The Heart of God's Desire

We begin chapter 5 with a profound statement by the apostle: "It was for freedom that Christ set us free;..." (v1).

We all know the cost of that freedom. It cost our Lord His comfort; His dignity; and His life. For us this was a gain of incalculable value.

Over against this stands the frightful loss of those who live out their religious lives by human effort.

Given the great cost of our freedom, how is it possible that we could "become subject again to a yoke of slavery?" Further still, how do we then "keep standing firm?"

From the beginning God has always been interested in securing the hearts of His people, not in simply observing the outward show of people continuing in man-made traditions.

Faith and human effort were all the Hebrews knew for hundreds of years. And when the true faith called for them to recognize the arrival of the “promised Seed” who was Messiah according to the Scriptures, for many of the Jews, faith was abandoned for a system of human effort alone.

Jews were often referred to simply as the circumcised (Acts 10:45; 11:2; Gal. 2:7) because this was their personal mark of distinction that set them apart from all other pagan peoples. So circumcision became a great source of pride and confidence among Jewish people.

But it was to be noted that circumcision, or the cutting away of the male foreskin, was to be merely a symbolic reminder of their God who desired to cut away the evil from their hearts.

Circumcision was an outward sign indicating an inward transformation. Apart from this, Paul indicates circumcision was of no saving significance. True circumcision is “of the heart, in the spirit, not in the letter" (Ro. 2:29).