In our epistle, St. Paul gives us a memorable summary of the whole letter to the Galatians: “Far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal. 6:14).
If you’ll recall, the main argument of Galatians concerns freedom from the law. In other words, as Gentile Christians, the Galatians had no obligation to submit to circumcision. Instead, Paul tells them, they should remember that they are justified by the faith of Christ. The grace of Christ, not works of the law, is what brings them into fellowship with God. And so Paul proclaims, excitedly, “Neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.”
One of the interesting things about Galatians, though, is that it resists our modern tendency to seize this doctrine for our own ends. We might be tempted to take the doctrine of justification by faith as an excuse to do whatever we want: “I am not under the law,” I tell myself; “I am justified by grace, and so I can do as I please.” This kind of antinomian lawlessness is perhaps the first reason why Catholics have been suspicious of a Lutheran or Reformed reading of these verses, which radicalizes Paul by saying not just “justification by faith,” but justification “by faith alone.”
If Paul really wanted to insist on faith alone, why, then, does he give us, in chapter five, a long list of sins to avoid, as well as a long list of fruits of the spirit that we should cultivate? Galatians doesn’t make any sense if we bring to it a sharp separation between all works—virtue, action, morality—and faith, as if the two have no relation to each other.
The key here is to understand what Paul means when he speaks of justification by faith as opposed to justification by the law, or by circumcision. When he speaks in Galatians of justification, he does not use it as shorthand for the whole life of salvation: to be justified by faith is not to be made perfect, to be fully and finally sanctified, or to be guaranteed the rewards of the kingdom. To be justified by faith means, for the Church of Jesus Christ, that faith, not circumcision, is the mark of membership. In other words, what circumcision was for Israel, faith is for the Church. Faith is what marks us as members, and it—along with the sacrament of faith: baptism—is the whole basis for our relations with one another.
We are not allowed to place other conditions on membership, to qualify baptismal faith with a set of additional requirements. One hears an echo to this warning in the the words that Jesus gives to the seventy-two when they return from their mission in Luke 10. They come back with great excitement about the wonderful deeds they were able to perform. “Even the demons are subject to us,” they crow. And Jesus says, soberingly, “Do not rejoice because the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice because your names are written in heaven.” There are any number of good things in the Christian life that can become sources of pride and distractions from the gospel.
And this is why circumcision and uncircumcision are irrelevant: what is relevant to the Church, to membership in the people of God, is God’s new creation in us through faith in Jesus Christ. And what this means is not that all concepts of law or works must be abandoned. In fact, if anything, Paul makes Christian standards of behavior even more demanding. Not only do we need to avoid immorality and vice ourselves, but we are responsible for helping others do the same. “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.” We will all be judged, Paul says, and we will reap what we sow. Verse 8: “He who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption; but he who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.”
A lot of Christians today love to emphasize the concept of Christian liberty, of freedom from the law. On average, maybe, Catholics don’t fall into this quite as much, but this doesn’t mean Catholic behavior is necessarily better. In many cases, we end up with a vaguely Christian version of certain American values, as if Christianity proclaims an absolute autonomy and freedom from all restraint. We are told that the only thing that matters is love, and that God only wants us to be happy. Paul’s exciting doctrine of freedom from the law is seen as confirmation of this point.
But nowhere does St. Paul suggest that, in the Church, we are free to do as we wish. This is exactly the important point: by proclaiming freedom from circumcision, Paul has made a radical expansion of the membership of God’s chosen people. To be a member of that people, in the most basic way, one only has to believe, to accept the word of God in faith. One does not have be a certain kind of person: the call of faith is universal, to every man and woman and child, of every place and ethnicity and personality and background.
But this universal openness in membership by faith is not the end. To say that anyone can join the family does not mean that anyone in the family can act however they want. As a family, as a body, our fellowship depends on more than mere membership; it depends on cultivating the kinds of holiness of life that enable us to be more and more open to the grace of God both for ourselves and for those near us.
This is what Paul means when he says that circumcision doesn’t matter, but a new creation. In Christ, God has made and is making us something new: He is reforming us into the image of his Son. He is restoring his image in us so that we can be a light to the world, so we can go out, like the seventy-two in Luke 10, proclaiming the lordship of Christ in every place that we go.
Our calling, as members of the body of Christ, is not just to be members, but to be functional members, to be members who are able to work for the good of the whole, in service to Christ our head. Because when we, following the example of the saints, open ourselves up to the work God wants to do in us, what the world sees is not we—a bunch of great individuals operating on their own power—but Jesus in us. And it is only through faith in him that all people can know the God who made them and loves them and calls them to eternal life. Amen.