There are times when we must show in stark terms the choices before men, and we must state the case with absolute clarity, to help them see it. Paul does not exaggerate here, just to frighten the Galatians. For them to have gone ahead with circumcision as necessary to obtain favour from God would have been fatal to their eternal hope. He therefore summons all his apostolic authority: ‘I, Paul say unto you’. But who today gives such clear warnings and puts things so bluntly? Christians are ready to compromise with almost anything rather than make a fuss.
Doesn’t Paul elsewhere say, ‘circumcision is nothing’? Surely it is only an incision in the flesh. How then can it separate a man from Christ and make Christ of no profit to him? The significance of this rite lay in the thinking of the one who submitted to it. If it was done to gain merit before God, or in reliance upon the law, or to procure salvation, then Paul was utterly opposed to it, as in the case of the Galatians. But if it was done so as not to offend the weak Jewish conscience in order to remove an unnecessary barrier to faith, then, as in the case of Timothy, he would agree to it.