The apostle warned his readers not to think that they could satisfy the demands of the Mosaic Law by obeying only a few of its commands. Only complete compliance satisfies its demands.
5:1 Paul's readers were in danger of returning to slavery, not to the slavery of their heathen sins as before but to the slavery of the Mosaic Law. The false teachers were evidently telling them that they needed to submit to circumcision to be truly acceptable to God.
"Before plunging into this third section of his letter, Paul interjects a verse that is at once a summary of all that has gone before and a transition to what follows. It is, in fact, the key verse of the entire Epistle. Because of the nature of the true gospel and of the work of Christ on his behalf, the believer is now to turn away from anything that smacks of legalism and instead rest in Christ's triumphant work for him and live in the power of Christ's Spirit. . . . The appeal is for an obstinate perseverance in freedom as the only proper response to an attempt to bring Christians once more under legalism."161
In what sense has God liberated Christians from the "yoke of slavery"(v. 1) that is the Mosaic Law (cf. Rom. 10:4; 2 Cor. 3:7-11; Heb. 7:12; Gal. 3:24)?
Calvin and many reformed theologians have answered this question this way. They have said the ceremonial laws (e.g., animal sacrifices, dietary restrictions, feast days, etc.) are no longer binding on us because of the death of Christ. Nevertheless the moral laws (the Ten Commandments) are still binding. God has done away with the moral laws only in the sense that they no longer condemn us (Rom. 8:11).162The problem with this explanation is that it makes a distinction between two parts of the Law that the text does not make. The text simply states that Christ is the end of "the Law"(Rom. 10:4), not the ceremonial part of the Law. Furthermore if the Ten Commandments are all still binding on us, why have Christians throughout history (Acts 20:7; cf. 1 Cor. 16:2) met to worship on Sunday rather than on the Sabbath? Some reformed theologians, following Calvin, believe that God abolished Sabbath worship along with the ceremonial laws.163This seems somewhat inconsistent. Others, following the Westminster Confession, regard Sunday worship as a continuation of Sabbath worship.164Nevertheless it is, of course, very different.
Dispensational theologians have suggested another answer to this question that to me seems more consistent with what Scripture says. They say that God did away with the Mosaic Law completely, both the ceremonial and the moral parts. He terminated it as a codeand has replaced it with a new code, "the Law of Christ"(Gal. 6:2). Some commandments in the Law of Christ are the same as those in the Law of Moses (e.g., nine of the Ten Commandments, excluding the command to observe the Sabbath day). God-given codes of laws that governed people's behavior existed before God gave the Law of Moses (e.g., Gen. 1:28-30; 2:16-17; 3:14-19; 9:1-17). God incorporated some specific commands from these former codes into the Law of Christ even though they were not part of the Law of Moses (e.g., 1 Tim. 4:3; cf. Gen. 9:3). He also incorporated nine of the Ten Commandments from the Mosaic Code.
"May this procedure not be likened to the various codes in a household with growing children? At different stages of maturity new codes are instituted, but some of the same commandments appear often. To say that the former code is done away and all its commandments is no contradiction. It is as natural as growing up. So it is with the Mosaic Law and the law of Christ."165
"The yoke' was used in current Jewish parlance in an honorable sense for the obligation to keep the law of Moses, and the Judaizers may well have urged the Galatians to take the yoke of the law' upon themselves. But Paul bluntly points out that the ordinances of the law as demanded by the Judaizers constitute a slave's yoke, so that he uses the word in the bad sense of an imposed burden, like slavery (cf. Acts 15:10; 1 Tim. 6:1)."166
5:2 Paul now began to attack the Judaizers' teaching about circumcision. Insistence on circumcision was a central feature of the false gospel that the Judaizers were promoting. It was the practice around which the whole controversy swirled.
5:3-4 The Galatians would be obligating themselves to obey the whole Mosaic Code if they allowed the false teachers to circumcise them.167Their confidence in circumcision would reveal confidence in their own ability to earn salvation by obeying the Law. This legal approach to salvation would separate them from Christ since what He did was provide salvation as a gift. They would fall away from the grace method of salvation if they chose the law method.168In view of the many scriptural promises that God never withdraws His gift of salvation, verse 4 cannot mean the readers had lost their salvation (e.g., John 1:12; 3:16, 36; 5:24; 6:47; 10:28-29; et al.).
The legalists appear to have been claiming that circumcision was a necessary step in the process by which people become acceptable to God. These steps from their viewpoint were faith in Christ, reception of the Spirit, and circumcision of the flesh. Paul argued that anyone who submits to circumcision to gain acceptance with God really believes in salvation by law-keeping. If one believes in law-keeping for salvation, he must keep the whole Law, not just the requirement of circumcision. That is impossible for sinners to do. Rather than gaining acceptance with God circumcision would be what separated him from Christ.
5:5-6 Paul's approach, and the one he tried to persuade the Galatians to adopt, was simply to trust God to deliver all that we anticipate in the future because we are now righteous (justified).169This hope includes our ultimate glorification (cf. Rom. 8:18-25; 1 Pet. 1:3-4, 13). We do not work for this, but we wait for it.170God does not care if a Christian has a circumcised body or not. What does matter is that we trust God because we love Him. Note that in these verses Paul united the three basic Christian virtues: faith, hope, and love. The Holy Spirit makes all three possible.
"We must guard against the misunderstanding current especially in Catholic theology (though Protestantism is far from exempt) that only faith made perfect in love leads to justification. This represents a serious distortion of the relationship between faith, love, and justification. In speaking of justification Paul never talks of faith andlove, but onlyof faith as receiving. Love is not therefore an additional prerequisite for receiving salvation, nor is it properly an essential trait of faith; on the contrary, faith animates the love in which it works."171
5:7-10 The false teachers had bumped Paul's readers as they ran the Christian race. God had not led the ones who interfered with them to do so. The "leaven"in Paul's proverb (v. 9) could refer to the error in the church, the leading false teacher in their midst (the bad apple in the barrel, cf. v. 10), and the single requirement of circumcision already mentioned (vv. 2-3). Paul was confident that the Galatians would side with him and that they or God would judge the false teacher or teachers. "Whoever he is"may allude to the high standing of the false teacher in the Galatians' minds rather than expressing Paul's ignorance about his identity.172
5:11 Evidently some people were saying Paul advocated circumcision. He may have preached it before his Damascus road conversion, but since then he had stopped. Probably Paul meant that the accusation of his critics that he preached circumcision when it suited him was not true (cf. 1 Cor. 7:18).173Paul thought it wise for some Christians, such as Timothy, to undergo circumcision for the sake of effective ministry (Acts 16:3). However, he did not teach that it was necessary for salvation.
Paul's point here was that if he taught circumcision was necessary for salvation the Judaizers would not have persecuted him. If people need circumcision, they do not need the cross of Christ. The legalists opposed Paul's preaching of the Cross because it implied that people are unable to please God themselves.
"The skandalon[stumbling block] of the cross, for Jews (cf. 1 Cor. 1:23), lay in the curse which it involved for one who was hanged on it (cf. 3:13). That one who died such a death should be proclaimed as Lord and Christ was intolerable. In the eyes of Gentiles the idea that salvation depended on one who had neither the wit nor the power to save himself from so disreputable a death was the height of folly. But there is a more general skandalonattached to the cross, one of which Paul is probably thinking here: it cuts the ground from under every thought of personal achievement or merit where God's salvation is in view. To be shut up to receiving salvation from the crucified one, if it is to be received at all, is an affront to all notions of proper self-pride and self-help--and for many people this remains a major stumbling-block in the gospel of Christ crucified. If I myself can make some small contribution, something even so small as the acceptance of circumcision, then my self-esteem is uninjured."174
Paul's gospel was a stumbling block for two reasons: it presented a crucified Messiah and it advocated a way of salvation apart from circumcision and the Law.
5:12 The Judaizers had gone too far with circumcision. Paul's wish that the Judaizers who were so keen on circumcision would mutilate (i.e., castrate) themselves reflects his deep feelings about the seriousness of their heresy. If God granted Paul's wish, they could not produce converts, figuratively speaking. Priests of the Cybele cult in nearby Phrygia practiced castration.175Paul regarded his legalistic rivals as no better than pagan priests.
". . . for Paul to compare the ancient Jewish rite of circumcision to pagan practices even in this way is startling. For one thing, it puts the efforts of the Judaizers to have the Gentiles circumcised on the same level as abhorred pagan practices. For another, it links their desire for circumcision to that which even in Judaism disbarred one from the congregation of the Lord (Deut 23:1)."176
Thus Paul's desire for the false teachers seems to have been that they would cut themselves off from the company of believers.177
"Most often Galatians is viewed as the great document of justification by faith. What Christians all too often fail to realize is that in reality it is a document that sets out a Christ-centered lifestyle--one that stands in opposition to both nomism and libertinism. Sadly, though applauding justification by faith, Christians frequently renounce their freedom in Christ by espousing either nomism or libertinism, and sometimes (like the Galatians) both. So Paul's letter to the Galatians, though directly relevant to the Galatian situation, speaks also to our situation today."178
