I love what I
do. Daily I get to spend time in God’s word. It’s a great blessing and always
challenges me. Today it completely surprised me. Paul was dealing with some
people trying to sway people away from Christ and his message. Instead they
were trying to persuade people to go back to the old ways of faith. For anyone
who was a male that just now came to faith (Later on in life) they would have
to do what everyone faithful to God had to do, get circumcised. As a kid, this
is a tough process, as an adult I couldn’t imagine doing it. This brings us to
the harsh words Paul shared about the people leading those astray.
Galatians 5:12…
Brothers and sisters, if I am still
preaching circumcision, why am I still being persecuted In that case the
offense of the cross has been abolished. 12 As for those
agitators I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves!
The Message…
If I were preaching that old message, no
one would be offended if I mentioned the Cross now and then—it would be so
watered-down it wouldn’t matter one way or the other. Why don’t these
agitators, obsessive as they are about circumcision, go all the way and
castrate themselves!
Ummm what? Paul
is blunt, I love this about him. He was all about Christ. People were so
wrapped into the old way and making sure they followed the old way. They didn’t
like the freedom Jesus brought in faith. They couldn’t grasp the idea that
grace save them and their wasn’t a hard conversion. Jesus and the Cross put an
end to the old way of faith, it made circumcision and following the old Mosaic
Law not needed.
So Paul uses
extremely hard language to explain this. He wished that those so wrapped into
the old way of circumcision would just cut it all off. Imagine if we did that
today? You got a problem with someone and you tell them to go castrate
themselves (You could say it’s biblical aka bad theology!). The author was
referencing this act that some of the cult of Cybele in Asia Minor priests did
during this period of time. Circumcision was once the main sign of faith, but
now it had no major religious meaning just like then any other cutting
traditions of other pagans.
Reflection, are
we wrapped into the old way of doing faith? Are we so wrapped into traditions
we stop looking at what Jesus did on the Cross? Are our personal opinions of
Church and faith trumping what Jesus actually taught? I once talked to a guy
that only liked the traditional original King James Bible. In his personal
opinion he thought this was the Bible that Jesus used and he wanted understand
the Bible that Jesus taught from (no joke). He couldn’t grasp the idea that
Jesus didn’t use the King James Bible and it was about a 75-85% correct
translation. Are your own ideas about faith trumping what Jesus truly taught?
If so, it might be time to take a deeper look at scripture.
Have a great
day.
