Am I now seeking the approval of men
The phrase "seeking the approval" comes from the Greek word "peitho," which means to persuade or to win over. In the context of Galatians, Paul is addressing the Galatian church, which was being influenced by Judaizers who insisted on adherence to Jewish law for salvation. Paul contrasts his mission with theirs, emphasizing that his goal is not to win human favor but to remain faithful to the gospel of Christ. Historically, this reflects the early church's struggle to define its identity apart from Jewish customs, highlighting the radical nature of the gospel that transcends cultural and religious boundaries.

or of God?
The rhetorical question "or of God?" underscores the ultimate authority and audience for Paul's ministry. The Greek word for God here is "Theos," which in the Jewish and Christian tradition, represents the one true God. This question challenges the reader to consider whose approval truly matters. In a historical context, this reflects the early Christian community's commitment to divine rather than human authority, a theme that resonates throughout Paul's letters as he often contrasts the temporal with the eternal.

Or am I striving to please men?
The word "striving" is translated from the Greek "zeteo," meaning to seek or desire. Paul is questioning the motivation behind his actions. The historical context here is crucial; Paul is defending his apostleship and the gospel he preaches against accusations that he is merely trying to gain favor with people. This reflects the tension in the early church between adhering to the truth of the gospel and succumbing to societal pressures.

If I were still trying to please men
The phrase "still trying" suggests a past behavior that has been abandoned. The Greek word "eti" implies continuity or persistence. Paul acknowledges that there was a time when he might have sought human approval, possibly referring to his life before his conversion when he was a Pharisee. This highlights the transformative power of the gospel, which calls believers to a new way of living that prioritizes God's will over human expectations.

I would not be a servant of Christ
The term "servant" is translated from the Greek "doulos," meaning bondservant or slave. This word choice is significant, as it denotes complete devotion and submission to Christ. In the Roman world, a "doulos" had no will of their own but was entirely subject to their master's will. Paul uses this imagery to convey the total allegiance and commitment required of those who follow Christ. This serves as a powerful reminder that true discipleship involves surrendering personal ambitions and desires to serve the purposes of God.

(10) You may take this vehemence of language as my answer to another charge that has been brought against me. I am accused of seeking popularity with men. Well, here at least is plainness of speech. If I seek to win favour with any one it is not with men, but God. The two things are really incompatible. If I were a. favourite with men I should be no true servant of Christ.

St. Paul naturally laid himself open to the charge of men-pleasing by the flexibility and largeness of his character. The trifles about which others quarrelled he could look upon with indifference, and his ready power of sympathy led him to enter as much as possible into the point of view of others: "To the Jews he became as a Jew," &c. But where a question of principle was at stake he knew how to take his stand, and he let the Galatians see it in the very unequivocal language he is now using.

(10) Now.--In speaking thus.

Persuade.--Conciliate, seek to win favour with, or to make friends of.

For.--This word is omitted by all the best MSS. and editors. It is characteristic of the Apostle, especially in animated passages like the present, to omit the connecting particles which are so common in Greek. He has a simple answer to give to the accusation of time-serving, and he states it roundly: "If my present conduct was really that of a man-pleaser I should be something very different from what I am."

Yet.--Still; at this late period of my career. The Apostle has cut himself adrift from the current of his age too thoroughly and too long for him to be still floating with the tide.

Verse 10. - For do I now (ἄρτι γάρ); for at this hour. This "for" points back either to the fact of the apostle's having now so solemnly pronounced afresh the awful anathema which at some former time he had uttered; or which, in effect, is nearly the same thing, to the tone of feeling which he in so doing evinced, and to his method of apostolic action which he therein exemplified. The adverb ἄρτι, as used in the New Testament, is distinguished from the more common "now" (νῦν), as denoting that space of time which is most closely present. This shade of meaning is conspicuous, e.g. in the "Suffer it to be so just now" of Matthew 3:15, that is, during that brief, quickly vanishing moment in which the Messiah was by Divine appointment to appear subordinate in position to his forerunner. So Matthew 26:53, "Thinkest thou that I cannot beseech my Father, and he shall (ἄρτι) at this very moment send me more than twelve legions of angels?" John 16:12, "Ye cannot bear them (ἄρτι) just now;" in a very short while they would be enabled to bear them. 1 Corinthians 13:12, "Just now (ἄρτι) we see in a mirror, darkly;" words written under a vivid sense of how brief the interval is which separates the present state of things from that of the life to come. 1 Peter 1:8, "On whom, though just now (ἄρτι) ye see him not " - another outcome of the same feeling. Similarly, in 1 Corinthians 4:13; 1 Corinthians 8:7, ἔως ἄρτι means "until this very hour;" and, on the other side of the point of time indicated ἀπ ἄρτι is "from this very hour" in Matthew 26:64; John 4:42. Many have supposed that the apostle is speaking of certain characteristics of his present course of behaviour as a believer and a servant of Christ, viewed in contrast with the life which he had once lived when an ardent disciple of Judaism. But the narrowly restrictive form of the adverb resists this interpretation, he could hardly with this reference in view have used the phrase "just now," or "at this very hour," of a tenor of life which he had been pursuing for now more than twenty years. Some eminent critics (Alford, Ellicott, Lightfoot, Sanday) take this ἄρτι as pointing to the style of language which the apostle is "just now" adopting: "Now, when I use such uncompromising language;" or, "There! is that the language of a man-pleaser? Now do I," etc. It is an objection to this view that it gives the adverb a somewhat diverse sense to that which it bears in ver. 9; for whereas in ver. 9 ἄρτι, points to the circumstances of the present hour as prompting the apostle to the utterance of his anathema, according to the view referred to it here points to the present hour as exhibiting the apostle himself in a certain aspect. It is more obvious, and indeed gives the present use of the adverb more force, to take it in both verses with the like reference. In both the apostle refers to the present hour as a juncture in which he felt that it had become necessary to depart from his customary manner of using a winning style of address. At other times he will persuade and please; just now he cannot. Persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? (ἀνθρώπους πείθω η} τὸν Θεόν η} ζητῶ ἀνθρώποις ἀρέσκειν); do I persuade men or God? or do I seek to please men? Expositors have endeavoured to establish, as one sense of the Greek verb rendered "persuade," that of "making So-and-so one's friend." No doubt it often means to prevail, or endeavour to prevail, upon others, by coaxing, persuasion, bribery, or anyhow, to go along with you in some particular course of thinking or acting indicated by the context; but it can nowhere. be shown to mean, when standing alone, "to win So-and-so's friendship." In Acts 12:20, "Having persuaded Blastus" means "Having got Blastus to concur with them." Similarly, Matthew 28:14, "We will persuade him," and 2 Macc. 4:45, "With a view to persuade the king." The verb is used here, in 2 Corinthians 5:11, "Knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade men." In that passage the apostle states it to be his practice to make use of all means of persuasion in order to induce men to accept the gospel message (comp. 2 Corinthians 6:1, "Working together with him, we intreat also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain"). He was not content with merely, as an ambassador, delivering the message and there leaving the matter; but made it his anxious concern to gain for the message acceptance, by the use of arguments addressed to the reason, and appeals addressed to the feelings, by putting himself, as it were, by the side of those he was addressing as one who sympathized to a large extent with their ways of thought, for the purpose of conducting them onward to concurrence with more perfect views. Among many examples which might be cited, illustrating his skill in persuasion, it will suffice to refer to the manner in which he dealt with the Athenians, with the Jews when speaking to them from the stairs, with King Agrippa (Acts 17:22-31; Acts 22:1-21; Acts 26:2, 3, 26, 27), and to his Epistle to Philemon. Another feature, closely connected with the one now mentioned, and here likewise referred to, is the care which the apostle took to "please men;" such a care as produced a manner towards his fellow-men far exceeding the courtesy and shows of respectful consideration which the law of charity ordinarily prescribes. For example, instead of thrusting forward into notice, as the spirit of unsympathetic pride naturally prompts us to do, the points on which he differed from others, and in reference to which he knew himself to he standing on higher ground than they, he chose rather to make prominent any points of agreement which he could find already subsisting, conciliating their candid interest by thus fraternally putting himself on a level with them. If this did not suffice for the purpose of enlisting their sympathies on behalf of himself and his views, he did not hesitate, in matters morally indifferent, to mortify and snub his own tastes, and forego the dissenting judgments of his. own superior enlightenment, "to buffet his body, as he expresses himself in 1 Corinthians 9:27, "and bring it into bondage," by following, how ever distasteful to himself, such practices as should get those whose spiritual improvement he was seeking, to feel, so to speak, comfortably at home with himself. In writing to the Corinthians the apostle in one passage (1 Corinthians 9:19-23) dwells at stone length upon this feature of his ministerial conduct, not ashamed of it, but manifestly glorying in it as a triumph of Christ's grace in his soul. Presently after, at the close of the following chapter, he distinctly propounds himself, as in this respect a Christ-like pattern, for their imitation, "Even [he writes] as I please all men in all things, not seeking mine own profit, but the profit of the many, that they may be saved: be ye imitators of me, even as! also am of Christ." Both of these strongly marked features of his ministerial character were liable to he misunderstood, and by his detractors could be easily misconstrued as grave faults, he was, in fact, accused of speciousness and insincerity, of double faced dealings, of simulation and dissimulation. We can easily understand how readily such accusations would be set on foot, and holy colourable they could be made to appear. That they painfully affected the apostle's mind is evidenced by the frequency of the references he makes to them, and by the earnestness and deep pathos of feeling which not seldom mark those references. It is to such sinister criticism that he alludes, when in 2 Corinthians 5:11, cited above, after saying, "we persuade men," he adds, "but we are become manifest unto God," meaning that, though he did make a habit of laying himself out to persuade, yet the entire sincerity of his action, however misconstrued by men, was patent to the Divine eye (comp. 2 Corinthians 1:12). Now, we have reason to believe that the apostle had been apprised, or at least that he suspected, that in Galatia also such misrepresentation of these characteristics of his ministry was rife. The Epistle supplies at least one token of such having probably been the case, We gather from Galatians 5:11 that he had been said to be still "preaching circumcision." They who said this did so apparently in the sense that his having hitherto kept back this point of his doctrine in preaching to them was only an artifice of "persuasion;" that, in order to prevail upon them to accept the Christian faith, he had thought it expedient not at first to press upon them the observances of Judaism, while nevertheless he knew them to be necessary and was prepared by-and-by to insist upon their being attended to. St. Paul is conscious, therefore, of the existence on the part of some of the Galatian Churchmen of unfriendly suspicions with regard to his straightforwardness and uprightness. It is this stinging consciousness that occasions both the substance and the sharp abrupt tone of what he here says. The substance of the verse may be paraphrased thus: "I have written decisively and sternly; for at such a critical juncture as the present is it men that I can make it my business to 'persuade,' as they sneeringly but not un-truly say I love to do? or is it God that I care, so to speak, to persuade, to wit of my fidelity to the gospel which he has committed to my trust? They scoffingly say I love to 'please men;' and I thank God I have been wont to 'please men' to the very utmost of my power for their good; but is it my work just now to be pleasing men by ways of sweet tenderness and forbearance? If at this time I were still laying myself out to 'please men,' these men, to wit, who are making havoc of the gospel message, and you who are ignorantly listening to them, - then were I no true servant of Christ." The interrogative form into which the apostle's language suddenly breaks is apparently, here also as in 2 Corinthians 3:1, due to his that moment bethinking himself of those malicious censurers of him. We have here an example of the form of sentence which the grammarians call zeugma; that is to say, "God" is named in conjunction with "men," as an object to the action of the verb "persuade," whereas this verb, suitable enough with relation to men, can only by a strain upon its proper sense be employed with relation to God. The sentence would possibly have expressed what appears to have been the apostle's real meaning with less ruggedness, but certainly with less intensity, if its second clause had been (perhaps), "or commend myself to God's approval? (η} συνιστάνω ἐμαυτὸν τῷ Θεῷ;)." (For other instances of zeugma, see Luke 1:64; 1 Corinthians 3:2.) The addition of the article before Θεόν, while it is wanting before ἀνθρώπους, gives the noun a more grandiose tone, as if it were, "Do I persuade men or GOD?" For if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ (εἰ ἔτι ἀνθρώποις ἤρεσκον Ξριστοῦ δοῦλος οὐκ ἄν ἤμην); if I still were pleasing men, I were no servant (Greek, bondserrant) of Christ's. The received text of the Greek has "For if I still (εἰ γὰρ ἔτι);" but the "for" is omitted by recent editors. It makes no difference in the sense whether we retain it or not, for, retaining the "for," we should have to understand before it, "I trow not," or the like. The word "bondservant" here expresses the official relation of a Christian minister, one especially at his Divine Owner's beck and call. So Romans 1:1; Philippians 1:1; 2 Timothy 2:24; Titus 1:1; James 1:1; 2 Peter 1:1. The apostle means, "I were no servant of Christ in spirit and reality, whatever I might call myself." A good many expositors suppose the "still" to be said with reference to the time before the apostle's conversion: "I were no apostle or Christian at all." But

(1) there is no indication either in this passage or anywhere that the apostle regarded his life before his conversion as characterized by the desire to please men;

(2) with the sense thus given to it, the thought, as Meyer observes, seems excessively tame;

(3) as thus explained, it would not harmonize with the apostle's explicit and repeated declaration that, in the discharge of his high office, he did make a point of pleasing men.

Parallel Commentaries ...

{Am I} now
Ἄρτι (Arti)
Adverb
Strong's 737: Now, just now, at this moment. Adverb from a derivative of airo through the idea of suspension; just now.

seeking the approval
πείθω (peithō)
Verb - Present Indicative Active - 1st Person Singular
Strong's 3982: A primary verb; to convince; by analogy, to pacify or conciliate; reflexively or passively, to assent, to rely.

of men,
ἀνθρώπους (anthrōpous)
Noun - Accusative Masculine Plural
Strong's 444: A man, one of the human race. From aner and ops; man-faced, i.e. A human being.

or
ἢ (ē)
Conjunction
Strong's 2228: Or, than. A primary particle of distinction between two connected terms; disjunctive, or; comparative, than.

of God?
Θεόν (Theon)
Noun - Accusative Masculine Singular
Strong's 2316: A deity, especially the supreme Divinity; figuratively, a magistrate; by Hebraism, very.

Or
ἢ (ē)
Conjunction
Strong's 2228: Or, than. A primary particle of distinction between two connected terms; disjunctive, or; comparative, than.

am I striving
ζητῶ (zētō)
Verb - Present Indicative Active - 1st Person Singular
Strong's 2212: To seek, search for, desire, require, demand. Of uncertain affinity; to seek; specially, to worship, or to plot.

to please
ἀρέσκειν (areskein)
Verb - Present Infinitive Active
Strong's 700: To please, with the idea of willing service rendered to others; hence almost: I serve. Probably from airo; to be agreeable.

men?
ἀνθρώποις (anthrōpois)
Noun - Dative Masculine Plural
Strong's 444: A man, one of the human race. From aner and ops; man-faced, i.e. A human being.

If
εἰ (ei)
Conjunction
Strong's 1487: If. A primary particle of conditionality; if, whether, that, etc.

I were still trying to please
ἤρεσκον (ēreskon)
Verb - Imperfect Indicative Active - 1st Person Singular
Strong's 700: To please, with the idea of willing service rendered to others; hence almost: I serve. Probably from airo; to be agreeable.

men,
ἀνθρώποις (anthrōpois)
Noun - Dative Masculine Plural
Strong's 444: A man, one of the human race. From aner and ops; man-faced, i.e. A human being.

I would not be
ἤμην (ēmēn)
Verb - Imperfect Indicative Middle - 1st Person Singular
Strong's 1510: I am, exist. The first person singular present indicative; a prolonged form of a primary and defective verb; I exist.

a servant
δοῦλος (doulos)
Noun - Nominative Masculine Singular
Strong's 1401: (a) (as adj.) enslaved, (b) (as noun) a (male) slave. From deo; a slave.

of Christ.
Χριστοῦ (Christou)
Noun - Genitive Masculine Singular
Strong's 5547: Anointed One; the Messiah, the Christ. From chrio; Anointed One, i.e. The Messiah, an epithet of Jesus.


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NT Letters: Galatians 1:10 For am I now seeking the favor (Gal. Ga)