Sha’ul’s Letter to the Galatians ~ Part 17

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We pause the ongoing story of Sha’ul to examine his Letter to the Galatians.

In our last post, we left off in Chapter 6:10 with Sha’ul describing Flesh and Spirit. In this post, we conclude our exploration of Sha’ul’s Letter to the Galatians.

Neither Circumcision Nor Law

¹¹ Look at the large letters I use as I close in my own handwriting.

(Yes, the CJB prints this passage in large letters.)

My own handwriting. Typically, Sha’ul’s handwritten greeting is short since its purpose is to assure his readers that the letter is really from him; this is proved by his calling attention to the large letters he uses and by 2 Thess. 3:17 in the light of 2 Thess 2:2–3a. Here, however, after dictating the body of the letter and authenticating it, it seems that, with papyrus or parchment before him and quill in hand, he was moved by the intensity of his feelings to express once more (vv. 11–18) what he thought of the Judaizers and the evil they were doing. In these verses, he is using highly charged, emotion-ridden language. This is important to remember because the very controversial v. 16 can be understood correctly only if it is remembered that Sha’ul was writing at white heat.

¹² It is those who want to look good outwardly who are trying to get you to be circumcised. The only reason they are doing it is to escape persecution for preaching about the Messiah’s execution stake.¹³ For even those who are getting circumcised don’t observe the Torah. On the contrary, they want you to get circumcised so that they can boast of having gained your adherence.

Even those Gentiles who are getting circumcised, becoming non-Messianic Jewish proselytes, and thus putting themselves “in subjection to the system which results from perverting the Torah into legalism” (see Galatians 3:23b), obligating themselves “to observe the entire Torah” as a Jew (Galatians 5:2–4) don’t keep the Torah, even this way misunderstood. On the contrary, they don’t follow that system’s rules; the only reason they want you to get circumcised is not so that you will obey the Torah but so that they can boast of having gained your adherence to them, personally (literally, “so that in your flesh they may boast”).

¹⁴ But as for me, Heaven forbid that I should boast about anything except the execution-stake of our Lord Yeshua the Messiah! Through Him, as far as I am concerned, the world has been put to death on the stake; and through Him, as far as the world is concerned, I have been put to death on the stake. ¹⁵ For neither being circumcised nor being uncircumcised matters; what matters is being a new creation.

Neither being circumcised nor being uncircumcised matters, repeated from Galatians 5:6 above (compare 1 Corinthians 7:18–20) so that Sha’ul can bring in the new idea that has come to him in his white heat (see comment on v. 11), that what matters is being a new creation of God’s because you trust Yeshua (compare 2 Corinthians 5:17) and respond to the Ruach HaKodesh (Galatians 5:5, 16–25).

¹⁶ And as many as order their lives by this rule, shalom upon them and mercy, and upon the Isra’el of God!

This controversial verse, with its expression, unique in the Brit Hadasah, “the Isra’el of God,” has been misinterpreted as teaching what Replacement theology wrongly claims, namely, that the Church is the New Israel which has replaced the Jews, the so-called “Old Israel,” who are therefore now no longer God’s people. But neither this verse nor any other part of the Brit Hadashah teaches this false and antisemitic doctrine. Nor, in my view (Sterns and mine), does it teach, as has been proposed (perhaps in reaction), the contrary doctrine that the phrase refers only to Jews and that “Isra’el” can never mean Gentiles.

¹⁷ From now on, I don’t want anyone to give me any more tsuris because I have scars on my body to prove that I belong to Yeshua! ¹⁸ The grace of our Lord Yeshua the Messiah be with your spirit, brothers. Amen. ^[1]

Brothers. As in eight other places in this letter, Sha’ul closes by reminding his hearers that they are all brothers in the Messiah. Therefore, they should mend their doctrinal errors and become reconciled with one another. Like the one in Galatians 1:5, the Amen at the end indicates that Sha’ul wants the congregation to respond to his final sentiment by saying, “Amen,” the Hebrew word that means, “Let it be so.”

In our next post, we will return to follow Sha’ul through Acts as we explore Sha’ul’s Second Missionary Journey.

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^[1] Galatians 6:11–18.