Paul has already reached two important goals in his appeal to the Galatians. He has defended his apostleship, including a defense of his right to preach the gospel with or without the support of other human authorities (1:11–2:21), and he has defended the gospel itself, showing that it is by grace alone entirely apart from human works that the Christian is freed from the curse of the law and brought into a right relationship with God (3:1–4:31). But there is one more point to be made before Paul concludes his letter: that the liberty into which believers are called is not a liberty that leads to license, as his opponents would charge, but rather a liberty that leads to mature responsibility and holiness before God through the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit. This theme dominates the last two chapters of the Epistle.

Since the Jews of Paul’s time spoke of “taking the yoke of the law upon oneself,” it is likely that Paul is referring to such an expression here. To the Jews the taking up of the law’s yoke was good; indeed, it was the essence of religion. To Paul it was assuming the yoke of slavery. Perhaps Paul was also remembering that Jesus had spoken of Christians taking his yoke upon them (Matt 11:29, 30), but this involves a different kind of service—one that is “easy” and “light”—as the readers of the letter are to see.

Notes

“Free!” says Paul. You have been purchased! You are the property of the Son of God. Nobody has any right to enslave you again. Which, of course, was just what the legalists were trying to do. They were trying to shackle Christ’s freemen with the chains of the Law with their silly man-made rules and regulations of religion.

“Stand!” he cries, “Stand fast!” It is one of Paul’s great rallying cries in his epistles (1 Cor. 16:13; Phil. 1:27; 4:1; 1 Thess. 3:8; 2 Thess. 2:15). “Stand firm! Plant your feet!” It would bring to mind the Roman way of waging war. When faced by wild, undisciplined enemy hordes, the Romans simply locked their shields together, planted their feet firmly on the ground, and presented to the charging enemy an iron wall of steel and resolution. That is the kind of stand that we must take against error. We must not yield a single point. Truth is truth; error is error. The two are at war. There must be no giving in on a single issue where error is involved. Paul, the most conciliatory of men, would never compromise when it came to truth.

Circumcision was the seal of the Abrahamic covenant (Gen. 17:9–14) for the natural seed of Abraham. Moses confirmed it as necessary for all aliens who wanted to share in the religious blessings of Israel (Exod. 12:48). It was, of course, for all Jews. Moses included all who wished to keep the Passover.

Paul sets before his Galatian friends two terrible warnings (vv. 3–4). The first one has to do with falling into debt: “For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law”

It implies a deliberate choosing of Mount Sinai over Mount Calvary. A person could conceivably drift unconsciously into some errors. Nobody could drift carelessly into circumcision. That would call for a definite, conscious decision. The whole operation is distasteful, radical, and extremely painful. A person no more drifts into circumcision than he drifts into having his tonsils or appendix removed

Paul cannot emphasize enough the seriousness of it all. Look at the words and phrases that he uses: “Christ shall profit you nothing” … “Debtor to do the whole law” … “Christ is become of no effect unto you” … “Ye are fallen from grace.”

But for those who cleave to Him, there is hope indeed. For the believer there is the Holy Spirit, hope, and righteousness by faith. The Holy Spirit indwells every trueborn child of God. Indeed, He is “the earnest of our inheritance” (Eph. 1:14). All of the righteousness of Christ is ours the moment we put our trust in Him. We might stumble and fall, but we have the unquestioning hope that we shall yet see Christ’s righteousness wrought in us, fully and forever in terms of our state as it already is in terms of our standing.

“We wait” for it, Paul says. The word means that we look forward to it. The word is often used in connection with the second coming of Christ (1 Cor. 1:7; Phil. 3:20; Heb. 9:28). One day, we shall be like Him for all eternity. John Nelson Darby has expressed it thus in his hymn “And Is It So?”:

And is it so—I shall be like Thy Son?

Is this the grace which He for me has won?

Father of glory (thought beyond all thought!)

In glory, to His own blest likeness brought.

Yet it must be! Thy love had not its rest

Were Thy redeemed not with Thee fully blest,

That love that gives not as the world, but shares

All it possesses with its loved co-heirs.

Whoever in his right mind would want to exchange that hope for the loveless laws of the legalist?

But what about works? Do we who are content to rest all on Christ have no works to perform? Paul speaks next of the true work that results from faith in Christ: “For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love” (v. 6). Here, the words circumcision and uncircumcision refer to Jews and Gentiles. The Jews made the distinction between circumcised and uncircumcised a matter of prime importance. The tradition went back a long time. When David offered to fight the great Philistine giant, Goliath of Gath, King Saul remonstrated with him. David at once began to speak of secret victories. “Thy servant slew both the lion and the bear,” he said, “and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be as one of them” (1 Sam. 17:36).

It was common in Paul’s day for the Jews to speak complacently of themselves as “the circumcision” and to speak contemptuously of the Gentiles as “the uncircumcision.” In Christ, however, the old barrier between Jew and Gentile, emphasized and focused by circumcision, was abolished. The whole question of circumcision was so trivial an issue in Paul’s eyes that he would never have raised the subject at all if the Judaizers hadn’t made it an issue and a mandatory requirement for salvation.

But the issue had been raised. Paul dealt with it (vv. 2–4), and now he summarily dismissed it. Because it made no difference, in Christ, whether a man was a Jew or a Gentile, what did matter? Faith! Hope! Love! These three. In Christ, everything boils down to simple faith and sublime hope that are manifested, not in law but in love. That is what works! If works there are to be, let love take over their operation. Let love fill the believer’s heart, let the love of Christ overflow all of its banks to touch everyone we meet, every situation we face, and every issue of life. Whatever love suggests, that is what we have to do!