Saturday, July 13, 2013

Galatians 6:11-16 – “Really Changed”

Once again, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

11See with what large letters I have written to you [with] my own hand?12As many are desiring to make a good appearance in [the] flesh, these are compelling you to be circumcised, only in order that they may not be persecuted [on account of] the Cross of Christ. 13For not even the circumcising ones themselves keep [the] law, but they are desiring you to be circumcised in order that they might boast in your flesh. 14But to me, may it never be to boast except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which [the] world has been crucified to me and me to [the] world, 15for neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything, but a new creation [is something]. 16And peace and mercy upon those whoever will keep this rule and upon the Israel of God.

It is easy to read these verses as casual closing words, as if Paul were sitting at his desk, having his coffee, and jotting down important thoughts for the Galatians to know and remember, as perhaps might be the case in the book of Romans or Ephesians. But we mustn’t forget the context. I would maintain these are emotionally packed words and we can’t lose sight of this as we would understand them. Paul is writing this letter with the truth of the Gospel hanging in the balance and people’s souls as it were suspended between heaven and hell. One last time, he is wrapping up and summarizing what he has been saying throughout the book – refuting and exposing the Judaizers.

Who are these people really? Paul exposes them as the same hypocritical people-pleasers legalists always are. “In order to be saved, you must be circumcised!” … as if they cared anything about the Galatians’ souls. No. The truth is they are trying to have Jesus while they attempt to appease the wrath of their Jewish family and friends. Following this Jesus of Nazareth and attending church with Gentiles certainly displeased those family and friends, but, if a man could say, “… but I insist those Gentiles all be circumcised and keep the Law!” then they can still show up at synagogue and family gatherings and consort with the same old crew. As Paul found out (not to mention Jesus Himself), to stand firmly on free grace and to renounce all the ceremonies and traditions of the Jews induced not just their displeasure but made them positively murderous.

So the truth is the Judaizers didn’t care about the Galatians, they were just using them. People-pleasers. Everything for show. Just like the Pharisees, they “loved the praise of men more than the praise of God” (John 12:42,43). Just like today, legalists always focus on the externals, they “wash the outside of the cup.” But, as Paul says, “neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, but a new creation.” The Cross is not about how much skin comes or goes or any of our other modern externals that legalists hold so near and dear. What the Cross is about is a new creation. It’s about a total transformation of who I am from the inside out. The Spirit indwells us to make us people of love and joy and peace, people who are who they are and do what they do, not to please anyone, but because they’re living the heart of Jesus.

This whole study has been so liberating to me. I never really understood law and grace and I certainly got swallowed up in people-pleasing legalism. But I feel like now I really do understand. I never ever again want to let other people’s approval affect what I do or don’t do and certainly not what I persuade others to do.

That is the problem with legalism. It is actually a very deviant way to be “religious” and yet to still live for the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. Legalism allows me to scruple over music and clothes and a whole host of traditions and do nothing about my rotten heart. It allows a man to be highly esteemed at the church building then go home and feast on pornography (as long as no one knows). It allows a man to pride himself that he doesn’t put alcohol in his mouth while he stuffs it with way more food than he needs and gets ridiculously overweight. Out of that same overstuffed mouth comes negativity and criticism and meanness, but that’s “okay.” It all comes down to whether my people-group is pleased. If they are, I’m good.

Paul says that real faith means I’ve been crucified to that world, that world of people-pleasing. The legalists will read about being “crucified to the world” and immediately congratulate themselves that “they don’t smoke and they don’t chew and they don’t run with girls that do.” They actually think they can reduce “the world” to their list of do’s and don’t’s. The Spirit helps us see the issues are way bigger than those pathetic lists.

The Spirit takes up residence in my heart to give me a new heart. His presence means that, although I’m still the same rotten selfish proud sinner I ever was, there is another Spirit present within me who, if I’ll let Him control me, can actually help me to love – to really love, to be the person God actually created me to be, to spend my days “doing good” to others and do it sincerely and from the heart.

It is an incredibly sad truth that, like Paul, Jesus’ worst enemies were the “religious.” The Pharisees prided themselves that they were “separated” from the world, yet they were so tied to that world, they could crucify the Messiah and think they were serving God. They were clueless what “world” was their problem. I remember when it first struck me that, if Jesus were in town, I really wasn’t sure He’d want to attend our church, and then, if He did, whether He’d even be welcome. Then it occurred to me that if a Pharisee and his family showed up – the man in his coat and tie with his wife and kids all looking so sharp, carrying their King James Bible, and being people who “knew their Bible” and who immediately started coming to every service, volunteering to teach Sunday School and work in the nursery, knowing just how to act and saying all the right things – (even if the truth is he is a gossiping, self-righteous, irritable twirp) we’d not only welcome him, we’d elect him a deacon first chance we got. So Jesus isn’t welcome but the Pharisees are. We won’t have the Son of God but we embrace His enemies. Yikes!!! I knew then something was very seriously wrong.

It took me years to finally see all of this clearly and this study in Galatians it seems has “iced the cake” for me. When Paul called the Galatians foolish, he could have spelled it with a capital F! Exchanging the freedom and wonder of grace and Spirit-life to go back to a rotten system of externals and rule-keeping! Now that’s Foolish!

No wonder Paul is all worked up. No wonder he’s pronouncing anathemas and wishing those men would castrate themselves!

May our boast truly ever be nothing less than the Cross of Christ, the amazing grace of a blood-bought substitutionary atonement, of an indwelling Spirit that allows me to know and live the very heart of the wonderful loving Father who planned it all -- and may I never ever again settle for anything less. I’m sure I haven’t even begun to plumb the depth and height and breadth and length of the love of Christ but I am quite sure I understand it better now than I did when I embarked on this study. I pray I’ll only grow to understand it more and once again, that my own life will be a living epistle. God change me. Really change me and in some way I hope Your Spirit in me might be a light to someone else.

As we grow in Him, may we really get to enjoy peace and mercy.

Soli Deo Gloria.


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