit raises in our spirits sentiments answering to the filial relation already established. The position of the clause introduced by "because" is like that in 1 Corinthians 12:15 , 1 Corinthians 12:16 . The persons recited by the "ye" are still God's people; not the Galatian believers in particular, except as a portion of the whole Church of God. The apostle puts the thought in this form to bring the truth more strikingly home to their minds. This he does more closely still in the next verse by "thou." But that he has in view God's people as a whole is clear, not only from the whole strain of the context, but also from the phrase, "into our hearts," in the next clause. God hath sent forth ( ἐξαπέστειλεν ὁ θεός ); God sent forth. The tense indicates that the apostle does not refer to a sending forth of God's Spirit to each individual believer, parallel to that "sealing" which believers are stated to be subjects of in Ephesians 1:13 . This historic aorist, as it does in Ephesians 1:4 , points to one particular emission—that by which the Comforter was sent forth to take up his dwelling in the Church as his temple through all time ( John 14:16 , John 14:17 ; Acts 1:4 , Acts 1:5 ). The Spirit of his Son . The Spirit which "anointed" Jesus to be the Christ ; which throughout animated the God-Man Jesus; which prompted him in full filial consciousness, himself in a certain critical hour with loud outcry ( μετὰ κραυγῆς ἰσχυρᾶς , Hebrews 5:7 ) to call out, "Abba, Father!" The phrase, "his Son," is aetiological; by it the apostle intimates that it was only congruous that the Spirit which had animated the whole life of the incarnate Son should be shed forth upon those who by faith become one with him, and should manifest his presence with them, as well as their union with Christ, by outcome of sentiment similar to that which Christ had expressed. Since the sonship of Christ is here spoken of as if it were not merely antecedent, but also in some way preparatory to the sending forth of the Spirit, it best suits the connection to construe it, not, as in Ephesians 1:4 , as that belonging to him in his preincarnate state of being, but as that which appertained to him after being "made to be of a woman," and in which his disciples might be considered as standing on a certain footing of parity with him. This harmonizes with the relation which in the Gospels and Acts the sending of the Spirit is represented as holding to his resurrection and ascension. The interpretation above given in one point presupposes the apostle's knowledge of the story of the agony in the garden, when, according to St. Mark ( Mark 14:36 ), Jesus himself used the words, "Abba. Father." This presupposition is warranted, not only by the probabilities of the case, but also by what we read in Galatians 5:7 of the Epistle to the Hebrews, Pauline, certainly, if not actually St. Paul's. We have to add that the Gospels not only make repeated mention of our Lord as addressing the Supreme Being by the compellative of "Father," but also represent him as constantly speaking of God as bearing that relation both to himself and to his disciples. This mode of designating the Almighty was characteristic in the highest degree of Jesus, and up to that time, so far as appears in the Scriptures, unknown. The manner in which the apostle here speaks of the "sending forth" of the Spirit in close proximity to the mention of the "sending forth" of the Son, strongly favours the belief that he regarded the Spirit, as being also a personal agent. In Psalms 104:30 we have in the Septuagint "Thou wilt send forth ( ἐξαποστελεῖς ) thy Spirit, and they will be created." In Psalms 43:3 and Psalms 57:3 God is implored to "send forth [ ἐξαπόστειλον , Septuagint] his light and his truth," "his mercy and his truth;" these being poetically personified as angelic messengers. Into your hearts ( εἰς τὰς καρδίας ὑμῶν ). But this reading of the Textus Receptus is , by recent editors, replaced by the reading, εἰς τὰς καρδίας ἡμῶν , into our hearts , the other reading being regarded as a correction designed to conform this clause with the words, "ye are sons," in the preceding one. In both cases the apostle has in his view the Church of God viewed generally. His putting "our" here instead of "your" was probably an outcome of his feeling of proud gladness in the thought of his own happy experience. A precisely similar change in the pronoun, attributable probably to the same cause, is observable in the remarkably analogous passage in Romans 8:15 , "Ye received not the spirit of bondage again unto fear; but ye received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father." Crying ( κράζον ); crying out aloud. The word expressing loud utterance betokens in this case undoubting assurance. No faint whisper this of an inner consciousness, shy, reticent, because afraid to assure itself of so. glorious, so blissful a relation; no hesitating half-hope; it is a strong, unwavering conviction, bold, though humbly bold, to thus address the all-holy Supreme himself. The "cry" is here attributed to the Spirit himself; in Romans 8:15 to believers, these being the Spirit's organs of utterance; presently after in the Romans, verses 26, 27, the Spirit himself is said to "intercede with groanings which cannot be uttered … according to the will of God." Analogously, in the Gospels, evil spirits in demoniacs at times are said to "cry out", while in other passages the cry is attributed to the possessed person. Abba, Father ( ἀββᾶ ὁ πατήρ ). In addition to Romans 8:15 , just cited, the same remarkable words are found once only besides, in Mark 14:36 , as uttered by our Lord in the garden. St. Luke ( Luke 22:42 ) gives only "Father" ( πάτερ ); St. Matthew ( Matthew 26:39 , Matthew 26:42 ), "my Father" ( πάτερ μου : in verse 39, however, νου is omitted by Tischendorf, though he retains it in verse 42). St. Matthew, by adding μου to πάτερ here, which he does not add in Matthew 11:25 , Matthew 11:26 , seems to indicate that the form of address which our Lord then employed bespoke more than usual of fervency or of intimacy of communion. According to Furst ('Concordance'), " Abba ," אבָּ ) , occurs frequently in the Targums " sensu proprio et honorifico;" in the Jerusalem Targum taking the form "Ibba," אבָּאִ . In consequence, we may assume, of ,the "honorific" complexion of this form of the word, it was in Chaldee the form usually employed in compellation, or for the vocative. The hypothesis that either the Divine Sneaker, or the Evangelist Mark, or the Apostle Paul, added ὁ πατὴρ as an explanatory adjunct to the Aramaic "Abba," for the benefit of such as might need the explanation, is resisted