Day 3
Lisa Scheffler, author
Listen at bit.ly/EngageGodDaily
A caged bird can’t fly, a chained elephant can’t roam, and a cheetah in a pen can’t run. No matter the reasons for restraining them, the simple fact is that these animals can’t act according to their God-given design when they are confined or restricted.
According to Paul, humanity has been in slavery to two forces, the law and sin. We’ve been caged, chained, and fenced in. Jesus Christ redeemed us in full! In Christ, we’ve been set free. As we discovered yesterday, this freedom is directly tied to our relationship with God. It is only in Christ and by the Spirit that we become free to live according to God’s good design. “In short, for Paul ‘freedom’ is near the very heart of the gospel: God sets us free through Christ and in the Spirit, so that we can love God and others.”[1]
With Galatians 5:1 as his thesis statement, in the passage we’ll look at today, Paul speaks directly to what’s been going on in the Galatian churches with several blunt statements. Imagine you’re sitting in one of the house churches when this letter is being read. How would these verses strike you?
[1] McKnight, 246.
Read
Galatians 5:2-6
2 Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. 3 Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. 4 You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. 5 For through the Spirit we eagerly await by faith the righteousness for which we hope. 6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.
What issue is Paul’s primary concern in this passage? Why?
What do you imagine the reaction of Paul’s audience was?
Reflect
In order to understand why circumcision was causing such controversy in the Galatian churches, we need to remember what it represents. Circumcision was the sign of God’s covenant with Abraham and all his descendants. It became like an “entrance requirement” into the covenant that you received either as an infant, or as an adult convert, because it was the first step in following the entire law. What’s more, it marked you as one of God’s people. You wouldn’t be accepted in the covenant community without it.
Paul saw the embrace of circumcision and all it represented as alienation from Christ. After all, why would Jesus have come to die if the law alone could justify you (make you right with God)? Membership in God’s covenant and acceptance into his family came through Christ. To say it could be attained by some other means was a rejection of God’s grace.
If you add anything to grace, you’re no longer experiencing grace. You’ve “fallen away” from it. It’s like paying someone for a heartfelt gift that they picked out just for you and bought with their hard-earned money. If you attempt to do such an insulting thing, you are turning a loving gift into an impersonal transaction.
According to commentator Gordon Fee, if the Galatians “were to yield to circumcision under pressure, they would in effect be saying that Christ’s death and resurrection are not sufficient for one to be in a right relationship with God. And this is what Paul recognizes clearly: it is either Christ + nothing or they miss out on Christ altogether.”[1]
Paul has clearly spelled out the negatives of circumcision, and now offers an alternative. Paul unites three key terms Spirit, faith, and righteousness in two beautiful, but tightly packed sentences.
The first statement points us towards the future. As N.T. Wright says, “Paul speaks of the time when God will declare publicly and completely that all those in Christ really are his people. This is ‘the hope of righteousness’, the longing for the time when God’s vindication and justification of all his faithful people will be made manifest.”[2]
Our faith is our response to the work of Christ, whose death and resurrection secures our place before God and eliminates any form of law-keeping as a means of gaining God’s acceptance. But it is not a hollow faith, where you simply acknowledge a certain set of beliefs.
Ours is a faith that works — but not through the works of the law. It is faith that works through love — a love that is open to all. God’s children are to love as he loves, sacrificially, unconditionally, and in the relentless pursuit of another’s good.
[1] Gordon Fee, Galatians, (Dorset, UK: Deo Publishing, 2011), 189.
[2] Tom Wright, Paul for Everyone: Galatians and Thessalonians (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2004), 62–63.
Respond
Are you resting in God’s grace? Do you think you try to add anything to it? What’s the problem with doing so?
How does your faith prompt you to love God and others? Spend some time in prayer and ask the Father how you might better love as Jesus loves.
