NOTES for Gal 5:1-12

Speaking about circumcision, Paul compares it with slavery, urging his readers to remain free people (v. 1). He tells the Galatian Christians directly that if they are circumcised, Christ will be of no benefit to them (v. 2). At first glance, such a statement contradicts the apostle's own words, spoken, however, at another time and on another occasion, that circumcision prevents neither salvation nor abiding in the Kingdom. The key to understanding such a stern statement by Paul is the apostle's demand that the one being circumcised fulfill the whole Torah completely (v. 3). Paul, as can be seen, is not against circumcision. He is not against religion as such, as long as it does not hinder entrance into the Kingdom, and he is certainly not against the Torah. But he is firmly against the game of religion into which, as can be seen, the Christians of Galatia had been drawn. He reminds the Galatians that in Christ the question of circumcision loses all meaning, that it has no relation at all to the Kingdom (v. 6). One cannot be justified by the Torah, and the Galatian Christians ought to know this (vv. 4-5).

But that is not the only point. The point is that they do not treat circumcision at all as the Torah prescribes. For a believing Jew who observes the Torah, the question of circumcision sometimes became a matter of life and death, as it did, for example, during the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, when circumcision was performed secretly and was punishable by death. In such a situation circumcision became the consequence of a deep spiritual choice, and not everyone resolved to take it. But in the present case the situation was different: circumcision was being used precisely in order to avoid problems, problems that Paul himself clearly did not try to avoid in this way (v. 11). For the apostle, as can be seen, circumcision is too serious a thing to be used as a cover. And he calls the Christians of Galatia to treat it just as seriously. He reminds them that by agreeing to circumcision they are choosing another path, not the one to which Paul had testified to them and on which they had walked before (vv. 7-8). This is no trifle; betrayal begins with something small (v. 9). And if someone among those who preach circumcision in the Galatian church does not understand the full seriousness of the situation, so much the worse for him (v. 10).

Circumcision, like religion in general, is neither good nor bad in itself. Everything depends on what it is for a person: a choice of path or a game that is played partly in order to avoid unpleasantness. In the first case, it is possible that the chosen path will still lead a person to the threshold of the Kingdom, as happened with Paul himself. After all, before the meeting on the Damascus road, he himself did not dare to think that circumcision could be spiritually useless. The second path leads nowhere, because it goes nowhere. It most of all resembles a circle around a playground, around which one can run endlessly. And the apostle certainly does not want running in circles to become the main occupation of his Galatian brothers.

The imaginative literature described time and again the problem of the freed slave. Being face to face with his freedom, with his new life, where there are no responsibilities, where you decide everything alone, man begins mostly to regret slavery.

Custom to the position of slave, to life, where everything is determined, forces to look all the time for habitual ways. And it becomes necessary to find again means to be slave. The exit from spiritual slavery and the reception of Christ is much more painful. Spiritual freedom, which we begin suddenly to feel, does not usually manifest itself in something outward. It is more complex to keep in oneself the sudden, undeserved donation, but possessing an incredibly high value.

When we discover in us a desire to a former, quiet life, it seems to us that it is our personal problem, of which nobody understands. However, the call of the apostle Paul to stand fast in liberty, which we found, already two thousand years ago is one of the most current interest for all the Christians. And it is only because we are insufficiently consistent in the execution of these instructions, which our life mostly doesn’t completely look like a testimony of the Christ should be.

Speaking of circumcision as a path back into slavery, Paul clearly has in mind the spiritual dynamic connected with the action of the Torah in a person. He tells the supporters of obligatory circumcision directly: if you are circumcised, then you must fulfill the Torah in its entirety. And the issue here is not only fulfilling all the religious prescriptions of Judaism, but going through the whole spiritual path marked out in the Torah, from a purely external, moral, and religious understanding of it to the spiritual work implied by the concept of the inner Torah. Otherwise, when understood only religiously, the Torah loses all spiritual meaning, and circumcision becomes a kind of religious game that in itself leads a person nowhere, only distracting him from the genuine spiritual path.

The apostle is not speaking against the Torah; he simply does not want following the Torah to turn into a kind of religious entertainment, by which many also reassured themselves that now they were doing everything necessary for God and for Christ. Many who were circumcised may have felt themselves to be "proper" Christians, while in Christianity they began to see not a spiritual path and not the life of the Kingdom, but a "proper" religion.

In such a case, religious life generally and imperceptibly replaced spiritual life, and it is precisely against this substitution that Paul warns the Galatian Christians. He says to them: do you seriously want to become Jews, to walk the whole spiritual path walked by the best representatives of the Synagogue? In that case, follow the Torah in all its fullness. Move from the external Torah to the inner Torah; try yourselves to become the living Torah, and learn from your own experience what that is like and what comes of such attempts. The apostle knew what he was talking about: in another of his letters, the Letter to the Romans, he himself described his attempts to realize the ideal of the living Torah in life.

Complete failure, a spiritual crisis, and finally the encounter with the Risen One on the Damascus road: all this is Paul's own path, a path which, however, none of the circumcised Galatian Christians intended to walk. The path of the Torah did not interest them; they simply wanted a little religion for variety in life and peace of mind. It is no wonder that such a position could arouse nothing in the apostle but indignation: he took the Torah, Christ, the Kingdom, and his own spiritual path with complete seriousness. And seeing certain "teachers" profane everything that was absolutely important to him, he could not remain calm.

In his letter to the church of Galatia, Paul speaks quite decisively about circumcision: whoever is circumcised receives no benefit from Christ. At first glance such a statement may seem plainly absurd: after all, among Christians in those times the circumcised were almost the majority, including, among others, Paul himself. Clearly the issue is not the fact of circumcision itself. However, judging by the context of the letter, it is not hard to be convinced that the issue here is recent Gentiles who were being circumcised after already becoming Christians. And that was an entirely different matter: for them circumcision became a kind of mandatory religious rite without which one could not enter the Church or become a Christian.

So, at least, claimed those who were urging newly converted Christians to be circumcised. Paul could in no way reconcile himself to this. And the issue here was not a position or theological opinions, but the apostle's experience. He knew too well that no religion and no efforts undertaken within religious frameworks lead, by and large, to anything. Paul, while still Shaul, did everything he could to reach the ideal and become what was then called a living Torah. He strove to follow the Torah with complete sincerity and in all fullness, and suffered complete defeat.

Only the meeting with the Risen One on the Damascus road saved him from spiritual collapse. And now he hears the assertions of people convinced that relationships with Christ are not enough for salvation, that they must be supplemented by circumcision, otherwise nothing will come of it! And this when even in the Torah circumcision is called only a "sign of the covenant"! Not its meaning, this covenant-union, and not even some fundamental condition, but only a sign!

Of course, refusing the sign of the covenant concluded with God is by no means a virtue. But to place salvation in the sign? For Paul this was simply absurd. Yet he understood: for some people it really is so. And such a state of affairs means only one thing: people hope more in their religiosity than in Christ. And in that case there is indeed no reason to count on Christ's help and intervention. One can, being a religious person, seek and find Christ.

One can even build relationships with Him while remaining, though not too much, a religious person. But to find Christ and then set out in search of some further religion without which one supposedly cannot manage means simply not understanding whom one has met. For a Christian, relationships with Christ are by definition of value in themselves, necessary and sufficient; they require no additions or "supplements." And if a person does not understand this, it means he is not quite a Christian yet. Or not a Christian at all.

In his letter to the church of Galatia, Paul speaks quite decisively about circumcision: whoever is circumcised receives no benefit from Christ. At first glance such a statement may seem plainly absurd: after all, among Christians in those times the circumcised were almost the majority, including, among others, Paul himself. Clearly the issue is not the fact of circumcision itself. However, judging by the context of the letter, it is not hard to be convinced that the issue here is recent Gentiles who were being circumcised after already becoming Christians. And that was an entirely different matter: for them circumcision became a kind of mandatory religious rite without which one could not enter the Church or become a Christian.

So, at least, claimed those who were urging newly converted Christians to be circumcised. Paul could in no way reconcile himself to this. And the issue here was not a position or theological opinions, but the apostle's experience. He knew too well that no religion and no efforts undertaken within religious frameworks lead, by and large, to anything. Paul, while still Shaul, did everything he could to reach the ideal and become what was then called a living Torah. He strove to follow the Torah with complete sincerity and in all fullness, and suffered complete defeat.

Only the meeting with the Risen One on the Damascus road saved him from spiritual collapse. And now he hears the assertions of people convinced that relationships with Christ are not enough for salvation, that they must be supplemented by circumcision, otherwise nothing will come of it! And this when even in the Torah circumcision is called only a "sign of the covenant"! Not its meaning, this covenant-union, and not even some fundamental condition, but only a sign!

Of course, refusing the sign of the covenant concluded with God is by no means a virtue. But to place salvation in the sign? For Paul this was simply absurd. Yet he understood: for some people it really is so. And such a state of affairs means only one thing: people hope more in their religiosity than in Christ. And in that case there is indeed no reason to count on Christ's help and intervention. One can, being a religious person, seek and find Christ.

One can even build relationships with Him while remaining, though not too much, a religious person. But to find Christ and then set out in search of some further religion without which one supposedly cannot manage means simply not understanding whom one has met. For a Christian, relationships with Christ are by definition of value in themselves, necessary and sufficient; they require no additions or "supplements." And if a person does not understand this, it means he is not quite a Christian yet. Or not a Christian at all.

In Gospel times people looked at the Torah (the Law) in different ways. For most believing Jews the Torah was a kind of moral and legal code that was to be accepted and fulfilled unconditionally. At the same time it was taken for granted that this code was fulfillable. And at the level to which the religious majority limited itself, there really were no insoluble problems with fulfilling the Torah. Of course, this required effort, but sincerely religious people are usually not sparing of such effort. And after making the effort and fulfilling the Torah, as it appeared to them, to the end, such people naturally considered themselves righteous. Indeed, from their own point of view, from the point of view of a religious person, they had nothing with which to reproach themselves. What more could God require of them? He had set out His requirements in the Torah, and they had fulfilled it.

Yet in those days there was another view of the Torah and of spiritual life. It was a view that, in essence, already went beyond the framework of traditional Jewish religiosity, and beyond the framework of any religiosity at all. In this case the matter concerned the inner Torah. A Torah perceived not as a legal or moral code, but as the revelation of God's will. God's will in the most literal sense. In the sense of God's intentions addressed to a person. Intentions that must determine the whole spiritual life of a person, and indeed that person's whole life in general. They must become the spiritual core that alone can make a person righteous, if it determines his life completely.

When speaking about the Torah, Paul often contrasts the inner Torah with the outer one. And the point is not that he is a principled opponent of all religiosity. He simply knows too well from his own experience that religion has never yet made anyone righteous, and cannot do so.

A religious person can do many things for God. But in spiritual life the main thing is not to do, but to be. What is needed is not a set of good and pious deeds, but a qualitative change of life. And here religion proves powerless, because it changes a person from the outside, through the norms and rules it offers. Real changes always happen from within. Here what is needed is precisely the inner Torah, but this is exactly what a fallen human being is unable to bring to fullness. Original sin stands in the way.

And the apostle understands this perfectly too: he himself tried to live this way and suffered a complete failure, described quite frankly by him in the Letter to the Romans. All that remains is hope in that breath of God, the breath of the Kingdom, which alone can make a person righteous. Of course, this is an admission of one's own spiritual insufficiency. But it is better to acknowledge the obvious and obtain the fullness of the life of the Kingdom than to try to put a good face on a bad situation and lose everything.

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.

Usually we think that freedom is something that can be given to a person. One can allow him to be free from one or another requirement of the law, from obligations to behave or think in a certain way. One can allow a person to be as he is. One can give a person liberty to act in his own way. Yet, judging by the words of the apostle Paul read today, this is a human notion that confuses freedom with permissiveness.

"You were called to freedom, brothers," says the apostle. Therefore, for him freedom is an ascetic task to which the Almighty calls us. And this freedom means above all the primacy of the spirit over the flesh. The apostle says that a person's slavery, the condition opposite to freedom, consists in his inability to resist the desires of the flesh. One way of resisting this slavery is the law, but even it does not give a person freedom; it only obliges us to resist the base principle that enslaves us.

But, the apostle continues, if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. A simple logical chain thus brings us to the thought that the essence of freedom is to be led by the Spirit. This is the only thing that always provides us with the possibility of responsible moral choice. And what is at stake here is not permission to make such a choice, but the existence of a real alternative. If you are not led by the Spirit of God, you are not able to choose the truth, and your paths, though paved with good intentions, nevertheless lead to destruction.

What is freedom, and does it exist in the world? In today’s passage from the Letter to the Galatians, the apostle Paul emphasizes: “...stand firm in the freedom Christ has given us... for in Christ ίσχύει (what has force, what counts)... faith working through love” (in the Greek text, “δι’” means through love). Freedom, then, is the subordination of life to the principal and only truth—faith working through love—rather than to transient variations in a way of life that depend on circumstances. To be free therefore means to believe and to act with love. For the apostle, any discussion of human rights is out of place here, because freedom and unfreedom exist before the face of the Almighty. He therefore says nothing about the presence or absence of freedom to profess one’s faith: it is not granted by this world in the form of freedom of conscience, but is realized personally by each person who follows Jesus.