"Christ has set us free in freedom; stand fast therefore, and be not held again in a yoke of bondage. Behold, I, Paul, say to you that if ye are circumcised Christ shall profit you nothing. And I witness again to every man who is circumcised that he is debtor to do the whole law. Ye are deprived of all profit from the Christ as separated from Him, as many as are justified by law, ye have fallen from grace.
"For we, by Spirit, on the principle of faith, await the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision has any force, nor uncircumcision, but faith working through love. Ye ran well; who has stopped you, that ye should not obey the truth? The persuasibleness is not of Him that calls you. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. I have confidence as to you in the Lord that ye will have no other mind; and he that is troubling you shall bear the guilt of it, whosoever he may be" (Verses 1-10, New Translation of J. N. Darby).
Well, indeed, may the apostle say (verse 1),
"Christ has set us free in freedom; stand fast therefore, and be not held again in a yoke of bondage." By nature a Jew, Paul had been under the bondage of the law; the Christians of Galatia, born Gentiles and idolaters, had been under the bondage of their heathen religion. Thus he could say, "has set us free."
Then he refers to a thing imposed by God before the law was given, on Abraham and his descendants in Genesis 17:1010This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised. (Genesis 17:10), and afterward added to the requirements under the law in Leviticus 12:33And in the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised. (Leviticus 12:3). Circumcision typified having our old nature mortified; should not this rite be continued which connects us with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? No; whatever the use to which God applied circumcision before Christ, it is gone now, and the apostle emphatically declares (verse 2),
"Behold, I, Paul, say to you that if ye are circumcised," that is, if you as Christians should seek it as necessary to complete justification before God—"Christ shall profit you nothing."
Christ is a complete Saviour and an exclusive one, as another has remarked, and the addition of anything to His work is in effect to destroy salvation by Him.
Besides, as the next verse goes on to relate, every one who is circumcised in order to attain complete salvation, not being content with the work of Christ to that end, is a debtor to carry out every provision of the law. And that is hopeless; he would be back on the ground of a sinner. Sad indeed would that be.
"Ye are deprived of all profit from the Christ as separated from Him; as many as are justified by law; ye have fallen from grace" (verse 4).
It was not that they had departed from Christ openly, but that they had joined the law, together with Christ, as a means of justification, and it was therefore no longer grace, the free grace of God, on which they stood.
Verse 5 presents in contrast the Christian's position as given him by God,
"For we, by the Spirit, on the principle of faith, await the hope of righteousness."
The Spirit of God dwells in us, and we are the righteousness of God in Christ. Faith rests in this righteousness, as God rests in it. The Holy Spirit sustains this faith, and directs the believer to the hoped for glory which is due to the righteousness. There Christ is, enjoying the glory due to righteousness—due to Him because of the work. He wrought for God's glory and our salvation; and we shall soon follow Him there; our hope then is not the hope of attaining righteousness, for we have the righteousness of God, but the hope which righteousness possesses, of glory above. And in Christ Jesus neither circumcision has any force, nor uncircumcision, but faith working through love.
We can see how the heart of the apostle was distressed over the thought of what the Galatian saints were doing in tampering with the truth of God,
"Ye ran well; who has stopped you, that ye should not obey the truth? The persuasibleness is not of Him that calls you. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. I have confidence as to you in the Lord that ye will have no other mind; and he that is troubling you shall bear the guilt of it, whosoever he may be."
Paul reproaches the Galatians for having lent an ear to the teachers of Judaism who had found their way in among them. "Leaven" it was, in God's sight, that they had absorbed,—the very term that is used in 1 Corinthians 5 in characterizing the gross moral evil that had been uncovered in that assembly. Men would consider the shocking abuse of morals at Corinth as terrible, and think the Galatian error a minor thing, but God's thoughts are not as man's. The Galatians had taken up with a doctrine which was destructive of the gospel, and robbing Christ of His glory.
"But I, brethren, if I yet preach circumcision, why am I yet persecuted? Then the scandal of the cross has been done away. I would that they would even cut themselves off who throw you into confusion. For ye have been called to liberty, brethren, only do not turn liberty into an opportunity to the flesh, but by love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, in Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself; but if ye bite and devour one another, see that ye are not consumed one of another" (verses 11-15 JND).
The book of the Acts shows that the Jews were the usual instigators of the persecution which befell the apostle. The fact that the gospel of Christ makes no provision for what Scripture calls "the flesh"—(the natural man), accounts for the opposition it has always had from the world. Another has said,
"Only preach circumcision, accept the religion of the flesh, and all difficulty will cease; the world will accept your gospel, but it will not be the gospel of Christ."