Galatians 5.2-4
“Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace.”
The Judaizers claimed that unless you are circumcised and keep the law, you cannot be saved. For these legalists, therefore, circumcision was much more than a minor surgical procedure. It represented salvation by good works through adherence to the law.
Paul’s message is this: If in response to the Judaizers you accept circumcision and the law as the way of salvation, then you cut yourself off from Christ. Salvation is in Christ alone by grace alone through faith alone. If you add anything to Christ, you lose Christ. You have rejected — and thus fallen away from — the grace offered to you in Jesus.
You cannot be justified by grace and law. You must choose between acceptance with God through law, or acceptance with God through grace. You can’t have it both ways. If you accept circumcision, then you are agreeing that salvation is by works, and that obligates you to be totally obedient to every aspect of the Mosaic Law.
The book of Romans makes it clear that the law provides moral standards that reveal our sin, but obedience to the law cannot save us from our sin. “Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.” (Romans 3:19-20)
The Galatians had a decision to make. Would they trust in Christ, in whom they would find true forgiveness and redemption; or would they look to keeping the law, in which they would ultimately find frustration and bondage? Paul repeats a point he made earlier in this letter. He wants the Galatians to remember that you can’t add to Christ without subtracting Christ. The Judaizers said salvation was through Christ + circumcision and adherence to the law. Paul says that is a fatal error: if you try to add the law to Christ, you lose Christ.
I close with Peter’s proclamation of the truth when he stood before the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem:
“Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, ‘Rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by him this man is standing before you well. This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.’” (Acts 4:8-12)
