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"For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a
new creature" (Gal. 6: 15).
He then speaks of `this rule' or `canon' namely the rule of the new creation, saying:
"As many as walk according to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy, and upon the
Israel of God" (Gal. 6: 16).
Paul's summing up of the circumcision party and their alms is reducible to the
following heads:
(1)
A desire for a fair show `in the flesh' and for glorying or boasting `in your flesh'.
(2)
This desire to stand well in the flesh `constrains' these teachers to have the Galatians
circumcised, but with an added reason, not that they can ever hope to keep the law,
but in order that they may avoid persecution for the cross of Christ.
(3)
Instead of `glorying' (or boasting) in the flesh and of attempting to avoid persecution
for the sake of the Cross, the Apostle's attitude was to `glory' (or boast) in nothing
save the very Cross that was an offence to the Judaizers, and by this cross he
realized that the world and all it stood for was crucified to him, even as he
recognized that by the Cross he too had been crucified to the world.
(4)
Yet he would be the last to give colour to the thought that he was forming an
opposition party called "The Uncircumcision".
In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails or `is' (so the texts)
anything. He had but one answer to all such alternations: the position of the believer
`in Christ Jesus', the state of the believer `dead' to sin, law and the world.
(5)
This was however no mere negative attitude and doctrine; it was definitely and
positively `a new creature', or better `a new creation' in which `old things have
passed away and new things have come into being'. This new creation pulses with
life; it is the only `rule' or `canon' by which `new creatures in Christ' can hope to
`walk in newness of life'.
(6)
The Galatians had been reproved for submitting to the bondage of `rudiments'
(stoicheia) and of returning to weak and beggarly `elements' (stoicheia), but now
they are reminded of a new, living `walk' (stoicheo), a walk that is `in the spirit'
and according to the rule of the new creation.
(7)
Upon all such the Apostle writes `peace and mercy' and he adds `upon the Israel of
God'--looking to the true believers from among the Jews, who were in vivid
contrast with "Israel according to the flesh".
Even an apostle, strengthened and equipped as he was by the Spirit of God, by grace
and by truth, must at some time cry `Hold, enough'. To say more would be but the
multiplication of words, and so he concludes by saying:
"From henceforth let no man trouble me: for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord
Jesus" (Gal. 6: 17).
The "I" is emphatic. "He bore in his body the proofs that by no subterfuge, such as
they attributed to him, had he evaded the consequences of a faithful delivery of the
doctrine of the cross" (Gwynne). These `marks' are stigmata, the scars left by the
scourging, the imprisonment, the stoning, the ship wrecks that had accompanied his
ministry, and had, as it were, recompensed his faithfulness by affliction. In the days of