We’ve got another exciting week of studying Paul’s letter to the churches in Galatia! We found some interesting things last week about the spiritual origins of what we see in our physical world and about Paul’s relationship with those he brought to the Messiah. This week we’re going to find some exciting things that connect all the way to the study of end times!
We’re starting this week at the beginning of chapter five, and there we see a continuation of Paul’s comparison to slavery. He emphasizes Yeshua’s provision of freedom, encouraging the Galatians to be strong against those who were trying to sway them from that and bring them again under a yoke of slavery (Galatians 5:1). This idea of a yoke, if you’re unfamiliar with it, is a reference to farming and how they would use animals to do things like plow a field.
A yoke is a piece of farming equipment that would connect two animals, usually oxen, so their strength and efforts were working together to complete whatever the task was. If one of the oxen was working a little harder than the other, it would help the other one along rather than putting all the weight of the farming instrument on one ox. Farming analogies were common amongst teachings in early Christianity because more people were closer to and more familiar with that line of work.
The analogy here by Paul was to invoke the imagery of someone being tied to slavery rather than being tied to Yeshua. In other words, the Galatians, by focusing on the Law as a means of attaining righteousness, were connecting themselves with a burden of being forced to do all the things written in the Law. They were unnecessarily requiring themselves to perfectly execute all the commandments, and believing that if they didn’t they were not meeting YHWH’s requirements for them to achieve righteousness.
This focus on trying to perform a physical justification for a spiritual problem is what Paul wrote about multiple times, including in his letter to the Romans which we studied previously (Romans 2:28, 8). In his next few sentences, which need to be taken as a whole vice separately, he lays out what he’s trying to get the Galatians to understand (Galatians 5:2-4). At the end of this passage, he makes a startling statement that surely shocked the original readers. I know it would have shocked me.
If we take these sentences separately, we’ll get twisted around again because it makes it seem like an all-or-nothing statement by Paul regarding the Law. He starts out by saying Yeshua, the One who these believers have been following and the One who is in fact the whole basis of their belief structure, is worthless to them if they get circumcised. We’ll get more into some detail and context about that particular commandment in a moment, but for now, just understand that this was a commandment clearly given only to Israel (Leviticus 12:3) and it was based on a commandment originally given to Abraham and his family well before the Law was given to Moses (Genesis 17:9-14).
Paul continues by stating that if someone allows himself to be circumcised, he must follow the whole Law. What he’s getting at here, and this is something we’ve seen in previous studies, is not that a believer can’t or shouldn’t follow the commandments in the Law. He’s pointing out that by getting circumcised, which is a physical and destructive action, a believer is focusing on doing things physically to obtain a spiritual righteousness, the righteousness that Yeshua provided through His death. The problem is that there is literally nothing you can do physically that can give you righteousness because that’s not how it works.
To re-emphasize something we’ve looked at before, YHWH designed creation such that everything starts in the spiritual and gets realized in the physical. YHWH is spirit (John 4:24), and He created everything we see physically. When He created man, it took His breath to turn man into a living being (Genesis 2:7), and as we learned in a previous study, the word for breath is synonymous with spirit. Nothing that we do physically can address our spiritual problem of being sinful as a result of the sin committed by Adam and Eve in the garden.
Think of it like this. If you have a river that is flowing through an area of land and providing it with the water it needs to grow plants and sustain animal life, and miles upstream that river gets dammed up, there is nothing you can do in and around that land to give it the river’s water again. You have to go upstream and break up that dam so the water can flow to the land once more.
The same is true for sin. Adam and Eve’s sin resulted in a spiritual separation from YHWH that was then realized physically as being expelled from the garden of Eden. This prevented man from having a close, intimate relationship to YHWH spiritually and also prevented man from being able to access the tree of life, which would have allowed him to live indefinitely. If the water from our river analogy represents the spiritual aspect of creation and the land represents the physical aspect of creation, Adam and Eve’s sin dammed up the flow of YHWH’s Spirit to man and set into motion a “drying up” of the physical aspect of man, which is a degeneration of our bodies to the point of physical death. Their sin was initiated with the spiritual aspect of their willful decision was to disobey YHWH, and it was culminated physically as them eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge.
It’s important that we recognize this aspect of the world we live in, because otherwise we will never be fighting against evil the right way. By trying to look for physical ways to fight back, or to justify ourselves like through the Law, we nullify the spiritual domination that Yeshua gave us over evil and over the wages of sin through His death. That’s exactly what Paul says in verse four, in the shocking statement alluded to earlier. Some translations say “severed from Christ,” while others say “cut off” or “alienated” from Christ, but the Greek word is the same one Paul used when talking about nullifying the body of sin so we are not enslaved to sin (Romans 6:6) and when the end comes and the last enemy, death, is nullified (1 Corinthians 15:26). Going back to our analogy, Yeshua’s death on the cross destroyed the dam in the river for believers and those focusing on the physical are essentially diverting that spirit-water from their land and still trying to make things grow there.
Paul states that this results in someone falling out of the grace given by YHWH for those believing in His Son, which is serious enough statement that it should give all believers pause. Sometimes, I feel as there is an inappropriate focus on grace that some Christians fall into, and Paul warns about this in various letters as well as in this one. If we jump down a bit further, we see that this grace-provided-freedom should not be seen as an opportunity to indulge ourselves of the desires of the flesh (Galatians 5:13). We’ll get more into detail on that next week, but he closes out that thought by reminding the Galatians that it’s all about loving each other and not attacking or consuming one another (Galatians 5:14-15). The word for devour here is the same as used by Yeshua when giving woe to the Pharisees about devouring widows’ houses (Matthew 23:14, Mark 12:40, Luke 20:47). According to commentaries, this was the practice of taking advantage of the ignorance and vulnerability of widows in order to gain their possessions and property for the Pharisees’ use.
Continuing back with verse five, the next few statements by Paul provide important context to where man is in YHWH’s master plan. We are waiting in expectation for righteousness (Galatians 5:5). Not that it is already given or that it is guaranteed, but that through our faith in Him being expressed through love (Galatians 5:6) we will eventually obtain it. That’s not to say we are not already spiritually righteous through our belief in Yeshua and the subsequent regeneration of our spirit. Paul’s just saying here like he did elsewhere (Romans 8:22-25) that it’s something spiritual that we cannot see yet, therefore we have hope in the promise that we are righteous and have received eternal life.
We saw last week that the Galatians, apparently, were doing well in their faith prior to this point, but the question Paul poses next and his subsequent train of thought is interesting (Galatians 5:7-9). He asks who has hindered the Galatians from “obeying,” the truth, but when you look at the Greek word it’s actually the root from which the Greek word for faith is derived. In other words, Paul is saying that the Galatians no longer had confidence in the truth, they no longer trusted it or had faith in it. It seems like a bit of a nuance compared to being translated to “obey,” but it speaks to the subtlety and sneakiness with which evil operates.
Just like in the garden, when the serpent caused Eve to question YHWH’s commandment, those that influenced the Galatians caused them to question whether or not they truly were saved simply by their belief in Yeshua. The serpent instilled doubt in the truth that eating of the tree of knowledge would result in death, and similarly, the former Pharisees convinced the Galatians that believing in Yeshua would still result in death. Based on this doubt, the Galatians’ willful decision was to add physical requirements to obtain salvation, which was culminated physically as following the Law, and resulted in metaphorically diverting YHWH’s Spirit-water away from their land.
Paul likens this doubt to leaven, or yeast, working through a batch of dough, which sounds very familiar, doesn’t it? All the way back to Yeshua, this analogy has been used to represent the infiltration and spreading of something (Matthew 13:33, Luke 13:20-21, Matthew 16:5-12, Mark 8:14-21, Luke 12:1-3, 1 Corinthians 5:6-8, Romans 11:16). To give the Galatians encouragement and prevent them from worrying they would be condemned for turning to the Law, Paul tells them he’s confident they’ll come back to the truth, and whoever was convincing them otherwise would be the ones to receive judgment (Galatians 5:10).
Now, here’s where we get a connection to eschatology, which is not quite obvious at first. Paul makes a seemingly off the cuff reference to persecution in relation to preaching that a believer is required to be circumcised (Galatians 5:11). Other than previously talking about the Galatians considering circumcision, it might be confusing as to why Paul included this unless you understand the context of his statement.
At the time of Paul’s writing, do you know who the main group of people was that were persecuting believers? Apparently, given Paul’s statement, at least one of the reasons they were being persecuted was due to preaching that circumcision was not required. If you read historical references, you might think the persecution was instigated by the Roman Empire, but based on scripture and deductive reasoning we know otherwise.
First, regarding scripture, the obvious reference is that Paul himself, when he was still called Saul, as a Jew, persecuted many believers (Acts 9:1-2). Second, as far as deductive reasoning goes, in general, the Roman Empire couldn’t care less if someone was circumcised. In fact, the only law they had regarding circumcision was that it just couldn’t be done without consent, which, in the case of the Galatians, would have made it lawful in this particular instance. Additionally, pagan beliefs and practices included such things as self-mutilation, so the Romans wouldn’t have had grounds for objection in the case of this particular religious practice.
No, at the time of Paul’s writing, the Jews were the ones murdering and imprisoning believers due to their beliefs, and this Jewish detest for Christians is one of the reasons I believe the Mystery Babylon woman of Revelation refers to Jerusalem (Revelation 17). It could certainly refer to Rome, based on the emperor Nero instigated persecutions of 64-68AD, so I’m not discounting that theory/interpretation. I just find more similarities between Jerusalem and the imagery of the woman than between her and Rome, and I think where a lot of interpretations get led down the path of a future reincarnation of the Roman Empire is that they connect her to Rome and Rome has not yet experienced the complete destructive fall that’s prophesied against the Babylon of Revelation (Revelation 18).
Closing out this week, Paul’s next two statements deserve a look as well. When he states that the “offense” of the cross is nullified, he is referring to a stumbling block, the same concept Yeshua preached about during His ministry. Who was the cross a stumbling block to? The non-believing Jews that were persecuting the believers. So, Paul was saying that if he was still preaching the requirement for circumcision, those Jews would overlook the fact that he was also preaching salvation through Yeshua. And if you take that a step further, Paul was therefore also suggesting that those former Pharisee believers convincing the Galatians they had to follow the Law were in actuality still non-believing Jews at heart. They had not fully given themselves over to believe in Yeshua.
In the last statement we’ll look at this week, we really just want to point out that Paul was not necessarily suggesting that those former Pharisee believers should castrate themselves (Galatians 5:12). While that certainly may be a possibility, I find it more likely that he was referring to them cutting themselves off from the body of Yeshua. This imagery was used by him elsewhere in his writings (Romans 9:3, 11:22, 12:4-5), albeit using a different Greek word, and in Jewish culture this type of language was used to refer to being cut off from the community or covenant, which was a serious consequence for disobedience or impurity. It is also notable that the King James versions are one of the only few that translate this verse in that way.
I hope you learned something and found this week’s study interesting! Remember that evil’s influence always starts subtly by introducing a hint of doubting the truth. Then, once the individual has accepted that doubt, he or she has been set down the path of little by little being led completely away from the truth. Keep your eye out for this subtlety, so you don’t fall into that trap!
We hope you have a wonderful week! Shabbat shalom and YHWH Bless you!
-Rob and Sara Gene
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