{"author":null,"canonical_references":[],"database_sha256":"8cfbe7284c6936871d57c02dc6aa63ebbdfd4722422d539dd9f716e46e91112e","date_end":null,"date_start":null,"edition_year":null,"id":"sermonindex-ecf-5486","native_reference":{"book_number":550,"chapter_from":4,"chapter_to":4,"system":"MyBible module coordinates (mapping unverified)","verse_from":14,"verse_to":14},"public_import_allowed":false,"record_kind":"verse-keyed-module-record","review_required":["English edition and exact text","author/work attribution","dating","verse mapping and citation kind","reuse and attribution","split author quotations and deduplicate"],"review_status":"unreviewed","source_html":"<p><b>Ambrosiaster</b>: The ailment of the apostle was a temptation to the Galatians. But they were found constant, not doubting as to his faith. For they could have stumbled and said, \"What virtue or hope is there in this faith when its minister is so humiliated?\" But when he had inspired their minds with future hopes, they did not fear present death for the sake of Christ's name.… This caused them later to blush, because after these laudable acts they became again entrapped so as to deserve reproach.<br/><i>— EPISTLE TO THE Galatians 4.14.1-2</i></p><p><b>Gaius Marius Victorinus</b>: The weakness in my body was no obstacle for you, but you received me as an angel of God, that is, as a messenger, a preacher sent from God (for that is an angel of God); and you received me like Christ Jesus, whom I was preaching to you. And so you truly received Christ Jesus, if you received me as an angel of God, in the same way you received Christ Jesus.<br/><i>— EPISTLE TO THE Galatians 2.4.14</i></p><p><b>Jerome</b>: (Verse 14.) And you did not despise or reject your temptation, which was in my flesh, but you received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus. It is a perplexing passage and requires careful attention. Indeed, I have preached to you like little ones and infants through the weakness of your flesh, starting from the least and speaking almost stammeringly. This arrangement and the feigned appearance of a weak proclamation were my doing, but your temptation was whether you would be pleased and consider great those things which, considering their nature, were smaller, and which I presented to you as humble. Indeed, you, who not taking them as small things but as great things, were so amazed that you received me, who was speaking them, as an angel and, if I may say more, as the Son of God. Therefore, your temptation, by which I was testing you in the announcement of my fleshly speech, was not despised or trivial; rather, it had more dignity than I estimated. And this place can be explained in this way: when I came to you, I did not come in the speech of wisdom, but as a humble and despised man, not bringing anything great, but the Crucified. Therefore, when you saw me in a body subject to weaknesses, promising heavenly kingdoms, you did not mock or consider me worthy of contempt. For you understood the lowliness of my flesh and the lowly state of my appearance, which was made for your temptation. Or perhaps you despised me, who was regarded as miserable by the unbelievers; but on the contrary, you received him who was humble, lowly, and despised, as if he were an angel, and more than an angel. Certainly, we can suspect that the Apostle, at the time when he first came to the Galatians, was sick; and though his body was weak, he did not cease, nor did he silence his voice, from preaching the Gospel that he had begun. For it is reported that he often suffered from a severe headache: and this was the angel of Satan, who was assigned to him, to strike him in the flesh, so that he would not be exalted. This weakness and illness of his body was a temptation among those to whom the Gospel was preached: whether they would despise him, who promised sublime things, when they saw him subject to bodily weaknesses. And also it can be said that, at the beginning of his coming to the Galatians, he endured insults, persecutions, and bodily afflictions from those who opposed the Gospel: and this was perhaps the greatest temptation for the Galatians, seeing the Apostle of Christ being beaten. But what he says, that you received me as an angel, as Christ Jesus: and by saying that Christ is greater than the angel, he shows that the one whom the Psalmist sang about as being a little lower than the angels according to the order of the flesh, is now revealed to be greater, and his words in the beginning were so powerful that they were thought to be those of angels and of Christ.<br/><i>— Commentary on Galatians</i></p><p><b>Oecumenius</b>: \"Rather you received me as an angel of God.\" How then is it not unreasonable, he says, that one who is being persecuted and driven away should be received by you as an angel, and even as the Lord himself? Yet he is spat upon while he counsels and exhorts those things that lead to salvation.<br/><i>— Commentary on Galatians</i></p>","source_html_sha256":"0c1d8b0767a445f678ac3b09388ee04e3230d4cfb6d549cb6bd387338c746664","source_module":"ECF","source_row_id":5486,"source_url":"https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/ecf/","text_sha256":"2ea06a74d888874b7e4315f7396c167081d3bb9dbbc9655c452a16e4aac5d740","translator":null,"work":null}