A personal postscript,
"Ye see in what large letters I write with mine own hand." There is a mystery about these large characters. It is conjectured that they may have been due to age, or to infirmity, or to weakness of eyes, or to the want of habit in writing Greek. But it is more interesting to see that, unlike other Epistles, which were written by an amanuensis, this one was written entirely with his own hand.
I. TO SHOW HIS LOVE FOR THE GALATIANS. The autograph would be a precious possession to them. It is the largest Epistle he ever wrote with his own band.
II. TO PREVENT IMPOSTURE. Letters were sometimes forged in his name (2 Thessalonians 2:2; 2 Thessalonians 3:17). But his handwriting, being probably already known to them, would prevent misunderstanding as to the authorship.
III. TO GIVE GREATER WEIGHT TO THE EPISTLE. It showed his profound anxiety on their account at a most critical moment.
Exposure of the tactics of his adversaries.
The apostle recapitulates in a few sentences the contents of the Epistle and exhibits the falseness of his Judaistic adversaries in a clear light. Mark—
I. THEIR DOGMATIC ATTITUDE. They "desire to make a fair show in the flesh." They made a pretentious display of religion by a zeal for external rites—"the unrenewed nature cropping out under its more special aspect of sensuousness and externalism." Yet all the while they affected a peculiar concern for God and religion.
II. THEIR URGENT ZEAL. "They are constraining you to be circumcised;" their delusive flatteries (Galatians 3:1), their arguments, their example, having all the stress of moral compulsion. The Judaizers had an immense and eager zeal for proselytism, and were sleepless in their efforts to undermine the gospel of liberty.
III. THE TRUE MOTIVE OF THEIR CONDUCT. "Only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of Christ."
1. Their conduct was cowardly. They would avoid persecution either by renouncing Christianity altogether or by shaping it into Judaistic forms. The last was the course they took. They had no true love for the cause of religion when they insisted upon the indispensableness of circumcision, for their real motive was to protect themselves from the fierce anger of their countrymen. The cross of Christ offered salvation without law of any kind, and welcomed the Gentiles without their becoming Jewish proselytes; but the Judaizers, by circumcising the Gentiles, desired to show their countrymen that, in attaching themselves to the gospel, they did not abandon the Mosaic Law or ritual.
2. Their conduct was hypocritical. "For neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the Law." They placed a burden on their Gentile converts which they were not themselves willing to bear. "Indifferent themselves, they make capital out of you." They make convenient selections out of the precepts of the Law; for they have no idea of obeying the whole Law, though it all rests upon Divine authority.
3. Their conduct was self-interested. "They desire to have you circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh." They wanted to swell the importance of their sect by a large array of proselytes, who were to bear in the flesh the mark of their instructions.
IV. IT WAS JUST AND NECESSARY THAT THE APOSTLE SHOULD EXPOSE A POLICY SO MEAN, SO MERCENARY, SO INSINCERE. Love may prompt the covering of a neighbour's faults, but it is right to expose religious seducers of all sorts.