In his letters Paul often compares Christian life to a race, and Christians to runners in a stadium competing with one another. Here too the apostle compares the recipients of his letter to runners who began their race well, but then something stopped them so that they no longer hear the voice of truth...
In his letters Paul often compares Christian life to a race, and Christians to runners in a stadium competing with one another. Here too the apostle compares the recipients of his letter to runners who began their race well, but then something stopped them so that they no longer hear the voice of truth. From the immediate context it becomes clear that he is speaking of an infatuation with that very religiosity which has never been enough for a genuinely righteous life.
Circumcision becomes the symbol of this religiosity, and with it, apparently, some members of the Galatian church connected their spiritual life even more than with Christ. And here their spiritual path ends. It ends precisely as a path on which they were supposed to walk or run, and which was supposed to pass in direct communion and union with Christ. The Christian's path is the path of the Kingdom, not the path of religion. But that is not the only point.
Paul does not accidentally tell the recipients of his letter that they have stopped. They did not turn onto another path, did not turn back, but precisely stopped. And no wonder: religiosity can both help a person on the spiritual path and hinder him. Religious life as such has no direct relation to spiritual life, although it is connected with it. It is connected above all as form is connected with content. Or, more precisely, as a source of forms for the content with which spiritual life is filled in that part of it which is connected with communion with God.
Here religion can indeed prove useful. But not when it turns into an end in itself. Not when religious life replaces spiritual life, that dynamic of relationships binding a person to God and to other people, which no religion can replace. Here one can truly speak only of a stop on the spiritual path. And if the stop lasts long enough, perhaps even of a rejection of that path: after all, a person can be satisfied with religion alone if he makes the corresponding choice. But then one will have to speak only and precisely of religion, and not of Christianity.
5
5:1 Stand fast therefore in the liberty - From the ceremonial law.Wherewith Christ hath made us - And all believers, free; and be not entangled again with the yoke of legal bondage.
5:2 If ye be circumcised - And seek to be justified thereby.Christ - The Christian institution. Will profit you nothing - For you hereby disclaim Christ, and all the blessings which are through faith in him.
5:3 I testify to every man - Every gentile. That is circumcised - He thereby makes himself a debtor - Obliges.
5:4 Therefore Christ is become of no effect to you - Who seek to be justified by the law. Ye are fallen from grace - Ye renounce the new covenant. Ye disclaim the benefit of this gracious dispensation.
5:5 For we - Who believe in Christ, Who are under the gospel dispensation. Through the Spirit - Without any of those carnal ordinances.Wait for - in sure confidence of attaining. The hope of righteousness - The righteousness we hope for, and full reward of it. This righteousnesswe receive of God through faith; and by faith we shall obtain the reward.
5:6 For in Christ Jesus - According to the institution which he hath established, according to the tenor of the Christian covenant.Neither circumcision - With the most punctual observance of the law.Nor uncircumcision - With the most exact heathen morality.Availeth anything - Toward present justification or eternal salvation.But faith - Alone; even that faith which worketh by love - All inward and outward holiness.
5:7 Ye did run well - In the race of faith. Who hath hindered you in your course, that ye should not still obey the truth?
5:8 This your present persuasion cometh not from God, who called you - to his kingdom and glory.
5:9 A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump - One troubler, ver. Gal 5:10, troubles all.
5:10 Yet I have confidence that - After ye have read this. Ye will be no otherwise minded - Than I am, and ye were. But he that troubleth you - It seems to have been one person chiefly who endeavoured to seduce them. Shall bear his judgment - A heavy burden, already hanging over his head.
5:11 But if I still preach circumcision - As that troubler seems to have affirmed, probably taking occasion from his having circumcised Timothy.Why do I still suffer persecution? then is the offence of the cross ceased - The grand reason why the Jews were so offended at his preaching Christ crucified, and so bitterly persecuted him for it, was, that it implied the abolition of the law. Yet St. Paul did not condemn the conforming, out of condescension to the weakness of any one, even to the ceremonial law; but he did absolutely condemn those who taught it as necessary to justification.
5:12 I would they were even cut off - From your communion; cast out of your church, that thus trouble you.