Stand Firm in Freedom (5:1–6)
1For freedom Christ set us free; so stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.
2It is I, Paul, who am telling you that if you have yourselves circumcised, Christ will be of no benefit to you. 3Once again I declare to every man who has himself circumcised that he is bound to observe the entire law. 4You are separated from Christ, you who are trying to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace. 5For through the Spirit, by faith, we await the hope of righteousness. 6For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.
NT: John 8:32; Acts 15:10; Rom 2:25; 7:6; 2 Cor 3:17; Gal 6:15; James 1:25; 2:18–20
Catechism: why the law cannot save, 578; freedom through Christ and the Spirit, 1741; the new law, 1972; faith, 162, 1814
Paul has just shown from Scripture that the true identity of his Christian readers is as “children not of the slave woman but of the freeborn woman.” Now he urges them to †live in accord with their status as free people, warning that the path of circumcision and †justification through the †law is completely incompatible with life in Christ.
[5:1]
Paul makes clear that the Christian status of freedom has as its origin a specific intervention by Christ in the past: Christ set us free. This proclamation of freedom, unique in the New Testament except for John 8:36, uses new terminology for what Christ has accomplished, expressed elsewhere by “ransom” (Gal 3:13; 4:5), “rescue” (1:4), and similar words. The difference between “set free” and the other terms is that the others focus on the negative aspect, the bad situation or evil from which we have been delivered. “Set free” emphasizes the positive, referring to the excellent standing that we have received, corresponding to our dignity as sons and daughters of God. Although the †covenant established at Mount Sinai was granted to people who had been freed from slavery in Egypt, it nevertheless brought them into a servitude to the †law that Paul compares to slavery (4:24–25). Through his death and resurrection, Christ has conferred true freedom on believers and has brought us to a higher kind of spiritual existence, where the law is no longer in charge as a disciplinarian or guardian (3:23–25; 5:22–23) and we are free (2 Cor 3:17). Paul will explain the purpose of this freedom in the next section (Gal 5:13–26).
Having established this fundamental principle, Paul immediately speaks of its practical consequences in a very important exhortation. In it we can recognize two of the goals that the Apostle pursues in this letter: (1) a defense of his †gospel, the gospel of freedom, and (2) a struggle against the †Judaizing propaganda that led the Galatians into slavery. Stand firm—that is, firmly attached to the gospel of freedom—and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery. Since the redemptive work of Christ consisted in obtaining freedom for us, whoever wants to benefit from this work needs to guard his or her freedom. A clear choice must be made between the freedom established by Christ and religious slavery.
It is interesting to note that the original Greek says to not submit again to a “yoke” of slavery—without the definite article. This widens the scope of this prohibition beyond a warning against submitting to the Mosaic law. Christians should not submit themselves to any religious teaching that entails a similar slavery. There is an incompatibility between relying on Christ and relying, not only on the Mosaic law, but on any religious system or rule of piety or conduct that claims to determine a person’s standing with God. While rules of life can fulfill an important function for individuals and communities, they can never be allowed to substitute for the only true foundation of a right relationship with God—that is, †faith in Jesus and in his death and resurrection.
Figure 15. Ancient surgical instruments used for circumcision. [© Zev Radovan]
In the verse that follows, however, Paul returns to the case of the Mosaic law, the issue in question, and affirms the absolute incompatibility between Christian life and †justification by the law.
[5:2]
Here the Apostle resumes speaking in the first-person singular in the fatherly tone with which he addressed the Galatians in 4:19–20: It is I, Paul, who am telling you. He first takes aim at circumcision—the means by which men were initiated into the †covenant, the characteristic mark of Jewish identity, and the most important expression of †justification through the †law in the eyes of the †Judaizers. If you, Christians of other nationalities, have yourselves circumcised, Christ will be of no benefit to you. Christ removed the barrier between Jews and †Gentiles (see 3:28; Eph 2:14–16) and placed a love in the hearts of believers that transcends barriers (Rom 5:5).
[5:3]
Paul combats an illusion that could have led the Galatians to an acceptance of circumcision. They may have thought that undergoing this rite would be sufficient and would not entail further obligations. Paul disabuses them of that misunderstanding by solemn testimony: I declare to every man who has himself circumcised that he is bound to observe the entire law. This meant, among other things, that †Gentile Christians would need to distance themselves from their own culture to live a Jewish way of life.
BIBLICAL BACKGROUND
Did Paul Keep the Law of Moses?
A person might assume from what Paul says here in Galatians and elsewherea that, since turning to Christ, he no longer practiced the †law of Moses and dissuaded other Jews from doing so as well. That is exactly what many interpreters have concluded, but there are some strong reasons to believe that is not the case.b
As Galatians makes crystal clear, Paul absolutely denies that a person can be †justified—put in a right relationship with God—through observing the law of Moses, and therefore he is utterly opposed to †Gentile Christians being circumcised and taking on the Jewish law. It is also clear that Paul associated freely and ate with Gentiles, which contradicted traditional Jewish interpretations of the law (although not the written law itself), and perhaps took other liberties for the sake of evangelization (1 Cor 9:20–21).
However, other indications in his letters and Acts suggest that in most respects Paul continued to live as an observant Jew. Immediately after winning the argument at the Jerusalem Council that Gentiles need not be circumcised (Acts 15), Paul circumcises Timothy—whose mother was Jewish (2 Tim 1:5) and whose father was a Gentile—on account of the Jews in that region (Acts 16:3). A little later, Paul makes a Nazirite vow, a voluntary act of piety spelled out in the law (Acts 18:18; Num 6:5–9, 18); other references in Acts and 1 Corinthians suggest that Paul continued to observe Israel’s feasts (Acts 20:16; 27:9; 1 Cor 5:7; 16:8).
The strongest indication that Paul continued to keep the law occurs in Acts when Paul arrives in Jerusalem with alms for the Jewish Christian community there. James, the leader of the Jerusalem church, informs him,
Brother, you see how many thousands of believers there are from among the Jews, and they are all zealous observers of the law. They have been informed that you are teaching all the Jews who live among the Gentiles to abandon Moses and that you are telling them not to circumcise their children or to observe their customary practices. (Acts 21:20–21)
James advises Paul to demonstrate publicly that the rumor is false by joining some local Jewish Christians who have just made a Nazirite vow:
Take these men and purify yourself with them, and pay their expenses that they may have their heads shaved. In this way everyone will know that there is nothing to the reports they have been given about you but that you yourself live in observance of the law. (Acts 21:24)
Paul does exactly as James suggests, refuting the false report that Paul is teaching Jews to abandon the law of Moses. Some interpreters think that in doing so Paul acted merely for the sake of expediency. But for Paul to deliberately give public evidence to a lie that he was living “in observance of the law,” when he was not, would contradict what we know of Paul’s character and would make him guilty of something worse than the inconsistency for which he reproves Peter in Gal 2:11–14.
a. See Rom 3:19–4:25; 7:1–4; 8:1–4; 1 Cor 9:19–23; Phil 3:2–11.
b. This interpretation of Paul, in combination with the rivalry between Judaism and Christianity in its first few centuries, led to Church prohibitions against Jewish Christians observing the law of Moses. This had the tragic result of the loss of a corporate Jewish witness to the Messiah in the Church. In recent decades Messianic Jews and Hebrew Catholics have revived the earlier practice of following Jesus while continuing to observe a Jewish way of life.
c. See Matt 5:17–48; 12:1–8; 19:3–9; 22:15–40.
[5:4]
The Apostle moves on to the Galatians Christians’ underlying motive for circumcision: you who are trying to be justified by law. For them, circumcision was the first step in the direction of seeking to be accepted as righteous by God on the basis of one’s own works performed in conformity to the †law. Paul has repudiated that way of thinking with great insistence (three times in 2:16) and has explained his reasons at length (2:17–21; 3:6–29). His warning here to those who persist in this error is very stark: You are separated from Christ . . . ; you have fallen from grace. Seeking †justification through the law breaks a person’s relationship with Christ because it means that person is denying the effectiveness of the redemptive death of Christ. Paul said it in 2:21: “I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.” Instead of relying on the work of Christ, such people are relying on the conformity of their conduct to the requirements of the law. By this act they place themselves outside the sphere of †grace, outside the realm of the gratuitous love of God.
[5:5]
The Apostle contrasts this ruinous attitude to that of true believers—Through the Spirit, by faith, we await the hope of righteousness—recalling his readers’ attention to the central positive themes of his letter: righteousness (i.e., †justification), †faith, and the Spirit. Now he adds hope, which corresponds to the theme of the †inheritance that Paul has touched on.1 In the New Testament, hope is not merely a wish but a confident expectation of a future good. The phrasing here is surprising, however, because he refers to the object of Christian hope not as the “inheritance” but rather as “righteousness.” Paul teaches in 2:16 and 3:24 and elsewhere2 that the gift of righteousness—that is, justification—is received on the basis of faith at the beginning of Christian life. Yet here he says “we await” this gift at the end when Christ returns (see also 1 Cor 1:7; Phil 3:20). Paul is speaking about justification (“righteousness”) differently from the way he speaks about it so far in Galatians. Instead, he speaks of justification as it was customarily employed in Judaism—namely, as a positive judgment about a person’s standing that takes place after death: those who are judged righteous will enter into eternal life, while the unrighteous will go to eternal punishment (see Dan 12:2–3; Matt 25:46; John 5:29).3 So Paul is saying that we Christians are waiting with confident expectation to be found righteous at the final judgment, when God judges people according to how they have lived (2 Cor 5:10).
What is interesting about this text is that Paul does not say that the final judgment depends on works—as the traditional Jewish and Christian understanding is expressed in other texts, including some written by Paul.4 Instead he speaks of the role of faith and the Spirit, just as he does earlier in the letter, where he refers to the initial justification that places a person in a right relationship with God (Gal 2:16; 3:5–6, 11, 14; 4:4–7). Paul’s position is consistent: having taught that faith and the Holy Spirit are the foundation of our justification and right relationship with God, he insists that they remain foundational for the whole edifice of Christian life. Just as Christian life begins with faith and the gift of the Spirit, it reaches its goal by the same means.
[5:6]
There exists an important difference, however, between initial †justification and final justification, which is indicated in verse 6, where Paul speaks of faith working through love. In initial justification, †faith is not accompanied by works for the simple reason that it has not been able to produce anything yet. Works done previously did not have faith as their foundation and are thus excluded as the basis of justification (see 2:16). However, after initial justification, faith does not remain passive. Rather it manifests a powerful dynamism with which the believer must actively cooperate. Otherwise, his or her faith could suffocate and come to nothing. What counts for final justification is thus “faith working through love.”
Paul knows from experience that faith produces love, an active love. Faith is a personal adherence to God, who has loved us to the point of giving his own Son for all of us (Rom 5:8; 8:32); it is the embrace of Christ, who loved us and gave himself over to death for us (Gal 2:20). By faith we receive the Holy Spirit (3:2, 14), whose first “fruit” is “love” (5:22; see Rom 5:5). The dynamism produced by Christian faith is one of charity—that is, of love toward all. By contrast, circumcision does not change the heart of the person. It is a rite that initiates a person into a particular people, and it therefore can function as a barrier to the universality of divine love. Paul, however, is not saying that noncircumcision is any better, since it also leaves human beings in their sinful condition. Therefore as regards justification before God, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything. Both conditions leave human beings in an unsatisfactory position, with an inadequate kind of existence. It is necessary to be raised to a higher plane, that of “faith working through love.”
Reflection and Application (5:1–6)
The source of love. The only thing that matters is to lean on Jesus in †faith. The source of love is not in us, and we delude ourselves if we think we are able to be charitable on our own. Only in Jesus can we draw upon that source, because it is he who is the fountain of life, of all good, and of the charity that draws us out of our selfishness and moves us to give ourselves to others, purified deep down by divine love (Rom 5:5; 1 John 4:7–10). Let us pray for the faith that makes Jesus the sole foundation of our life and that transforms us by means of charity, a gift that has already been given and that the Spirit can make fruitful in us.5
Freedom in Christ. Paul declares triumphantly: “For freedom Christ set us free; so stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery” (Gal 5:1). We find a similar note sounded in the Gospels. Jesus introduces his preaching in Nazareth by saying,
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring glad tidings to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free. (Luke 4:18; see John 8:31–32)
Jesus came to restore to the human race its full dignity, which is possible only in freedom. Christians are free, liberated by Jesus, and we must remain so, just as Paul admonishes the Galatians: “Do not submit again to the yoke of slavery” (Gal 5:1). We must therefore persist in exercising our liberty by continually liberating ourselves from the false freedom of following our own impulses, which easily degenerates into slavery. Here, however, St. Paul is not writing the Galatians about combating sin: neither circumcision nor keeping the †law of Moses is a sin or immoral i
n itself. Paul was fighting for the freedom of these Christians who were foolishly submitting to a yoke from which Christ had liberated them.
Christian freedom, as Paul will indicate (5:18), is to be led by the Holy Spirit. This freedom is a source of great joy and opens beautiful and unexpected vistas before us. In this interior freedom we see the material and moral slavery of so many brothers and sisters with eyes of mercy and compassion, and we find the courage to fight alongside them so that they may also be free, using all the means that the love and hope that spring from the †gospel suggest to us.6
Do Not Be Misled (5:7–12)
7You were running well; who hindered you from following [the] truth? 8That enticement does not come from the one who called you. 9A little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough. 10I am confident of you in the Lord that you will not take a different view, and that the one who is troubling you will bear the condemnation, whoever he may be. 11As for me, brothers, if I am still preaching circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case, the stumbling block of the cross has been abolished. 12Would that those who are upsetting you might also castrate themselves!
NT: 1 Cor 1:18–24; 5:6; 15:33; Gal 6:12
Having forcefully restated his position, Paul reprimands the Galatians one last time and has stern words for those responsible for the false teaching that threatens their relationship with God.
[5:7]
Paul begins with a compliment: You were running well. However, the fact that he puts the verb in the past tense makes the compliment an implicit reproof. The sports metaphor of running a race, which the Apostle likes to use (1 Cor 9:24–27; Gal 2:2; Phil 2:16), serves here to describe the past fervor of the Galatians that has now disappeared. Paul’s question aims at making the Galatians aware of the negative nature of the change that has occurred. Their former spiritual vigor has been hindered by someone; their admirable running has been interrupted to the point that they no longer obey [the] truth, the authentic †gospel. This passage is closely related to the beginning of the letter, where Paul reproaches the Galatians for following “a different gospel,” which is not the true gospel of Christ, and for “forsaking the one who called” them (Gal 1:6).
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