Galatians 5: The Law and Circumcision

If you are going to be memorizing Galatians 5 with me this month, you may find it harder to immediately understand or apply than Psalm 19 was last month. Please don't be discouraged. I think that you will find that these verses (like all of Scripture) are well worth your time if you will press through with me to the end.

Galatians 5 will also be best understood in its context. The best thing to do, then, in order to benefit from this chapter, would be to read the whole book of Galatians. That being said, I will try my best over the remaining Mondays in July to address some of the main ideas in this passage. This is a rich text that we could spend much more time with than I can give here, but I will do what I can.

The first idea I would like to draw out from this chapter is the idea of circumcision and its relation to God's law. First, it would be helpful to have a little background. The church of Galatia, to whom this letter is written, had begun to listen to the false teaching of a group known as the Judaizers. This group taught that before one became a Christian that they must first be a Jew. To do this, Gentiles (non-Jews) were told that they must be circumcised.

Of course, circumcision had been the mark of the covenant between God and Israel since the time of Abraham (see Genesis 17). To be a member of Israel meant to be circumcised. However, Paul makes it clear in Romans 2:25-29, among other places, that, since Jesus has come, circumcision is only valuable if one depends on God's law for salvation. He reinforces this in verse 3 of this chapter when he says that "every man who accepts circumcision... is obligated to keep the whole law."

Just to be clear though, this is impossible. To depend on the law for salvation is to depend on our own works, which are tainted with sin (see Isaiah 64:6, Romans 2 and 3). Even worse, if we depend on this law to save us, then we are not depending on Christ. This is because Jesus gives His grace freely to be accepted by faith (verse 6). To add anything to Christ's work is to actually take away from it.

This is at least part of what Paul is referring to when he uses the phrase "the offense of the cross" in verse 11. It is offensive to our sinful hearts that salvation is free and requires nothing from us. We want to earn our way. We want to deserve this gift. We don't want to be seen as sinful and unworthy, even thought that's what we are.

Salvation is from God alone through Jesus' sacrifice alone. There is nothing we can add to it without trusting in ourselves and nullifying what God has done for us. This is what Paul is saying about circumcision. Hopefully that helps clear some things up for this chapter.