even in his exordium, he scatters traces of the goodness of God, and we may conceive him speaking thus: “O ye who were lately slaves, enemies and aliens, what right have ye suddenly acquired to call God your Father? it was not the Law which conferred upon you this relation- ship; why do ye therefore desert Him who brought you so near to God, and return to your tutor?13 But the Name of the Son, as well as that of the Father, had been sufficient to declare to them these blessings. This will appear, if we consider the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ with attention; for it is said, “thou shalt call His Name Jesus; for it is He that shall save His people from their sins;” (Matt. i. 21.) and the appellation of “Christ” calls to mind the unction of the Spirit. Ver. 4. “Who gave himself for our sins.”14 Thus it appears, that the ministry which He undertook was free and uncompelled; that He was delivered up by Himself, not by another. Let not therefore the words of John, “that the Father gave His only-begotten Son” (John iii. 16.) for us, lead you to derogate from the dignity of the Only-begotten, or to infer therefrom that He is only human. For the Father is said to have given Him, not as implying that the Son’s ministry was a servile one, but to teach us that it seemed good to the Father, as Paul too has shown in the immediate context: 5 “according to the will of our God, and Father.” He says not “by the command,” but “according to the will,” for inasmuch as there is an unity of will in the Father and the Son, that which the Son wills, the Father wills also. “For our sins,”15 says the Apostle; we had pierced ourselves with ten thousand evils, and had deserved the gravest punishment; and the Law not only did not deliver us, but it even condemned us, making sin more manifest, without the power to release us from it, or to stay the anger of God. But the Son of God made this impossibility possible for he remitted our sins, He restored us from enmity to the condition of friends, He freely bestowed on us numberless other blessings. Ver. 4. “That He might deliver us out of this present evil world.” Another class of heretics16 seize upon these words of Paul, and pervert his testimony to an accusation of the present life. Lo, say they, he has called this present world evil, and 13 [The word is παιδαγωγός, the same that is used in Gal. 3: 24, 25, and translated ‘school-master’ in the A.V., but ‘tutor’ in the Rev. Ver.—G.A.] 14 [“The Galatians had practically ignored the atoning death of Christ; compare ii. 21 and v. 4.”—Lightfoot.—G.A.] 15 [“The idea of satisfaction is implied not in the preposition ὑπέρ but the whole nature of the case.”—Mey- er.—G.A.] 16 That is, the Manichees, who considered matter intrinsically evil, and paid divine honors to the sun, moon, and stars. Vid. Epiph. Hær. lxvi. [On Mani and the Manichean heresy see Schaff, Church History, Vol. II. pp. 498–508 where a full account of the literature is given also.—G.A.] 14 Galatians 1:1--3