Galatians 4:19-31.
Christian Friend vol. 18, 1891, p. 101.
" … Look at Adam; his faith was in the promised Seed. Was it a king he expected to arrive, or a judge, or a lawgiver? No; but his faith was in the bruised Seed of the woman, therefore he called her Eve - the mother of all living. He himself had tainted the channel of life. There is much carnal religiousness about us, or it might be exceedingly simple to understand the new life that a poor sinner finds in the grace of Jesus. Read the epistle - 'I stand in doubt of you.' Paul had sorrow. Why? The carnal eye would have thought that they had advanced in religiousness in observing 'times and days,' etc.; but not so the jealous eye of the Spirit of God in Paul (the watchman of Jesus). He reproaches the Galatians. Was not God sufficient for you? Was not the strength of His grace sufficient? Must you use a crutch to aid or encumber your glorious liberty and strength divine in adding days and months and observances? 'It is God that worketh.' Who worked with Him when all the morning stars sang together? From the first breath of life divine the work is God's. Paul saw the entrance of a legal self-righteousness - a slipping away from the simplicity that is in Christ, which consists in having our minds perfectly formed by Jesus. The serpent would beguile and draw away from simple alliance with Jesus, but the Holy Spirit is given to supply the needful strength. In the remainder of the chapter the two covenants - Sarah and Hagar - are explained. The ulterior revelations of God are always brighter. The devil brings under the covenant of the bondwoman the state of slavery, but when the seed of the grace of God is cast into the soil of a convicted conscience, God in the triumphant march of His own unaided strength by His own blessed Son finds out a remedy for all our wretchedness and sin." J. G. Bellett.