Galatians 5:2-12

Final emphatic statement of the dilemma, Christ or circumcision. Paul, speaking with all authority in spite of false inferences drawn from his circumcising Timothy (Galatians 5:11) and in spite of probable evasions on the part of the Judaizers testifies that those circumcised on religious grounds must keep the whole Law. More important still, in accepting such a rite as necessary to salvation, one renounces Christ; to whom all Christians taught by the Spirit look in faith for the sentence of justification at the great day of judgment. Not that, as an external inherited rite, circumcision is a matter of any consequence. Neither it nor uncircumcision (cf. Galatians 6:15; 1 Corinthians 7:19). Faith is all, and faith works through love. (Working (Galatians 5:6) is theologically, and by analogy of Paul's language elsewhere, preferable to mg. wrought.) They had known this and acted accordingly. Who the word (as at Galatians 3:1) is singular had arrested their progress? A persuasive influence on the wrong side (cf. Galatians 1:10), assuredly not from God. Is the small knot of errorists really to leaven the whole community? (Best taken as a question; so, but differently, 1 Corinthians 5:6.) Paul at least is confident of a better issue, through Christ's grace; the leader we have no light at all on his identity will have a terrible punishment Divinely appointed him. Do any pretend that Timothy's circumciser is himself, when it suits his book, a preacher of circumcision? Facts prove the opposite; he is persecuted. Christian doctrine proves the opposite; all true Christians preach the Cross an insuperable stumbling-block (cf. 1 Corinthians 1:23) to the unregenerate Jewish mind. Pity that these fanatics for a surgical operation would not carry it further and castrate themselves (mg.) like some of the heathen of Asia Minor.