2. The foes of our liberty (5:7–12)

a. Their doctrine revealed (5:7–9)

Having discussed the foundation of our liberty in Christ, Paul now turns his attention to its foes. He describes both their doctrine and their doom. He begins by showing how their doctrine spoils: “Ye did run well; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth? This persuasion cometh not of him that calleth you” (vv. 7–8). They had been off to a good start. Paul could remember the dynamic days he had spent among them and how eagerly they had embraced the gospel. They were off and running when he had left them.

But someone had raised a roadblock in the way. The word for “hinder” is enkoptō, which was used of people breaking up a road or putting an obstacle in the path. “Who broke up the road along which you were making such good progress?” Paul demands.

Often in my travels along the American highways, I will encounter a sign that reads, “Roadwork Ahead”. Sure enough, around the next bend in the road, traffic is stalled. The caterpillar tractors, heavy earthmoving equipment, and big shovels are there. There are the workmen in their hard hats. There’s the man with the flag, waving the traffic ahead into a single lane. And there ahead is the improvised traffic light, glaring red, bringing all vehicles to a stop. It means both danger and delay. It is bad enough when warnings are posted, when every effort is made to clear the road and let the impatient traffic through. But what if there were no signs? What if the obstructions were deliberate? What if they were set up maliciously, not to improve the highway but as traps for the unwary motorist? That was what Paul was asking. He knew only too well the natural dangers and difficulties of the Christian life. But what of those men who were deliberately obstructing the way? “Who are they?” he demands. Paul had no patience with false teachers who would do such a thing.

Somebody had been persuading them. Whoever it was, the arguments had not come from God. The Devil can quote the Bible. He dared to quote it (or, rather, deliberately to misquote it) to the Lord Himself. Nearly all cultists appeal to the Bible to give credence to their errors. The Judaizers had the whole Mosaic Law to which to appeal. But they quoted Scripture without any regard for that monumental dispensational change effected by Calvary and Pentecost that had rendered Judaism null and void. As Paul would put it, they did not “rightly [divide] the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15).

So the Judaizers were spoilers. They put their hindrances in the way of those who were making progress in the truth. But the false doctrine did something else. Paul showed the Galatians how their doctrine spreads: “A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump” (v. 9). Throughout the Scripture, leaven is used as a symbol of corruption that spreads furtively, secretly, and unseen until it permeates everything. It usually symbolizes false doctrine at work within the corporate body of the people of God. Leaven was sourdough. It was introduced into the dough of a new loaf, which was then left to stand in a warm spot until the fermenting, spreading influence of the old had thoroughly taken hold of all parts of the new. The only way to stop the action of the leaven, once it had been insinuated into the new loaf, was to put the loaf in the oven. The action of the fire stopped the action of the leaven.

That is the trouble with false doctrine! That is why the Old Testament prophets, the Lord Himself, His apostles, and discerning, Spirit-filled men in all ages have been so vigorous in exposing error and in denouncing those who propagate it. It spreads. It does its corrupting work until it has taken over the whole. Not a major denomination in Christendom has not eventually been taken over by liberalism, legalism, fanaticism, formalism, ritualism, or some other such corrupting influence.

By its third generation, every new movement, born of revival by the Spirit of God, needs a fresh moving of the Holy Spirit if it is to survive. With the first generation, freshly discovered truth is a conviction; those who see it and embrace it propagate it with zeal. They would willingly die for it. They will give up all they have for it. “Buy the truth, and sell it not,” advised the wise man (Prov. 23:23). That is the motto of the first generation.

By the time the second generation takes over, what was once a conviction has become a belief. The second generation has been taught these truths. They have heard the first generation tell tales of battle, fire and sword, of persecution and pioneering, of the high price that was paid for these truths. They have been brought up in them, drilled in them, made to memorize them, and urged to accept them for themselves. And so they do, but not with the same fire and fervor of the first generation. But they believe them. They can give chapter and verse for their beliefs. The zeal to spread them has cooled, but they still hold to them and defend them and still rear their children to believe them.

By the time the third generation is in charge, what was first a conviction and then a belief has become an opinion. The truths are now lightly held. Compromise is acceptable. Things are watered down, distinctives disappear, and an accommodation is reached with dissenters and other groups who hold some things in common. First, the sharp edges are blurred, then new ideas are introduced; things that would have made the first generation turn over in its grave the third generation tolerates with smiling ease. The power has gone; the drive has gone. There is talk of renewal. New methods are tried. More money is poured in. Projects are announced. Doctrines are tinkered with. The emphasis is on education. The Holy Spirit moves out. Error moves in. But revival is needed, not renewal. When revival does not come, people drift away or some kind of phony, counterfeit revival is accepted. The lump is now thoroughly leavened. People might continue to “play church” for a very long time, but “Ichabod” can be written over what remains. The glory is departed. The Holy Spirit has moved on elsewhere. History furnishes us with countless examples.

Paul could see the deadly leaven at work in Galatia. It was spreading. It wasn’t even the third generation; yet, this particularly virulent heresy already was permeating the Galatian churches. Paul was alarmed. All he could do was write, warn, and pray.

b. Their doom revealed (5:10–12)

Paul can think of no argument that he will not use in his battle for the souls of his Galatian friends. We note his confidence: “I have confidence in you through the Lord, that ye will be none otherwise minded …” (v. 10a). He appeals to them. He expresses his faith in them. “I’m sure,” he says, “that you will not take that final, fatal step.” Paul knew that no genuinely born again believer could repudiate the gospel in the way the Judaizers were demanding. The majority in the Galatian church seems to have been still wavering at the time Paul wrote this letter. Certainly anyone who took the final step into the Judaizing apostasy, after reading Paul’s letter, could never have been genuinely saved in the first place. This view is reinforced by a careful analysis of the two major warning passages in Hebrews (Hebrews 5:11–6:20; 10:26–30).

Apostasy is not the same as backsliding. Only a genuine believer can backslide. There is restoration for the backslider. The Holy Spirit convicts the backslider, and the Father chastens the backslider. The backslider might die in his sinful condition, but he will still go to heaven. He will be “saved, so as by fire” (1 Cor. 3:15). Only an unbeliever can become an apostate. An apostate is a person who has been enlightened to the truth but who turns away from it. He repudiates it and embraces some kind of error. The apostate crucifies afresh the Son of God and puts Him to an open shame. It is impossible to renew this kind of person to repentance. God abandons him to his false beliefs. He has despised the Spirit of grace.

Paul was confident that not a single truly Spirit-born Galatian believer would apostatize into the Judaistic heresy being so zealously propagated in their midst. Anyone who took that final, fatal step would prove, by that very action, that the root of the matter was never in him at all.

We note also his conviction: “but he that troubleth you shall bear his judgment, whosoever he be” (v. 10b). Paul held out no hope to the Judaizers themselves. They were wedded to their ways. He was sure that they would not receive his letter in any good spirit at all.

The word for “troubleth” is tarassō. It is used of the agitation of the water at the pool of Bethesda (John 5:7). It is used of the Lord’s inner anguish as He accompanied His dear friends, Martha and Mary, to the tomb of their brother, Lazarus (John 11:33). It is used to describe the consternation of the disciples as they faced the fact that Jesus was soon to leave them (John 14:1). It is used of the agitators who tried to foment trouble for Paul at Thessalonica (Acts 17:8). This is what the Judaizers were doing at Galatia. They were upsetting the faith of Paul’s converts. Paul hands them over to judgment. It made no difference who they were, although Paul probably had a good idea who they were. They would face a serious charge one day. Paul was a firm believer in God’s sovereign control over human affairs and in His holding men accountable for their actions.

We note also his condition: “And I, brethren, if I yet preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution? then is the offence of the cross ceased” (v. 11). Paul knew the pressure that was being brought to bear on his beloved Galatians. He knew the kind of persecution that some of them were facing. He was experiencing the same pressure and persecution himself. Some of the Judaizers seem to have been trying to persuade Paul’s converts to accept their views by saying that the apostle himself still advocated circumcision. Paul indignantly disassociates himself from any such story. Advocate circumcision indeed! Why, if he were to advocate that rite, his troubles would cease! It was precisely because he refused any compromise with legalism that he was the constant target for persecution.

The legalists might have found some ground for their charge in that Paul advocated circumcision in the case of Timothy. That Paul had circumcised Timothy would be a well-known fact in Galatia because Timothy had come from the area (Acts 16:1–3). Timothy’s, however, was a special case. The Holy Spirit makes Paul’s motive clear: “Him would Paul have to go forth with him; and took and circumcised him because of the Jews which were in those quarters: for they knew all that his father was a Greek” (Acts 16:3). The Galatians also knew that his mother was a Jewess. So Timothy was already half Jewish. It made sense to Paul to make Timothy wholly Jewish if by doing so would increase Timothy’s usefulness in evangelizing Jews. However, Paul certainly did not circumcise Timothy because he thought that circumcision was essential to salvation. Perhaps, had he known how his action would be misrepresented, he would not have circumcised Timothy in the first place. In any case, if Paul made a mistake, he learned from it. He soon saw that any attempt to win the goodwill of the Judaizers was never going to work. As for preaching circumcision, such a charge was nonsense. He did nothing of the kind, and he paid dearly for not doing so. Of course, he had once preached circumcision (“if I yet [still] preach circumcision …”), but that was before his conversion.

The real reason Paul suffered persecution was “the offence of the cross” (v. 11). Everything about Christ scandalized the Jews. He was born poor and lowly in a Bethlehem stable, surrounded by cattle, the son of a peasant woman, the adopted son of a laborer from the despised Galilean town of Nazareth. The Jews never recognized that He was the rightful heir to David’s throne. His life and teaching cut cleanly across theirs. He refused to pay any respect to their rabbinical rules and regulations, openly defying their man-made Sabbath shibboleths. They could not deny His miracles, but the more reckless of them had a ready explanation. They attributed them to Satan, just as they attributed His mysterious birth to fornication. They argued with Him incessantly about the Law and about Moses and the commandments. They hated Him because He refused to endorse their traditions. They were outraged by His love for publicans and sinners. They wanted a militant messiah, not a meek Messiah, a sovereign, not a Savior. They wanted someone who would smash the power of Rome and make Jerusalem the capital of a new world empire, someone who would confirm them in their seats of power. Above all, they were scandalized by His cross. That someone claiming to be their Messiah should end up on a Roman gallows was the last straw, although they themselves were responsible for putting Him there. The mocking title that Pilate gave Him—“This is Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews”—still rankled in their souls. As for His resurrection, they had a ready enough explanation for that: there was no resurrection; the disciples stole the body.

The cross! To preach the cross was an offense to the Jews, and it was nonsense to the Romans and the Greeks. Yet, Paul knew that Calvary enshrined the greatest truth in the world. He knew that the preaching of the cross was the message for lost mankind. In the preaching of the cross resided “the power of God unto salvation.” The gospel was God’s high explosive, the divine dynamite to convict, convert, and consecrate sinners willing to believe it. So, although such preaching might be offensive to the unregenerate human heart, no other message existed. For preaching that message, Paul was mobbed in Jerusalem, mocked at Athens, and murdered at Rome. No indeed! The cross’s offense had not ceased. If the Galatians thought that they could mitigate their own sufferings by being circumcised, they were wrong. All they would get in return for that ritual would be the pall of spiritual death upon their souls.

“I would they were even cut off which trouble you!” Paul exclaims (v. 12). This is a strong expression. The word apokoptō means “to amputate” (Mark 9:43, 45). It is used of the cutting off of Malchus’s ear by Simon Peter (John 18:10, 26). The Judaizers wanted Paul’s converts to be circumcised, to submit to a minor amputation to enhance their religious standing. Scornfully, Paul says in effect, “What they need is to go all the way and emasculate themselves.” That is literally what he means. They should emasculate themselves, make eunuchs of themselves. That would put an end to their pernicious teaching, for then, according to the Law itself, they would be cut off from “the congregation of the LORD” (Deut. 23:1). We might think such an exclamation to be radical and not what we would expect from a great apostle. But it was precisely because he was an apostle, the very apostle to the Gentiles, indeed, that Paul did make such a statement. What the Judaizers were trying to effect was the cutting off of those Gentile believers from the body of Christ. No wonder Paul does not hesitate to call a spade a spade. Paul had no false modesty. He was as fierce as a tiger defending its cubs when it came to defending his converts from cultists.