Galatians 5:7 You were running a good race. Who cut in on you and kept you from obeying the truth? That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you. “A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough.” I am confident in the Lord that you will take no other view. The one who is throwing you into confusion will pay the penalty, whoever he may be. Brothers, if I am still preaching circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been abolished. As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves!
Many of you have seen little waifs on television. Little children without parents to take care of them, existing on the streets of the world, living lives of desperation and hopelessness. We usually view them with disheveled, dirty, and tattered clothing, standing with bare feet on rocky streets, looking hungry and forlorn. They are children with downcast faces, unwashed for many days. There they stand in need: hurting, lonely, without hope of anything meaningful in life. They are definitely on their own. In the spiritual sense, they represent every one of us when we are outside of God's protection and saving grace: without hope, alone in a finite world, not having the proper clothing for an eternal existence, starving for food that satisfies, dead to God. We are temporary in every way, marking time with meaningless activities, looking for answers to the wrong questions, never knowing the purpose of life. Perhaps we are resigned to the definition of existence as being a composite of six elements, known as flesh, with an internal energy source made up of electrical-chemical impulses. Is this what life is all about? Is this the essence of living? Standing almost naked on the corner of life, experiencing our limited exposure to what we can touch, see, hear, smell, and taste, without any hope of anything else. Is that what it means to be human? Is this truth we might ask ourselves? Are we running a good race? The psalmist wrote: Man is a mere phantom as he goes to and fro: He bustles about, but only in vain; he heaps up wealth, not knowing who will get it. (Psalm 39:6)
Thanks to the mercy of the Lord, the Galatians had found their purpose for living: You were running a good race, Paul said in their defense. He had been pleased with the way they initially embraced the Good News. They knew the God of creation through their faith in Christ's teachings and his works. They were wearing the eternal robes of righteousness and looked for a glorious eternity. The hopelessness of life had disappeared from them; the joy of life expressed through the Holy Spirit's work in them brought new hope for every day. But now, Paul is concerned for them. Instead of living by faith with the joy that God had given them through faith in Jesus Christ, they were attempting to return to the beggarly elements that affected their lives before they were saved. They were trying to be better, more pleasing to God by their own efforts. An example of that was their desire to be circumcised so that they would be more pleasing to God. But Paul warns them their attempts to be better on their own discount the works of grace and purposes of God. They are telling God his efforts are not enough. They must also be involved in the washing and in the sewing up the holes of the old garments. They are telling God that they can take the filthy rags and make them acceptable to him. All of this is taking God's plan of grace and mercy away from him, substituting their plan of works, literally, putting new wine into old wineskins. It won't work: the new life cannot be contained by the old life of works, our efforts. Jesus said, "Neither do men pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.” (Matthew 9:17) He knew that the old must pass away, so that all things could become new. Paul told the believers in Corinth: Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. (2 Corinthians 5:17 NKJV)
Paul is very frank in his thoughts about those who are leading the Galatians astray. He not only says their persuasion does not come from the one who calls you, but he goes on to say, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves! Otherwise, I wish they would make themselves eunuchs, castrated males, having no hope of offspring. He is chiding them: if a little self work is good for salvation, go all the way, complete your own salvation by your own hands, cut off every vestige of unholiness. Of course, he knows emasculating themselves is not their purpose for propagating the idea that men should be circumcised to please God. They are preaching this doctrine to gain control in the Galatian community. They want to erode Paul's authority with the Galatians by discounting his message of salvation by God's grace and mercy exclusively through faith in Jesus Christ. Paul tells them very directly, that the lost waif status of human beings must be dealt with through the work of the cross. No other power or authority can make new creatures of fallen mankind, who will wear the righteous robes of God, with an eternal purpose in their heart of serving and loving God forever. The waifs now have a parent who will take care of them and never leave them nor forsake them. He alone will be the loving Father who adopts them into the family, The All-Sufficient-One the El Shaddai where they can find succor in the midst of difficult lives. Before Christ, these waifs were abandoned, hopeless, without eternal life; but because of Christ, new life surges through their bodies forever, and they will praise God for all eternity. Yes, Christ is our righteousness. As Paul wrote to the church at Rome: For there is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith. (Romans 3:22-27) Amen! Amen!
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