Tertullian — Commentary on Scripture

Galatians 5:11

And I, brethren, if I yet preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution? then is the offence of the cross ceased.

And, of course, it had been meet that the mystery of the passion itself should be figuratively set forth in predictions; and the more incredible (that mystery), the more likely to be "a stumbling-stone," if it had been nakedly predicted; and the more magnificent, the more to be adumbrated, that the difficulty of its intelligence might seek (help from) the grace of God.

Galatians 5:12 · 2 passages

I would they were even cut off which trouble you.

How should he not, when he himself experiences the same? "I would," says he, "that they were even cut off which trouble you." In perfect agreement with reason was that indignation which resulted from his desire to maintain discipline and order.

"When I was a child," he says, "as a child I spake, as a child I understood; but when I became a man, those (things) which had been the child's I abandoned: " so truly did he turn away from his early opinions: nor did he sin by becoming an emulator not of ancestral but of Christian traditions, wishing even the precision of them who advised the retention of circumcision. And would that the same fate might befall those, too, who obtruncate the pure and true integrity of the flesh; amputating not the extremest superficies, but the inmost image of modesty itself, while they promise pardon to adulterers and fornicators, in the teeth of the primary discipline of the Christian Name; a discipline to which heathendom itself bears such emphatic witness, that it strives to punish that discipline in the persons of our females rather by defilements of the flesh than tortures; wishing to wrest from them that which they hold dearer than life! But now this glory is being extinguished, and that by means of those who ought with all the more constancy to refuse concession of any pardon to defilements o…

"When I was a child," he says, "as a child I spake, as a child I understood; but when I became a man, those (things) which had been the child's I abandoned: " so truly did he turn away from his early opinions: nor did he sin by becoming an emulator not of ancestral but of Christian traditions, wishing even the precision of them who advised the retention of circumcision. And would that the same fate might befall those, too, who obtruncate the pure and true integrity of the flesh; amputating not the extremest superficies, but the inmost image of modesty itself, while they promise pardon to adulterers and fornicators, in the teeth of the primary discipline of the Christian Name; a discipline to which heathendom itself bears such emphatic witness, that it strives to punish that discipline in the persons of our females rather by defilements of the flesh than tortures; wishing to wrest from them that which they hold dearer than life! But now this glory is being extinguished, and that by means of those who ought with all the more constancy to refuse concession of any pardon to defilements of this kind, that they make the fear of succumbing to adultery and fornication their reason for marrying as often as they please-since "better it is to marry than to burn.

Galatians 5:13

For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another.

Nay, rather banish quite away from your "free" head all this slavery of ornamentation.

Galatians 5:14 · 2 passages

For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

Are we to paint ourselves out that our neighbours may perish? Where, then, is (the command), "Thou shall love thy neighbour as thyself? " "Care not merely about your own (things), but (about your) neighbour's? " No enunciation of the Holy Spirit ought to be (confined) to the subject immediately in hand merely, and not applied and carried out with a view to every occasion to which its application is useful.

Now, if none other but the Creator shall be found to execute judgment, it follows that only He, who has determined on the cessation of the law, shall be able to condemn the defenders of the law; and what, if he also affirms the law in that portion of it where it ought (to be permanent)? "For," says he, "all the law is fulfilled in you by this: `Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.' " If, indeed, he will have it that by the words "it is fulfilled" it is implied that the law no longer has to be fulfilled, then of course he does not mean that I should any more love my neighbour as myself, since this precept must have ceased together with the law.

Galatians 5:16

This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.

Every soul, then, by reason of its birth, has its nature in Adam until it is born again in Christ; moreover, it is unclean all the while that it remains without this regeneration; and because unclean, it is actively sinful, and suffuses even the flesh (by reason of their conjunction) with its own shame. Now although the flesh is sinful, and we are forbidden to walk in accordance with it, and its works are condemned as lusting against the spirit, and men on its account are censured as carnal, yet the flesh has not such ignominy on its own account.

Galatians 5:17 · 2 passages

For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.

Thus, so long as the things which are the Spirit's please them not, the things which are of the flesh will please, as being the contraries of the Spirit. "The flesh," saith (the apostle), "lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh." But what will the flesh "lust" after, except what is more of the flesh? For which reason withal, in.

For although he says that "in his flesh dwelleth no good thing; " although he affirms that "they who are in the flesh cannot please God," because "the flesh lusteth against the Spirit; " yet in these and similar assertions which he makes, it is not the substance of the flesh, but its actions, which are censured.

Galatians 5:19 · 4 passages

Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,

It is not indeed the flesh which he bids us to put off, but the works which he in another passage shows to be "works of the flesh." He brings no accusation against men's bodies, of which he even writes as follows: "Putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor: for we are members one of another.

What are these? Among the first he has set "fornication, impurity, lasciviousness: "" (concerning) which I foretell you, as I have foretold, that whoever do such acts are not to attain by inheritance the kingdom of God." The Romans, moreover,-what learning is more impressed upon them than that there must be no dereliction of the Lord after believing? "What, then, say we? Do we persevere in sin, in order that grace may superabound? Far be it.

But what do we understand "the sense of the flesh" and "the life of the flesh" (to mean), except whatever "it shames (one) to pronounce? " for the other (works) of the flesh even an apostle would have named. Similarly, too, (when writing) to the Ephesians, while recalling past (deeds), he warns (them) concerning the future: "In which we too had our conversation, doing the concupiscences and pleasures of the flesh.

He means the works of the flesh and blood, which, in his Epistle to the Galatians, deprive men of the kingdom of God. In other passages also he is accustomed to put the natural condition instead of the works that are done therein, as when he says, that "they who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Galatians 5:20

Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,

On this point, however, we dwell no longer, since it is the same Paul who, in his Epistle to the Galatians, counts "heresies" among "the sins of the flesh," who also intimates to Titus, that "a man who is a heretic" must be "rejected after the first admonition," on the ground that "he that is such is perverted, and committeth sin, as a self-condemned man.

Galatians 5:21

Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

It is after displaying to the Galatians these pernicious works that he professes to warn them beforehand, even as he had "told them in time past, that they which do such things should not inherit the kingdom of God," even because they bore not the image of the heavenly, as they had borne the image of the earthy; and so, in consequence of their old conversation, they were to be regarded as nothing else than flesh and blood.

Galatians 5:26

Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another.

There is, too, another chief spur of impatience, the lust of revenge, dealing with the business either of glory or else of malice. But "glory," on the one hand, is everywhere "vain; " and malice, on the other, is always odious to the Lord; in this case indeed most of all, when, being provoked by a neighbour's malice, it constitutes itself superior in following out revenge, and by paying wickedness doubles that which has once been done.

Galatians 6:2

Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.

The Creator's law, therefore, has received the approval of the rival god, who has, in fact, bestowed upon it not the sentence of a summary dismissal, but the favour of a compendious acceptance; the gist of it all being concentrated in this one precept! But this condensation of the law is, in fact, only possible to Him who is the Author of it. When, therefore, he says, "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ," since this cannot be accomplished except a man love his neighbour as himself, it is evident that the precept, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" (which, in fact, underlies the injunction, "Bear ye one another's burdens"), is really "the law of Christ," though literally the law of the Creator.

Galatians 6:7 · 3 passages

Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

For God is "jealous," and is One who is not contemptuously derided -derided, namely, by such as flatter His goodness-and who, albeit "patient," yet threatens, through Isaiah, an end of (His) patience.

"Be not deceived, God is not mocked." But Marcion's god can be mocked; for he knows not how to be angry, or how to take vengeance.

But Marcion's god can be mocked; for he knows not how to be angry, or how to take vengeance. "For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." It is then the God of recompense and judgment who threatens this.