I don’t know if you’ve ever read Galatians?

Paul’s writing, elsewhere in the New Testament, is often really varied in terms of themes. He covers a wide breadth of topics.

Not Galatians. Galatians is fixated on one key issue central to the Gospel.

Paul tackles that issue by providing a warning and an encouragement.

The warning: Don’t fall for the Judaisers who are trying to convince you salvation is earned through believing Jesus AND circumcision.

The encouragement: Stand firm on the simple good news story that Jesus has paid your debt.

The good news in brief…

Like it or not, nobody ever had to teach you how to misbehave 😬
It’s a default, inherited character flaw we all have.

The bible defines this as sin and it’s a nature we inherit. The bible explains that this nature can be traced all the way back to the first humans Adam and Eve.

Sin simply means to fall short of God’s perfect standard.

Human history can be summed up as a series of attempts by humans to understand God and make it up to God, to elevate ourselves to that perfect standard.

It’s a futile story because we simply can’t make it up to God and we can’t achieve perfection ourselves 😭

That’s ok though because, despite this bad news God has intervened and provided Jesus.

Jesus, though fully human, didn’t fall short. Jesus lived a life of perfect obedience to God’s standards and then, stepped willingly onto the cross in our place. To take what we deserve.

Jesus, being fully God as well as fully human (this article explains this well) was able to do more than just die in our place, he also miraculously conquered death and ascended to God’s eternal kingdom.

There’s a simple question at the heart of this good news that will transfer Jesus’ reality to your reality – do you trust Jesus?

If you do, you get what he has. Life forever, in closeness to God, in a beautiful better-than-now reality free from suffering, pain, loss, sadness, sin.

The World’s lies

The world wants to convince you of something different.

In light of this, it’s refreshing to look at Galatians (in general, and Galatians 5 specifically) and be reminded of the wonderful, simple good news of Jesus.

The passage:

Let’s look at Galatians 5:1-12 together…

5 It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

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.

⁷ You were running a good race. Who cut in on you to keep you from obeying the truth? ⁸ That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you. ⁹ “A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough.” ¹⁰ I am confident in the Lord that you will take no other view. The one who is throwing you into confusion, whoever that may be, will have to pay the penalty. ¹¹ Brothers and sisters, if I am still preaching circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been abolished. ¹² As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves!

A Spot Of Context

Before we dig much deeper, it’s helpful to know a little bit of the story so far.

Paul spent his life travelling from town to town, region to region preaching the simple good news message of Jesus.

As he did that, he nurtured church communities of new believers and taught them what life in Christ, together, looks like.

Then he’d move on after a while to the next place and so on.

That’s what happened in Galatia (There are debates over exactly who the Galatians are – if you want to go on a tangent, click here).

After Paul had left, he got news that some bad guys (theological term right there lolz) had muscled in on his turf and were teaching the Galatians that their faith in Jesus wasn’t enough, that they needed to get circumcised too to be saved.

So Paul writes to the Galatians to address the issue.

How we’ll tackle the passage…

I’d like to look at this passage by exploring three ideas that come from the text:

Liberty – Freedom in Jesus

Let me ask you something, have you ever experienced something like this?

One minute you seem to be doing so well in your life as a Christian.

Perhaps you’ve been reading your bible regularly, your prayer life is flourishing, you feel really close to God and your relationship with others is going great.

Then something goes wrong:

And as a result of that blip you just feel a weight of shame and of guilt.

It impacts your good habits of prayer, bible reading etc.

For days you’re walking around with a cloud of shame hanging over your head.

It feels like you can’t look God in the eye.

You want to hide.

What if I told you there’s a way for this to never happen again?

The trick comes in understanding what Paul means when he says:

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free”

I really like how John Stott puts it.

This is Scandalous 😱

We’re free from the guilt attached to our sin. Forever.

When you grasp this, when the penny drops, you realise the scandal.

We live in a culture where if someone screws things up, it’s a big deal. If it happens in public life there will be newspaper headlines, there will be reports on the Telly. If it happens at work there will be reprimands, potentially job loss. If it happens at school you might be in detention, you might get excluded.

But, when we muck it up as a Christian God looks at us exactly the same way as he looked at us when we first trusted him: as if we were perfect.

It’s a mind-blowing reality.

The freedom Paul is talking about is a radical freedom.

In his letter to the Romans, Paul puts it like this:

8 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, ² because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you^[a] free from the law of sin and death. 

I like how Phillip Yancey defines it:

That’s why Paul concludes that sentence with a charge to “stand firm” at the end of Galatians 5:1.

If you’re feeling guilt right now, if shame has crept in to your life, perhaps this is your nudge from God to stand firm in the truth → You stand as a free man or woman. 0 guilt.

You have a father in heaven who sees what you have done (even if no one else knows about it). He knows how bad it’s got.

And he lifts your eyes up to meet his, and he smiles as he sees not your shame but Jesus’ self-giving love.

He sees you as spotless. Clothed in the righteousness of Jesus.

That’s the good race the Galatians were running.

And they were in danger of throwing away their freedom, of putting the immense weight of guilt and shame back onto their shoulders by observing religious rituals and practices.

You can almost hear the heartbreak in Paul’s tone when he writes…

“You were running a good race. Who cut in on you to keep you from obeying the truth?”

The Lie of Legalism

There’s an interesting contrast to explore at this point. You see, I don’t think there’s much danger in anyone reading this and then booking in with the local rabbi to get circumcised.

And that presents a challenge for us wanting to interpret Galatians 5 and apply it to our lives today. What’s the principle underlying this since we’re not likely to get circumcised?

Take a look at Genesis 17 with me:

When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty; walk before me faithfully and be blameless. ² Then I will make my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers.”

³ Abram fell facedown, and God said to him, ⁴ “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. ⁵ No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. ⁶ I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. ⁷ I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. ⁸ The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.”

⁹ Then God said to Abraham, “As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. ¹⁰ This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. ¹¹ You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you.

Ancient Jewish culture was built on typological stuff. In other words, there was deep meaning behind physical covenant signs like circumcision.

It’s a sign of the curse God has placed on humanity since Adam and Eve that if humans break contract with God they will be forever cut off from him.

Without going into too much detail, you can see how circumcision would be a powerful sign of that, what has been cut off physically isn’t coming back.

It’s also a sign of God’s promise of blessing. No longer would people be cut off from God as He had made away for them to relate to Him.

Sadly, the judaisers distorted this with the Galatians. Instead of seeing it as an old testament sign that pointed forward to the once and for all completed work of Jesus, they instead saw it as the way people are saved. It’s not by trusting in Jesus alone. It’s about physically signing the contract by cutting off flesh.

If you’re going to sign such a serious contract then you’re bound by it.

Which is why Paul wrote Galatians 5:2-3.

Maybe now you can see the principle underneath circumcision.

It’s swapping faith in Jesus with a lie of external performance.

I can think of all kinds of ways this permeates our churches.

The list goes on and on.

Heed Paul’s warning here in Galatians – it’s a lie.

Don’t depart from the good race you’ve been running. Trust Jesus. Don’t buy the lie that you need to bring anything to the table.

Life ❤️

Paul uses a really interesting picture to describe the lifestyle of a Christian. He talks about waiting. Did you notice that in Galatians 5:5?

Take a look at what Charles Spurgeon says regarding this:

Like the Galatians, we’ve been Liberated by the gospel. We’re free-indeed because of Jesus. Like the Galatians, we need to be warned about the Lie of legalism. Like the Galatians, we’re freed to live a life of love -waiting in peaceful joy for that great and glorious day when God wraps up this chapter of human history and brings about His forever kingdom.

Paul’s deep pastoral concern for the Galatians is that they were running such a good race, and suddenly that’s being disrupted, they’re being cheated out of their Liberty by a LIE robbing them from living a LIFE of love.

Having been reminded of our freedom, let’s take a moment to ask ourselves is anything threatening to rob us of our joy?

There’s an opportunity now to mark Paul’s words…

“Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”