Passage Read: Galatians 5-6
Meditation Verses: 6:13-15
Thought
These people who think a man must be circumcised in order to be saved don't understand what they're talking about! They are picking and choosing what commands of the Old Testament they should obey, instead of recognizing that the Law is an all-or-nothing proposition. Either you obey all of it or else you're condemned. All are condemned by the Law, so if you add on circumcision, it's meaningless. You're still condemned by all the commands you didn't keep! But oh how we wish for something we could do once and be done, a proxy that guarantees our salvation so that we can "set it and forget it." That was never God's way. God was always after a life change, and through the Gospel, with true salvation, there is a new creation, a man created to live and walk in the righteousness that God always desired from us, love for a neighbor as God defines love. There is so much to learn, because we carry our old, worldly ideas into our new life, without recognizing their error. We need to learn what God defines as love and lay aside our old understanding. We need the Scriptures to teach us to recognize the voice and will and heart of the Spirit, so we can walk in step with His actual leading. It's not about keeping key commands so as to be saved; the saved Christian life is actually about being retrained by God to live the life He always intended for us, loving Him first and foremost, and loving our neighbor as He describes and illustrates.
Application
There is no "one and done" key to salvation. Trusting in Christ brings a change that affects all the rest of my life. There must be change, continual growth in knowing God and living more and more as He desires. And that growing is not a side part of my life, a hobby, an occasionally thing to give attention to, but it is my life, the center and core of who and what I'm supposed to be. There is nothing more important. I have been changed and I need to live according to that new nature! If I pin my hope on one thing I did some time in the past and give little or no attention to whether I'm growing in knowledge of and conformity to the likeness of Christ, then I am no better than those who command circumcision but fail to keep the whole Law. I'm deceived and still lost in sin. My main purpose every day must be to know Christ better and discipline myself to walk more perfectly in His ways; that's the only sign of salvation that actually means anything!