Before we consider the Spirit in the book of Galatians, we will review the revelation of the Spirit in 1 and 2 Corinthians. At the conclusion of 1 Corinthians, Paul says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you. My love in Christ Jesus be with you all” (16:23-24). At the end of 2 Corinthians, he again mentions grace and love, but he adds fellowship. Second Corinthians 13:14 is a significant verse. After everything Paul said in 1 and 2 Corinthians, he closed his writing by saying, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” All the books of the Bible were written in a very specific and meaningful way. No other book ends in the way 2 Corinthians does. Paul’s concluding word indicates that the transforming work spoken of in the two Epistles to the Corinthians requires the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.
This verse speaks of three items: the grace of Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Spirit. Here we can see the Divine Trinity. God, Christ, and the Spirit are neither three alone nor one alone. Rather, They are three in one. In the same way, grace, love, and fellowship are three items in one. Love is inward, in the heart, so it needs to be expressed. For example, if a brother gives someone a Bible, his love is expressed by that gift. In this sense, the gift of the Bible is a grace to the recipient. While love is the inward source, grace is the outward expression. We may compare love and grace to an object with two ends. It is one object, but what is love on one end is grace on the other end. Love is in God the Father as the source, while grace is in God the Son as the expression. First John 4:8 and 16 tell us that God is love, and John 1:17 says that grace and reality came through Jesus Christ.
Fellowship is the transmission of love and grace. If I love a brother in my heart, I will express this love by grace, but it is by a certain kind of transmission that the grace is brought to him. Love is expressed in grace, and grace with love is in the transmission, the fellowship, of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit transmits the grace of Christ with the love of God. Therefore, the transforming Spirit in 1 and 2 Corinthians is the transmitting Spirit, transmitting the grace of Christ with the love of God.
The transforming Spirit is transforming us with a certain substance and element. This substance and element are the grace of Christ with the love of God. The transforming Spirit transforms us by transmitting the grace of Christ with the love of God into us.
Seemingly, love is first, and grace is second. However, this verse mentions grace first. This is because the subject of 2 Corinthians is the grace of Christ (1:12; 4:15; 6:1; 8:1, 9; 9:8, 14; 12:9), and our experience is mainly of grace. What we enjoy is Christ as our grace. Moreover, this grace has a source, which is the love of God, and this grace needs a transmission, which is by the Holy Spirit.
The concluding verse of Galatians says, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers. Amen” (6:18). Ephesians 6:24 says, “Grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ in incorruptibility,” and Philippians ends with, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit” (4:23). All these books end with grace, because grace, which is Christ Himself, is our enjoyment. This grace has a source, which is God the Father as love, and this grace comes to us by the transmission, the fellowship, of the Holy Spirit. Moreover, grace is transmitted to us in our spirit. All this is revealed to us by the final verses of these Epistles.
The transforming Spirit within us is the transmitting Spirit, transmitting the grace of Christ with the love of God for the purpose of transforming us. We can compare transformation to a chemical reaction. In order to produce a chemical change, one substance needs to be put into another. The transforming Spirit transmits Christ with God into us as our new element. This causes the “chemical change” in which we are transformed.
The Spirit is not mentioned in Galatians until the third chapter. The subject of Galatians 3 is the gospel, of which the Spirit is the center. When did the gospel begin to be preached? Some may say the gospel began with the preaching of John the Baptist or the Lord Jesus, or even on the day of Pentecost. The beginning of the gospel, however, was at the time of Abraham. Galatians 3:8 says, “And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles out of faith, announced the gospel beforehand to Abraham: ‘In you shall all the nations be blessed.’” The time of Abraham was about two thousand years before the preaching of the New Testament dispensation. The gospel was preached even before the law was given.