Galatians 5:3 - The Whole Shootin' Match

"But I am witnessing again to every man being circumcised that he is a debtor to do the whole law."

-Instead of making a (spiritual) profit, circumcision winds up being the way to take on a massive, non-repayable debt.  All kinds of indebtedness in this world - credit card debt, mortgage debt, school loan debt, car loan debt, back taxes, favors owed - for most of us, we can manage to pay off these and other debts if we simply scrimp and save and work hard enough for long enough.  The more materially wealthy in this world perhaps need not even worry about having to deal with debt, at least not in a financial sense.  But rest assured, the debt to which Paul refers here makes any earthly debt pale in comparison.  There is no way any individual can ever work hard enough to scrape together enough spiritual capital to pay off this debt, not in a million lifetimes.  Because as soon as you depart from the faith-approach to God through Jesus Christ and receive circumcision as a way to earn spiritual capital in heaven, you become indebted, obligated to the whole law.

-The whole law. The WHOLE Law.  Every jot and tittle, every last tiny little bit of it. If our approach to God, if the prospect of gaining or maintaining right standing with Him is dependent on keeping even just one of those 600+ commands, then it becomes necessary to keep all of them.  Every single one, the whole shootin' match.  That's what Paul here is saying.  The standard is absolute perfection, and there are no shortcuts.  No get out of jail free card.  No grading on a spiritual curve for good attendance.  No teacher's pets.  You keep it all, or not at all, short of the goal you do fall (James 2.10).  One must fulfill all of it if he would pass thru those pearly gates and enter paradise, that place of total perfection, the heavenly city where there is no darkness nor shadow of turning whatsoever lurking in some corner somewhere, no hint of leaven in heaven which would leaven the entire lump. There is no such thing as slightly imperfect in heaven. We may pay thousands of dollars in this realm for a diamond which is slightly imperfect, or nearly flawless, but nearly flawless doesn't cut it on this scale.  There cannot be even the smallest discoloration or inclusion.  That most beautifully sublime moral perfection cannot coexist with any whiff of imperfection.  No more than clean and dirt can coexist. Light and darkness. Innocence and guilt. Life and death. These opposites do NOT attract - they are antithetical.  One is in fact the complete absence of the other.  It is the same with absolute moral perfection.  It cannot coexist with any imperfection.  One misstep, and you are guilty.  The Divine Perfection which cannot even look at guilt nevertheless does not overlook it.  Better by far to approach His throne with hands and feet and heart washed clean and whiter than white (thru faith) by the crimson blood of the Lamb.  The cleanest that the best of us can get on our own, with our own feeble stabs at moral-law-keeping, is filthy rags.  I'll pass, thank you...