Daily Devotional for Friday 8th March
Keep on Track
In our reading today, Paul has us jumping around from athletics, to the courtroom, to the kitchen, to meditation, then to a different courtroom and then via a glimpse of Paul’s own life, to the cross of Jesus, and finally to a shocking scene involving Paul’s opponents.
We begin on the running track. Being a Christian is like running a race (Paul says this elsewhere, too, e.g. 1 Corinthians 9:24). The Galatians had made an excellent start. Paul isn’t going to say that they have slowed down or become lazy. But someone seems to have got on the track in front of them, like a person making a political protest at an athletics meeting, and has barred their way. This ‘someone’ is of course the person who has insisted that if they want to be full and true members of God’s people, they must get circumcised.
But this has been done through ‘persuasion’. Suddenly we are in the courtroom, with clever advocates trying to persuade judge or jury that their case is right. It isn’t a matter, for Paul, of people choosing one religious option or another, finding a way forward on a spiritual journey; it’s a matter of truth. The Galatians, however, have been persuaded for the moment, by this ‘agitator’, not to believe it. Paul warns them that this ‘persuasion’ is not coming from the God who called you through the gospel (‘the one who called you’ is a way of referring to God Himself, as in Galatians1:6).
Paul then leaps from the courtroom to the kitchen. Yeast is small but powerful. If you’re making a loaf of bread, you need yeast to make it rise, but only a few grains will do for the entire loaf. Paul’s point is that if the Galatians give in on this one thing, i.e. circumcision, they won’t simply be all right in everything else, with one little blemish; this mistake will be like yeast, and will change everything.
Then, equally suddenly, back to the courtroom. Paul is now playing judge and jury, and making his own decision (being persuaded, or confident) about the Galatians themselves, and about the person who is troubling them. He is confident ‘in the Lord’; this probably means that, as he has wrestled with the question in prayer, he has arrived at a settled conviction that the Galatians will make up their minds the right way. But the blame will fall on the person, whoever it is, who has got them into this trouble.
Another swift jump, this time to Paul’s own life and work. The ‘agitators’ seem to have told the Galatians that Paul himself was really, like them, a preacher of circumcision. Absolute nonsense, declares Paul. Of course, before his conversion, he would have believed that Gentiles had to be circumcised if they were to join God’s people, but now he obviously believes no such thing. If he did, why would he still be persecuted?
Wherever he goes he is attacked by those Jews who think he is letting the side down, who cannot bear his message of a crucified Messiah. For them, Paul has a sharp and shocking word. The agitators want to convince the Galatians that circumcision is necessary? Well, declares Paul, if they are that keen on cutting off a slice from their male body parts, why don’t they go the whole way? Why don’t they just emasculate themselves?
This seems a violent conclusion, but Paul is probably being heavily ironic. Can’t you see, he says to the Galatians, that cutting off bits of your body is neither here nor there? It’s on a par with the sort of ritual markings in the flesh that various religions perform.
What Paul wants above all is that the people who are troubling the Galatians will lose their power, will no longer be able to dominate them or propagate their ideas among them.
Time to reflect…
Is there something that is distracting me from running a good race?
Perhaps, like yeast in a batch of dough, there is something small that is beginning to infiltrate my life and have a widespread affect.
Pause to pray…
Lord Jesus I am sorry for the times I have allowed myself to be side-tracked from your truth. May I stand firm in the freedom and grace that Christ has secured for me, refusing to compromise my faith for any counterfeit version of salvation. And may my life be a testimony to the sufficiency of the cross and the power of God's redeeming love. Amen.
