The following excerpts are from the book, "Galatians: An Expository Paraphrase", by Sandy K. Gregory.
Our approach to growing in Jesus is exactly the same as it was to being saved by Jesus--faith in His promise to change us without any help of any kind from the Judaizer's self-improvement-by-self-effort program. (p. 25)
And since you started the Christian life by depending on God's Spirit of grace, is it not foolish to think that you become mature, vibrant people by depending on your own abilities? What God wants from you is faith in His ability to change you, and He uses even our troubles to develop that faith in us. (p. 26)
Do you see a pattern here? It is by faith and not works that you became Christian. It is by faith and not works that God performed miracles in your midst. And even your sufferings were meant to refine your faith. Your own experience should tell you that you go on with Christ in the same way you got started with Christ, which is through faith and favor, not law and labor. (p. 27)
The person whom God stamps Legally Righteous and experiences a life of multiplied blessings is no the person who points with pride to all he has accomplished, but the one who, with a broken and contrite heart, humbly receives God's mercy and grace and then, secure in his acceptance by God, walks in simple faithfulness before God. (p. 28)
Do you think Jesus, knowing He was going to be mocked, spit on, beaten, and crucified, left His home in glory and came down here to make the ransom payment necessary to buy freedom for you in high hopes you would turn right around and go back into slavery? And yet that is exactly the conclusion you must draw from the Judaizer's gospel. So, I say, forget this nonsense! Plant your feet firmly on the Gibraltar of Freedom, and don't ever let yourselves get tangled up with the self-improvement-by-self-effort philosophy again! (p. 38)
Listen to ol' Paul here, because I want each of you to get hold of this. If you choose to be circumcised as your path to spiritual growth, this how much help you can expect from Christ for your journey: none, nada, zilch! This is so critical that I'll say it again. Once you buy into the self-improvement-by-self-effort system on any point, you have obligated yourselves to do everything, perfectly, all the time. Your decision is like a digital switch: one or zero, on or off, yes or no. The moment you plug yourselves into that "I've gotta' be perfect and I'm gonna' be perfect" mentality, you unplug yourselves from Christ's power to transform you.
We refuse to do that. We believe that only the Spirit of God can produce a genuine inner transformation, and so we pray and wait with great anticipation for Him to do a job that only He can do. You see, when Jesus steps onto the stage of our lives, He rolls up His sleeves. To Him, circumcision or the lack thereof, is meaningless, and truth be told, our efforts to help Him only get in His way. The only question that remains is, "What do we do while we are waiting in faith for Jesus to change us?" The answer is simple: what God wants you to do is what you would do if you were perfect, which is to spend your lives loving people. (p. 39)
And furthermore, the suggestion by some of the Judaizers that I advocate circumcision is utter nonsense. If I preach that circumcision is a condition for receiving the benefits of the will, why am I being persecuted? You see, brothers, circumcision symbolizes the idea that people have what it takes to truly improve themselves. What offends people about the cross, and our preaching, is the idea that people bring nothing to the party and Christ has to do it all. That offends peopoles' pride and that's why we are being persecuted. I wish the people who have created this uproar would take the next logical step, for surely if circumcision helps a little, castration would help a lot, and perhaps the real benefit of that act would be that their ability to perpetuate their perversion would end. (p. 40)
Now, let's apply what we've been talking about to two questions. The first is, "How does a Christian experience victory over the destructive want-to's of the flesh which frustrate our desire to walk close to Jesus?" The solution is not to go back to the have-to's of the Mosaic Law, but to identify the want-to's that the Holy Spirit is producing deep within you at any given moment. Follow those, and not only will you have the lasting satisfaction that comes from doing something constructive that you wanted to do, you also will not have time to obey the flesh. You see, the desires of the flesh pull you in one direction; the desires of the Spirit pull you in another. These are always at odds with each other, and when you select one, you automatically deselect the other. So again I say, simply follow the Spirit, adn as you get the hang of walking in Heaven's want-to's, those destructive want-to's will become less and less of an influence in your lives. When you do that, you can forget about the self-imporvement-by-self-effort program and it's never-ending list of things you have to do to "be more spiritual" or "become a better Christian." (p. 41)
