22. The Consequences of Liberty - 5:2-12

The Consequences of Liberty - 5:2-12

Now follow seven consequences of not holding this liberty and allowing such a wrong yoke upon us. The yoke that the Lord speaks about in Matthew 11:1-30 is easy and has nothing to do with the yoke of bondage as we see here. The apostle pointed out in Acts 15:1-41 that the Israelites were not able to take this yoke of the law, they were not able to produce fruit for God under this kind of bondage, and so Paul did not want the Christians to be placed under that bondage either, but there was a constant battle to maintain their freedom.

“Behold, I, Paul, say to you, that if ye are circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing.” (5:2)

[1] This is the first point. They were not circumcised yet, although they were contemplating it, in connection with this false doctrine, this mixture of law and grace. The false teachers might say something like, “You will lose your salvation if you will not be circumcised,”but Paul said, “Christ shall profit you nothing if you are.”He said that the consequence of this would be that they would not benefit from Christ in any practical manner. So Paul did not say that they would lose their salvation, but practically their being circumcised would have had very serious consequences. These teachers were saying, “You need to be circumcised in order to be saved”or “You are saved by grace but now you need to keep the law in order to please God, you need to keep the Mosaic law in order to live a holy life.”Paul pointed out that they would loose their true Christian liberty. This liberty means, we are free from the law as the grounds, or the means, of our justification before God. We have seen in chapter 2 that we are not justified by the law or declared righteous before God on the basis of doing works of law, for this can only be on the basis of faith. Our rule or standard of life and our basis of fellowship with God are not through the law of Moses, but through the law of Christ. We are under a new rule, as Paul says in chapter 6:16, “As many as walk by this rule,”which is the law of Christ. This is the law of liberty I was referring to. So what Paul was saying then was that it was not only the act of circumcision by itself, but that such an act would involve the whole ‘package’that came with it; it would imply that they would be brought back under the Mosaic law. That would be the consequence. Therefore Paul said, “Christ will profit you nothing.”They would not benefit from Christ practically. I repeat, it does not mean that they would lose their salvation, but in actual practice for their Christian life they would not draw any profit from Christ. That is what Paul pointed out. It was a very serious consequence. If people say, “I am saved and now I keep the law of Moses in order to please God,”what are they doing? They are placing themselves under a curse. We have seen that in chapter 3. In that sense Christ cannot help them. It is not that Christ does not want to help them, but because of the decision they have made He cannot help them.

“And I witness again to every man who is circumcised, that he is debtor to do the whole law.” (5:3)

[2] The second point is that these people were sometimes very inconsistent. They would say, “We will keep the Sabbath,”but they would forget about the Passover lamb. This is just an example. ‘No,’Paul would say, ‘you cannot do that. If you keep the law, if you are under the law, you have to keep the whole law.’James 2:10 also makes this point and there are other references that show the same principle very clearly. You cannot divide the law into a moral part or a ceremonial part or a ritual part, the law is one package, you are either under it, or not at all. This is why Paul said, “If you view circumcision as part of the law, then you are a debtor to the whole law.”A debtor means you are in debt. To the believers who were considering being circumcised, Paul said, ‘If you do that, you will be in debt, you will lose your walk, you will lose all your riches in Christ, you will not be able to enjoy them, you will be a debtor.’In chapter 3 Paul had already shown that if a man was under the law he was obliged to keep the whole law (vv.10-13).

“Ye are deprived of all profit from the Christ as separated from him, as many as are justified by law; ye have fallen from grace.” (5:4)

[3] The third consequence is that those who wanted to be justified by the law by being circumcised would be deprived of all profit. This goes together with verse 3, but it further means that they would in actual practice be separated from Christ. He elaborates on the same point in verse 3 but here makes it even more forceful. The word “deprived”means “render inoperative.”We have a similar thought in Romans 7:6, “But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead to that wherein we were held we should serve in newness of spirit.”Here the deliverance from the law is that the law has no claims anymore, it has been rendered inoperative to the real believer. This is the same principle that Paul applies now in another way. He says, “If you want to be justified by the law, then you deprive yourself of all profit from Christ.”We cannot have it both ways, it is either law or grace. In Romans 6:1-23 Paul shows, if we are in this new order of things the law has no claims on us anymore, but on the other hand, here in Galatians 5:1-26 he says in verse 4, “If you want to be justified by the law, you cannot have any benefit from Christ anymore.”Paul’s teaching is very consistent.

“For we, by the Spirit, on the principle of faith, await the hope of righteousness.” (5:5)

[4] This is the fourth consequence. If they would place themselves under the law or want to be justified by the law, there would also be a conflict with the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit acts on the principle of faith. So just as they would lose their profit from Christ, they would also lose the help of the Spirit. Faith is here connected with hope. The impossibility of justification by the law is here contrasted in verse 5 by the hope of righteousness. True believers are justified on the basis of faith and they have a real hope, a hope of righteousness. Here faith, hope and love are linked together. Through faith we benefit from the help of the Spirit and we have the right kind of hope, the hope of righteousness; but if we are under the law, if we want to be justified by the law, our hope is gone. With expectation we are looking forward, with eagerness. It is the same word that is used in Php 3:21, “We expect the Christ as Saviour”to come from heaven to transform our bodies to make them conform to His glorified body. We hope with expectation. Here we see the same kind of expectation in connection with the hope of righteousness. Again this is connected with Christ. Whenever faith, hope and love are mentioned in Scripture they are always connected with something. For example, the Thessalonians not only had faith, hope and love, they had, “the hope of faith, the labour of love, and patience of hope”(1 Thessalonians 1:3). In this sense we may await with patience the hope of righteousness.

“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision has any force, nor uncircumcision; but faith working through love.” (5:6)

[5] This is the fifth point. Paul elaborates now on the principle that you cannot be justified by law, because the position in Christ makes the other things of no importance. He shows how relative those things are which are of so much importance to the religious man. If we have been in the Jewish position such as being circumcised and now we have been saved, Paul does not ask us to change that circumcision now, but if we are a Gentile person who is saved, we are also now in Christ Jesus being uncircumcised, we are not asked to change that either. Such things are irrelevant. What really is relevant is the position in Christ Jesus. This is a position we have, and it is mentioned forty-eight times in the New Testament. Interestingly, we are also said to be “in the Lord”forty-eight times. In Galatians the fact that we are “in Christ Jesus,”is emphasized five times. This means the anointed Man in the glory (Christ), who is Jesus (emphasizing His manhood), He is the One in whom God sees us. This is the wonderful position we have, and so these matters like for example circumcision or uncircumcision, are not important in themselves. However, they are important when it comes to the matter of justification or sanctification. If one says, you cannot be justified unless you are circumcised then the matter becomes important, not because the issue itself is so weighty, but because that is where the deviation starts.

Summing it up Paul says, “but faith working through love.”This is what matters. We have seen the hope of righteousness, now we see faith working through love. The three go together many times. This love is the love for God and it is the love for the people of God. In James 2:1-26 Abraham, the father of all believers, is called “a friend of God”(v.23). He is said to have worked byfaith, that was his relationship with God. Then we find Rahab whose characteristic was a love for the people of God. Faith is seen in Abraham, love for God, faith is seen in Rahab, the harlot, and this goes together with love for the people of God; this is what really characterized Rahab. Faith goes together with love and it is linked with hope.

“Ye ran well; who has stopped you that ye should not obey the truth?”(5:7)

[6] Paul now comes to his sixth point, the loss of direction. The Galatians received Paul enthusiastically when first he went to Galatia, they were even ready, if it had been possible, to pluck out their own eyes and to give them to Paul. They were going on well at one time, and Paul says about that, “You ran well.”

Think of Paul in Php 3:1-21, how he was trying to reach the goal, it was his all-consuming effort. There are other Scriptures where we can see the running. This takes energy and commitment. “But,”he says, “who has stopped you?”This is a very solemn thing. There was one who had stopped them. Paul was himself an example of a runner who ran well. He says in Acts 20:24, “But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God.”He is an example for us to follow. We are now runners in the race and we are to follow Paul’s example, and, of course, to follow the Lord Jesus. But the Galatians were stopped because of wrong doctrine. Paul asks the question, “Who has stopped you that you should not obey the truth?”Here is a play on words. The word “obey”here could be translated “that you would not be persuaded by the truth,”and then he says, “This persuasion is not of Him that calls you.”There is a link between this lack of obedience and this new persuasion, this new conviction, this new obedience that characterized them, this persuasion, was “not of Him that calls you.”To finish this word play, in verse 10, “I have confidence,”could be translated “I am persuaded as to you.”So there is a link between the verses 7-10 through this word play.

“The persuasibleness is not of him that calls you.” (5:8) As a consequence of point 6, the believers were moving away, like already mentioned in Galatians 1:6, where we also have a reference to the call, “I marvel that ye are so soon removed from Him that called you into the grace of Christ and to another gospel.”They were moving away from the position that they had when they were called. This is now further emphasized. They were moving away from their position, and this was not according to the One who had called them. We have seen this call in a very powerful way exemplified in Paul himself in chapter 1:15.

“A little leaven leavens the whole lump. I have confidence as to you in the Lord, that ye will have no other mind; and he that is troubling you shall bear the guilt of it, whosoever he may be.” (5:9-10)

[7] This is the seventh consequence, the principle that there was corruption from within. It had only started with perhaps one person, “he that is troubling you”(v.10). Then we have references also to there being more people who were leading the Galatians astray, but here Paul emphasizes one person, so we see how much harm one person can do. “He that is troubling you”is a reference to the false teacher and he says, “he shall bear the guilt of it.”This is an epistle that is not dealing with assembly principles, as is the case in 1 Corinthians 5:1-13 where the same expression is used about leaven. There Paul explains that the man needed to be dealt with and disciplined. Of course this needs to be done here also, but that is not the issue of this epistle, rather it is to show how this teaching would work as a leaven until it had leavened the whole lump. It had a small start, “a little leaven”but what a consequence it had! In Matthew 13:1-58 the Lord presents a parable about a woman who takes a little bit of leaven and puts it in the three measures of meal and we see then the process of corruption that results. There it is related to idolatry in connection with the history of the church until it leavens the whole thing. This is exactly what has happened. The Lord speaks also of the leaven of the Sadducees, rationalism. They rejected many things because of rationalism, for example, they did not believe in the resurrection. This will work as leaven, it will convince others as well, and so this spreading action works with wrong doctrine as we have here. It is an ongoing process. It is very insidious. And so when this takes place, what needs to be done? The leaven needs to be removed, before it gets a chance to penetrate the dough. This is how Israel was taught to have un leavened loaves; in 1 Corinthians 5:1-13 Paul applies what happened in the history of Israel to the Church, to instruct them to be free from leaven’s influence.

It is beautiful to see in verse 10 that, despite the seventh point he has mentioned about the dangerous situation, he also says, “I have confidence as to you in the Lord, that ye will have no other mind.”Paul is stressing to the Galatians that if they paid attention to his word they would not go the wrong way. It is beautiful to see this, and this may have helped them also to come to their senses, and to go back to the right track.

“But I, brethren, if I yet preach circumcision, why am I yet persecuted? Then the scandal of the cross has been done away.” (5:11)

Paul was not preaching circumcision in order for the believers to be saved, but maybe they had heard how Timothy had been circumcised; Paul had used Christian liberty to do that, and he did it so Timothy would be able to reach the Jewish communities he would visit, because Timothy was half Jewish. We saw earlier that Paul would not allow this in the case of Titus who was a Gentile. So Paul was definitely not preaching circumcision. The message that he preached was not to circumcise, because then he would not be persecuted. The fact that he was persecuted showed that he was not preaching circumcision, so maybe that was a misunderstanding with some among the Galatians. In chapter 6:12, “As many as desire to have a fair appearance in the flesh, these compel you to be circumcised, only that they may not be persecuted because of the cross of Christ.”This was a very real thing that Paul presented here. The cross of Christ will not go together with this religious compromise to circumcise, whatever carnal purposes it may concern. Not only do we need to grasp what Paul is saying here, we need to make applications as well. In the religious world of today, people will follow outward rituals like baptism or other sacraments and put their trust in them. It is wrong. This is exactly the same thing that Paul condemns here in connection with circumcision. The cross sets aside everything of man, also of the religious man, so if we want to build on rituals or regulations it is an immediate contradiction to the cross. The scandal of the cross means it is a scandal for the religious man. That is why Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:23 that the cross is a stumbling block to the Jews, a cause of offence, they cannot accept it.

“I would that they would even cut themselves off who throw you into confusion.” (5:12)

Again Paul refers to the false teachers. We have seen in verse 10 one particular person, but now Paul speaks in the plural, “they,”and he speaks, as it were, “I would that they would mutilate, or cut themselves off.”This is really what Paul is saying, that they might use the knife for circumcision, so let them, then, castrate themselves. He is mocking them. In Php 3:2 he refers to this religious action by another term, “the concision.”This is another term of contempt to illustrate these people who were always cutting, they wanted to cut, but no amount of cutting would benefit them. So Paul says, “You may start with this kind of circumcision and continue, but it will not benefit you. You may even go as far as to castrate, but it will not benefit you.”No amount of cutting will help. The believers in Galatia were brought into confusion because of this teaching.