"As many as are wanting to make a good showing in [the] flesh, these are compelling you to be circumcised, only in order that for the Cross of Christ they should not be persecuted."
-Paul is writing to these believers himself, showing them that he truly does care about them, and now adds that these Judaizers don’t really care about them at all. He restates his point here, that the ones who are telling these Galatian believers that they needed to be circumcised were primarily motivated to avoid being persecuted themselves by zealous Jews. Again, the prevailing assumption within Judaism at that time was that God only accepted good circumcised Jews who were descended from Abraham, and then He would accept any Gentile converts to Judaism IF and only if they also received circumcision and began to observe the entire mosaic law. All 600+ commands of it.
-The biggest challenge for the early church was for Jewish believers in Jesus as Messiah to embrace the truth that in fact circumcision did NOT make one more acceptable in God’s eyes, that Jesus was the ONLY way to the Father, and ALL who receive Him are given the right to become children of God, Jew and Gentile alike, regardless of the state of their foreskins or any other part of their anatomy, or their ancestry, for that matter. These Judaizers would likely look better in the eyes of orthodox Jews and receive less persecution from them for following Jesus if they could convince these Gentiles to go on and receive circumcision after they received Jesus. But herein their motive is exposed - they're just putting on a show. They are pushing circumcision only in order to make life easier for themselves. They don’t really care about what is best and right for the Galatians. It was more about them, more of a sham, merely for show. May we find the grace to truly care about what is best and right for our fellow believers...
No comments:
Post a Comment