My last blog article—Christian Baptism Gives Access to the Lord’s Table—included the following in a paragraph concerning the apostle Paul’s mention of baptism in his letter to the Galatians. I purposely did not provide any additional explanation of my statements because to do so would have expanded the article which was already sufficiently long. Nevertheless, claims that I make in this paragraph call for clarification.
Now, all who are baptized into Christ—Jew and Gentile alike—not those who are circumcised in the flesh, whether Jews or Gentile proselytes, are Abraham’s children. This indicates that Paul’s principal argument for the Galatians is that submission to circumcision to become Abraham’s seed is tantamount to repudiating Abraham’s one true seed, Jesus Christ. Paul does not mean that to receive circumcision is an act that constitutes “works righteousness.” Rather, he means that to receive circumcision is to sever oneself from Christ who has brought both the Abrahamic and the Mosaic covenants to their climactic completeness, to their God-designed fulfillments. Thus, to receive circumcision is to be united with unfaithful Israel under the law’s curse (Galatians 3:10). To receive baptism is to be united with Christ, to be clothed with him, for to belong to Christ is the only way one can become Abraham’s child (Galatians 3:26-29).
What calls for clarification? The prevalent assumption among Evangelicals is that in his letter to the Galatians the apostle Paul is opposing a false gospel of “works righteousness” advocated by teachers and preachers who were attempting to Judaize the new Gentile Christians. Indeed, Paul emphatically denounces the message that the Judaizers were proclaiming to the Gentile believers in Galatia. He does not mince words. He blasts their message as a perversion of the gospel of Christ Jesus (Galatians 1:6-9). It is reasonable to say that every distortion of the gospel diminishes Jesus Christ’s role as our redeeming sacrificial substitute and elevates the human recipient’s role. Thus, without dispute, Paul makes it clear that the Judaizers’ corruption of the gospel eventually reduces to a message of being justified by the Mosaic law, which is a perversion of the Mosaic covenant. For Paul warns that everyone who submits to circumcision for justification severs oneself from Christ Jesus, which is to perish eternally (Galatians 5:2-6).
However, in his letter to the Galatians Paul does not construct his argument by attacking a blatantly obvious system of “works righteousness” fabricated by the Judaizers. Like all other teachers who corrupt the Christian gospel, the Judaizers believe their own message is in harmony with the gospel of Jesus Christ. We miss both the bulk and the heart of Paul’s argument in his Letter to the Galatians if we represent his response to the Judaizers as a counterpunch to a consciously framed teaching of self-salvation. If we could locate a written record of the Judaizers’ response to the apostle’s Letter to the Galatians, surely, they would have disputed Paul’s assertion that Gentiles who submit to the ritual cutting of circumcision would cut themselves off from Jesus Christ and perish. We need to gain some understanding of who the Judaizers were and the foundational error of their teaching.
After the apostle Paul and Barnabas had planted numerous churches throughout the province of Galatia and had returned to Antioch of Syria, other Jewish teachers who professed faith in Christ Jesus entered Galatia. They seized upon the apostle’s absence as an opportunity to persuade the new Gentile converts to Christ to receive circumcision that they might also become Abraham’s seed. Therein is the core of their falsification of the gospel that invariably and unavoidably results in self-salvation, though the Judaizers fell short of comprehending this fact. When the apostle dismantles this false gospel, he neither first exposes nor fixates upon the results but rather focuses on the false gospel’s assault upon Christ Jesus, which doubtless the Judaizers failed to realize they were doing. How does Paul dismantle the Judaizers’ gospel? Trace his argument in his Letter to the Galatians.
The only access we have to the Judaizers’ teaching is through the apostle Paul’s commentary in his letter to the Galatians. Consequently, some contend that our knowledge of their teaching is inferential at best, like listening to one end of a telephone conversation. However, if we truly believe that Paul is an apostle called by Christ Jesus, it seems that we are obligated to trust that he accurately represents the Judaizers’ message and their assault upon the veracity of his apostleship and receipt of the apostolic gospel directly from Christ and not from any human source, though his message is in full harmony with the gospel that the other apostles proclaimed. The inferences that we can draw from Paul’s letter are reliable and provide information and insights into the Judaizers’ errors that are better than eavesdropping on someone’s telephone conversation. I will summarize the essence of their errors.
Throughout Galatians 3, as the apostle exposes the Judaizers’ errors to which they have attempted to subject the Gentile believers in Galatia, he does not mention circumcision. Nevertheless, their attempt to compel Galatian Gentiles to submit to ritual circumcision is the integral presupposition to his whole argument. While the Judaizers preach the need for Gentile believers to be circumcised, they have no realization at all that they are opposing the Lord Jesus Christ and imposing a system of self-salvation. Instead, they believe that Paul is guilty of concealing an important element integral to the Messiah’s message, one necessary for Gentile converts to embrace to receive the blessing promised to Abraham. When they arrive in the province of Galatia, the Judaizers are delighted that Paul and Barnabas successfully persuaded so many Gentiles to believe in Israel’s Messiah. However, they discover what they are convinced is a fatal flaw. Paul’s converts are not circumcised.
Though it is true that the Judaizers’ corrupted gospel terminates in the cul de sac of self-righteousness, the apostle Paul does not regard this resultant dead end to be the heart of their corrupted message but the result of it. If we carefully track Paul’s argument in Galatians, it is right and necessary that we infer from his reasoning that the Judaizers are delighted that the Gentiles’ have received the message concerning the Messiah who was promised to Abraham. The Judaizers believe their own teaching to be the necessary correction to the apostle’s gospel by enforcing an aspect that the apostle Paul left out of his preaching when he was among the Gentiles of Galatia. The apostle’s gospel, in their judgment, accepts the inclusion of circumcision when he is ministering among fellow Jews (Galatians 5:11), but he alters his gospel when among Gentiles. He hides the knife and cuts circumcision from his gospel for his Gentile converts because he is eager to win their favor (Galatians 1:10). Therefore, they insist that if these Gentiles desire to belong truly and properly to Messiah, they need to receive in their flesh the sign of circumcision given to Abraham and required by the law of Moses. Only by belonging to Abraham by way of circumcision will one belong to Christ Jesus.
Before Paul exposes the anathema-worthiness of the Judaizers’ message which is not good news at all, he exposes their bearing false witness against his gospel and his apostleship, the first thing he does in his letter is correct the record on both. He devotes a lengthy defense of both the gospel he proclaims and his direct call from Christ Jesus to be an apostle (Galatians 1:11-2:10). Neither an apostle nor a church, including Jerusalem, is the source of his appointment to preach and the gospel he is to preach. The Lord Jesus Christ alone is the source of both.
Concerning the core belief of their message to the Galatians, the Judaizers insist that only by belonging to Abraham by way of circumcision, as required by the law covenant, will any of the Gentiles of Galatia properly belong to Christ Jesus. Paul insists that the Judaizers have inverted the truth as it is in Jesus. Thus, throughout Galatians 3:7 through 3:29, he argues that everyone who belongs to Christ Jesus belongs to Abraham. This is how he begins his argument—“Understand, then, that those who are of faith[fulness], these are Abraham’s sons” [γινώσκετε ἄρα ὅτι οἱ ἐκ πίστεως οὗτοι υἱοί εἰσιν Ἁβραάμ, 3:7]—and how he ends his argument—“Now if you belong to Christ, then you are the seed of Abraham, heirs in keeping with the promise” 3:29).
Thus, Paul’s argument demonstrates that because the Judaizers fail to understand the Mosaic law covenant’s function they diminish the Christ to whom the law covenant points. They incorrectly believe that the Mosaic covenant remains perpetually in force after the advent of the Messiah. They fail to comprehend that the law covenant finds its fulfillment and displacement with the new covenant at the advent of Christ Jesus. So, as Paul reaches the apex of his argument, it becomes evident why the Judaizers’ demand that the Gentiles need to submit to circumcision is the integral premise of their message that he disputes. The Jesus they preach is not the Jesus whom the apostle Paul, Barnabas, and the other apostles preach. The teachers who sneaked into Galatia to trouble Paul’s converts preach a Jesus who is subordinate to the Mosaic law covenant rather than the Jesus who brings the law covenant to its divinely purposed climactic termination at the cross where Christ Jesus became a curse for us to redeem us from the law covenant’s curse (Galatians 3:13).
Hence, Paul argues that God designed the Mosaic law with a covenantal function restricted to a temporal range beginning 430 years after Abraham at Mt. Sinai and ending with the climactic redemptive work of the Messiah at Mt. Calvary. The law covenant’s function was to exacerbate human sinfulness by way of its codification of sin until Abraham’s Seed, the Messiah, to whom God’s promise to the patriarch referred, had come. The wonderful message of the gospel is that “God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law that we might receive adoption to sonship” (Galatians 4:4-5). So, now that the good news embodied in the advent of Messiah has come, the law covenant has surrendered its jurisdiction (Galatians 3:23-25). We are no longer under the law covenant’s custody as slaves because we are now Abraham’s children by virtue of being united with Abraham’s Seed, the Messiah Jesus, into whom we have been baptized (Galatians 3:26-29).
Because he has argued that the effectual cause of justification before God, both Abraham’s and ours, is found not in the Mosaic law covenant, which brings a curse, but in the redemption that is in Jesus Christ, the apostle Paul is not shy to feature baptism into Christ Jesus, the symbolic rite of the new covenant as the displacement of the symbolic rite of the now-defunct Mosaic covenant. So, as he mounts the climactic point of his argument, the apostle Paul situates the new covenant’s watery ritual of baptism over against the Mosaic law covenant’s bloody ritual of circumcision (cf. Colossians 2:11-12). “For as many as were baptized into Christ, they have clothed themselves with Christ” (ὅσοι γὰρ εἰς χριστὸν ἐβαπτίσθητε, χριστὸν ἐνεδύσασθε, Galatians 3:27). Paul fixates his argument upon the Judaizers’ error that permanently subjects Messiah to the Mosaic law covenant. Though he fundamentally disagrees with them, the apostle understands their reasoning, that one becomes united with Jesus Christ only by becoming united with Abraham through circumcision. Therefore, Paul is not embarrassed at all to feature Christ’s commanded water ritual that displaces and puts an end to the cutting ritual of circumcision. The baptism ritual displaces the circumcision ritual as Christ displaces the law covenant (cf. Colossians 2:11-12). The outward symbolic ritual is not irrelevant but crucial. Now that Messiah has come, anyone who receives ritual circumcision will sever oneself from the Seed of Abraham, the Messiah, who has brought both the Abrahamic and the Mosaic covenants to their climactic completeness, to their God-designed fulfillments. Consequently, Paul insists that to receive circumcision is to be united with unfaithful Israel under the law’s curse and to sever oneself from Christ (Galatians 3:10; 5:2-6), but to receive baptism is to be united with Christ, to be clothed with him, and to be blessed with Abraham because to belong to Christ, Abraham’s Seed, is the only way one can become one of Abraham’s seed (Galatians 3:26-29).
Resources on Paul’s Letter to the Galatians
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