Freedom from Being a Good Person to Prove Yourself
“Listen! I, Paul, tell you this: If you are counting on circumcision to make you right with God, then Christ will be of no benefit to you. I’ll say it again. If you are trying to find favor with God by being circumcised, you must obey every regulation in the whole law of Moses. For if you are trying to make yourselves right with God by keeping the law, you have been cut off from Christ! You have fallen away from God’s grace. But we who live by the Spirit eagerly wait to receive by faith the righteousness God has promised to us. For when we place our faith in Christ Jesus, there is no benefit in being circumcised or being uncircumcised. What is important is faith expressing itself in love.”
Galatians 5:2–6 NLT Read More
There isn’t a big push in the church today to promote salvation by circumcision, so it’s easy to read over these parts like they don’t apply to today. If you ever find yourself trying to explain why God loves you or why you know you’re going to heaven and you say something like “Because I do [this or that good thing] I know I’m going to Heaven,” then that is your version of circumcision. In Paul’s day, circumcision was the thing that men would say was proof that they were part of God’s people.
What Paul is explaining about the law is that if a person boasts about circumcision as evidence of them following the law, they’d better follow all of the other 612 laws from Moses too! Since that is impossible, they need Christ to save them. We all need Christ to save us, whether we know about the 613 Old Testament laws or not. If we think we can save ourselves by being a good person, or going to church every time the door is open, then we are saying we don’t need Christ.
God’s grace frees us from following the laws to be saved. God’s grace covers over every time we were too proud to ask for God’s help or to do things His way. God’s grace, given to us in the life and death of Jesus, gives us freedom to eagerly wait for Christ’s righteousness and not be afraid of how we can generate righteousness on our own. We don’t have to impress God with how holy we think we are, and we don’t have to impress others either.
That is freedom.
With that freedom, we can express our faith in love for God and His creation. We express the confidence that we have a righteousness from God and that others do too. So others don’t have to justify their righteousness to me just like I don’t have to justify my righteousness to them! The freedom increases!
Since Christ has set us free from the law of sin and death, we can set each other free from judgment, bitterness, standard-making, self-righteous expectations, etc.
Christ is of great benefit to us. Life and death benefit. And He wants to benefit us freely.
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