Galatians 5:1 - Meaning and Application

In the first part of this chapter, Paul warns the Galatians about the Jewish teachers, who were trying to pull them back under the slavery of the law. He had already argued against these teachers at length, showing how their ideas were opposite to the spirit of the gospel. This verse brings together the main lesson from all that he had said: since we are justified, that is, counted right with God, only through faith in Jesus Christ, and not by keeping the law, Christians must stand firm in the freedom Christ has given them. They must not let themselves be trapped again by a yoke of slavery.

Under the gospel, we are set free. We are freed from the ceremonial law, the special religious rules given to Israel, and from the curse of the moral law, which condemns everyone who does not keep it perfectly (Galatians 3:10). So we are no longer bound to follow the old ceremonies, and we are no longer under the strict judgment of a law that demands perfect obedience. This freedom comes from Jesus Christ himself. By his saving work, he satisfied the broken law, and by his authority as King he released us from those outward rites that had been laid on the Jews.

So it is our duty to stand firm in this liberty. We must hold tightly to the gospel and the freedom it gives, and not let anyone persuade us to go back under the law of Moses. Paul then supports this warning with several reasons. One reason is that if they accepted circumcision and relied on law-keeping for righteousness, they would be contradicting their Christian faith and losing all they had in Christ (Galatians 5:2-4).

Paul states this with special seriousness: “Listen, I, Paul, tell you” (Galatians 5:2), and he says it again, “I testify to you” (Galatians 5:3). He is making it clear that he is speaking as Christ’s apostle, with Christ’s authority. He is not a preacher of circumcision, as some may have claimed. Instead, he warns that submitting to circumcision in the way these teachers demanded was a matter of grave danger.

Paul is not talking about circumcision by itself. He is not saying that every circumcised person cannot benefit from Christ. After all, all the Old Testament believers had been circumcised, and Paul himself had Timothy circumcised. He is speaking about circumcision as the Judaizers used it, teaching that unless a person was circumcised and kept the law of Moses, he could not be saved (Acts 15:1). That is the same point Paul makes in verse 4, where he speaks of being justified by the law, or seeking right standing with God through law-keeping.

If they accepted circumcision in that sense, Christ would be of no benefit to them. They would be required to keep the whole law. Christ would become of no value to them, and they would have fallen away from grace. In other words, they would be rejecting the way of salvation that God had appointed. They would also place themselves in a position where they could not be justified in God’s sight, because the law demands complete obedience, which they could not give, and it also pronounces a curse on those who fail. The law could condemn them, but it could not save them. So if they turned from Christ and put their hope in the law, Christ would profit them nothing.

By being circumcised in this way, they would be giving up their Christian faith and cutting themselves off from any benefit in Christ. That is why they must hold firmly to the gospel they had received and refuse to go back under this slavery. Even though Jesus Christ is able to save completely, there are many whom he will profit nothing. Everyone who seeks to be justified by the law makes Christ of no effect to them. If they build their hope on law-keeping, they lose the hope that comes from him, for he will not save those who refuse to trust him alone.

To encourage them to stay firm in the gospel and its freedom, Paul points to his own example and that of other Jews who had become Christians. Their hope was that, through the Spirit, they were waiting for the hope of righteousness by faith. Though they had been Jews by birth and raised under the law, the Spirit had brought them to know Christ. So they had given up all reliance on the law’s works and were looking for justification and salvation only through faith in him. It would be foolish in the extreme for Gentiles, who had never been under the law, to place themselves under it and build their hopes on it.

What are Christians waiting for? They are waiting for the hope of righteousness, that is, the happiness of the life to come. This is called the hope of Christians because it is the great thing they long for and pursue. It is called the hope of righteousness because their hope rests on righteousness, not their own, but Christ’s. A righteous life is the path that leads there, but it is Christ’s righteousness alone that has won it for us and gives us confidence to receive it.

How do they hope to obtain this blessing? By faith. That means faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, not by the works of the law or anything they can do to earn it. They receive and trust him as the Lord our righteousness. This is the only way they expect to be counted right with God now or to enjoy salvation later. And they wait for this hope through the Spirit.

Here they act under the direction and help of the Holy Spirit. It is under his guidance and by his aid that they are persuaded and able to believe in Christ, and to look for the hope of righteousness through him. When the apostle describes Christians this way, he is also saying that if they expect to be made right with God and saved in any other way, they will be disappointed. For that reason, they should cling closely to the gospel teaching they have received.

He then argues from the nature and purpose of the Christian faith. Its purpose was to remove the old division between Jew and Gentile and to establish faith in Christ as the way we are accepted by God. He says in Galatians 5:6 that in Christ Jesus, or under the gospel way of life, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything. Under the old law, there was a real difference between Jew and Greek, between those who were circumcised and those who were not. The circumcised were admitted to privileges in God's church that others did not have. But it is different now that Christ, who is the fulfillment and end of the law, has come. Now it makes no difference whether a person is circumcised or uncircumcised. Neither condition makes him better or worse, and neither can recommend him to God. So the teachers who were trying to force circumcision on them, and require them to keep Moses' law, were acting very unreasonably, and the Galatians would be unwise to submit to them.

Yet he does tell them what does matter for acceptance with God, and that is faith, which works through love. This means a real trust in Christ that shows itself as genuine by sincere love for God and our neighbor. If they had that faith, it would not matter whether they were circumcised or uncircumcised. Without it, nothing else could help them. No outward privilege or profession will bring us into favor with God unless we have sincere faith in the Lord Jesus. And true faith is an active grace, it works through love, love to God and love to our brothers and sisters. Faith working through love is central to the whole Christian life.

To bring them back from their turning aside, and to strengthen them for the future, he reminds them of their good beginning and asks them to think about why they have changed so much, Galatians 5:7. He tells them that they had run well. At the start of their Christian life, they had behaved very well. They had gladly received the Christian faith and shown real zeal in living it out. In baptism, they had given themselves to God and declared themselves to be disciples of Christ, and their behavior had matched that confession.

The Christian life is a race, and a person must keep running if he wants the prize. It is not enough to enter the race by making a profession of Christianity, we must also run well by living in line with that profession. That is how these believers had begun, but something had blocked their progress. They had either been turned out of the way, or at least had begun to slow down and stumble. So Paul asks them, and wants them to ask themselves, “Who hindered you?” How did it happen that they did not continue in the path where they had started so well? He already knew who had done it and how, but he wanted them to think seriously about it. He wanted them to ask whether they had any good reason to listen to those who were troubling them, and whether those teachers' arguments were strong enough to excuse their present course.

Many people begin well in religion and run well for a while. They stay within the appointed course and do so with zeal and eagerness. Yet somehow they are hindered or turned aside. Those who have run well, but are now beginning to turn aside or grow weary, should ask what is blocking them. New believers must expect Satan to place stumbling blocks in their way and do all he can to pull them off course. Whenever they find themselves in danger of being turned aside, it is wise for them to think about who is hindering them.

Whoever these Galatians were listening to, Paul tells them that by giving them a hearing they were being kept from obeying the truth, and were in danger of losing the benefit of all they had done in religion. The gospel he had preached to them, and which they had received and confessed, was the truth. In it alone the true way of justification, meaning being made right with God, and salvation was fully revealed. To enjoy that benefit, they had to obey it, firmly hold to it, and keep shaping their lives and hopes by it. If they allowed themselves to be drawn away from it, they would be showing great weakness and foolishness.

The truth is not only something to believe, it is something to obey. It must be received not only in the light of it, but in the love and power of it. Those do not truly obey the truth who do not firmly hold to it. And we have the same reason to obey the truth that we had to receive it in the first place. So it is very unreasonable for anyone who has begun to run well in the Christian race to let himself be hindered and fail to keep going.

He also urges them to stand firm in the faith and freedom of the gospel by pointing to the bad source of the teaching that was pulling them away, Galatians 5:8. “This persuasion,” he says, “does not come from the one who calls you.” The persuasion he means was no doubt the idea that they must be circumcised and keep Moses' law, or mix law-keeping with faith in Christ when seeking justification. The Judaizing teachers, Jewish Christians who wrongly insisted on the law, were pressing this on them, and the Galatians had too easily accepted it.

To show them the foolishness of this, Paul says that this persuasion did not come from the one who called them. That is, it did not come from God, by whose authority the gospel had been preached to them and they had been called into its fellowship. It did not come from Paul either, who had been the messenger used to call them into it.

It could not have come from God, because it went against the way of justification, that is, being made right with God, and salvation that he had already set in place. Nor could they have received it from Paul himself, despite what some may have claimed. Paul had always opposed circumcision as a requirement for Christians, and though he may at times have allowed it for the sake of peace, he never urged it on believers or treated it as necessary for salvation.

Since this teaching did not come from the one who had called them, Paul leaves the Galatians to judge where it must have come from. He strongly suggests that it could only come from Satan and his agents, who were trying to destroy their faith and hinder the spread of the gospel. So the Galatians had every reason to reject it and to keep firm hold of the truth they had already accepted.

We should learn from this that, when Christians hear different views in religion, they must ask whether those views come from God, the one who calls us, and whether they rest on the authority of Christ and his apostles. If careful study shows that they do not, then no matter how strongly others press them on us, we should refuse them.

Paul also warns them about the danger of this error spreading and harming others. Some may have tried to excuse themselves by saying only a few teachers were pushing this view, or that they had only gone along with small things, like being circumcised and keeping a few Jewish customs. They may have thought that, even if they were wrong, the matter was too limited to worry about.

Paul answers that kind of thinking with a strong warning: a little yeast leavens the whole batch (Galatians 5:9). One false idea can corrupt the whole Christian message, and one person can infect the whole church. So they needed to resist this error at once, and if anyone had already fallen into it, they should use every proper means to remove the poison from among them.

It is dangerous for Christian churches to tolerate people who hold, and especially spread, destructive errors. That was the case here. The false teaching being spread, and already accepted by some in these churches, threatened the heart of Christianity itself. So Paul would not let them feel safe just because the number involved seemed small. If such people were left unchecked, the disease could spread quickly and bring ruin to the truth and freedom of the gospel.

Paul then says something kind to help them receive his warning more willingly: “I have confidence in you in the Lord, that you will not think otherwise” (Galatians 5:10). He had real fears about them, which is why he spoke so plainly, but he still hoped God would use his letter to bring them back to the same mind he had, and to the truth and freedom of the gospel he had preached.

He also teaches us here to hope the best even about people we have reason to fear the worst. To soften the blow of his rebuke, he puts more blame on others than on the Galatians themselves. He says, “But the one who troubles you will bear his judgment, whoever he is” (Galatians 5:10). He knew there were people disturbing them and twisting the gospel of Christ (Galatians 1:7), perhaps even one especially active man, and he places more blame on those leaders than on those who were led astray.

This reminds us that, when correcting sin and error, we should always tell apart the leaders and those who are led. Some set out to draw others into error, while others are simply carried away by them. Paul softens the fault of these Christians even as he rebukes them, so he can win them back to the freedom Christ gave them. But as for those who troubled them, he says they will bear their judgment. God will deal with them justly, and Paul is so angered by them as enemies of Christ and his church that he wishes they were cut off, not from Christ and all hope of salvation, but by the church’s discipline, which should bear witness against teachers who corrupt the gospel.

Those who try to destroy the faith of the gospel and disturb the peace of Christians, whether ministers or others, lose their right to Christian fellowship and deserve to be cut off from it.

To keep these Christians from listening to their Jewish-minded teachers, and to free them from the harm already done, Paul shows how dishonestly those men had acted. They had misrepresented him so they could more easily reach their goal. Their aim was to bring the Galatians under circumcision and mix Judaism with Christianity. To make that easier, they spread the claim that Paul himself preached circumcision. When Paul says, “And I, brothers, if I still preach circumcision” (Galatians 5:11), it is clear they had been saying that about him, and had used that lie to persuade the Galatians to submit to it. They may have built this claim on his circumcising Timothy (Acts 16:3).

Paul had good reason to allow circumcision in that one case, but he firmly denied that he preached circumcision, especially not in the sense his opponents meant. To show how unfair their charge was, he gave arguments that should have convinced them if they were willing to think honestly about them.

First, if Paul had really preached circumcision, he could have avoided persecution. He says, in effect, “If I still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted?” His readers knew he was hated and attacked by the Jews. But that hostility makes no sense if he had agreed with them and taught that circumcision and the law of Moses were necessary for salvation. That was the very issue they were fighting over. If he had joined them on that point, they would have welcomed him instead of raging against him.

Second, if Paul had yielded to the Jews on this matter, then the offense of the cross would have ended. The cross of Christ, meaning that salvation comes only through faith in Christ crucified, was a stumbling block to the Jews (1 Corinthians 1:23). What angered them most about Christianity was that it set aside circumcision and the whole law system as no longer binding. That is what stirred up their opposition and persecution. If Paul had taught that circumcision still had to be kept, and that the law of Moses had to be joined with faith in Christ for salvation, their offense would have been greatly reduced.

But Paul could not do that. Others may have been willing to go along with the Jews, including those who wrongly accused him, but he would not. He was ready to risk comfort, reputation, and even life itself rather than corrupt the truth or surrender the freedom of the gospel. That is why the Jews kept opposing Christianity and Paul as its preacher. In this way, Paul clears himself of the false charge against him, and he also shows how little respect is due to men who could treat him so badly. It helps explain why he could wish that they were even cut off.