Brethren
So he calls them, to testify his affection for them,
notwithstanding their infirmity and instability, and the
roughness with which he had treated them; and to show his great
humility and condescension in owning the relation, and putting
them on a level with himself, which the pride of the false
teachers would not suffer them to do.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your
spirit:
which is his concluding benediction and usual salutation and
token in all his epistles: he wishes that more gifts of grace
might be bestowed upon them; that the Gospel of the grace of God
might be continued with them; that the love of Christ might be
shed abroad in their hearts; that they might receive out of his
fulness grace for grace; that there might be an increase of grace
in their souls; that it might abound in them, and they grow in
the exercise of it: he does not pray that the law of Moses, or
the righteousness of works, but that the grace of Christ might be
with them; not in the mere notion of it, but in the spiritual
experience of it; that it might be in their hearts, and with
their spirits, quickening, comforting, and strengthening them;
making them more spiritual and evangelical in their frames and
duties, and freeing them from a carnal and legal spirit: to all
which he sets his
Amen;
signifying his desire that so it might be, and his faith that so
it would be. The subscription of the letter follows,
unto the Galatians, written from Rome;
where perhaps he was then a prisoner; the Arabic version adds,
"by Titus and Luke": who might be sent with it, but the
subscriptions of the epistles are not to be depended on.