Galatians 6

¹⁴ But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. ¹⁵ For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. ¹⁶ And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God.

Ours is a day that is conspicuously lacking in peace of mind and heart. It is a shiftless day, a day of anxiety and worry. Many people in the world today feel an inner sense of tension and a loss of spiritual equilibrium. This sense of despair was powerfully captured by T.S. Eliot in his 1925 poem “The Hollow Men.”

Mistah Kurtz—he dead.

A penny for the Old Guy

I

We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together

Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

Our dried voices, when

We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless

As wind in dry grass

Or rats’ feet over broken glass

In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,

Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed

With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom

Remember us—if at all—not as lost

Violent souls, but only

As the hollow men

The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams

In death’s dream kingdom

These do not appear:

There, the eyes are

Sunlight on a broken column

There, is a tree swinging

And voices are

In the wind’s singing

More distant and more solemn

Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer

In death’s dream kingdom

Let me also wear

Such deliberate disguises

Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves

In a field

Behaving as the wind behaves

No nearer—

Not that final meeting

In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land

This is cactus land

Here the stone images

Are raised, here they receive

The supplication of a dead man’s hand

Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this

In death’s other kingdom

Waking alone

At the hour when we are

Trembling with tenderness

Lips that would kiss

Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here

There are no eyes here

In this valley of dying stars

In this hollow valley

This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places

We grope together

And avoid speech

Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless

The eyes reappear

As the perpetual star

Multifoliate rose

Of death’s twilight kingdom

The hope only

Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear

Prickly pear prickly pear

Here we go round the prickly pear

At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea

And the reality

Between the motion

And the act

Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception

And the creation

Between the emotion

And the response

Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire

And the spasm

Between the potency

And the existence

Between the essence

And the descent

Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is

Life is

For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

What a devastating portrait of modern man, man without hope, man lost in a cycle of despair. I would argue that this sense of hopelessness has taken hold of many today. Alongside this, ours is the age of comparative religions, when religion is seen as a human construct, a psychological attempt to trick ourselves into thinking that there is some sort of transcendence in the world and that it might somehow be available to us. The reduction of religion to such an idea relativizes all faiths and allows us to take sanctuary in none of them.

However, in the midst of this morass, and over and against this morass, stands the cross of Jesus Christ in all of its concrete and bloody historicity, its raw reality and rebuke of all attempts to say that this symbol is just one of many, or that it is a symbol at all. The cross is no mere symbol, no matter what the strange and ironic turns of our own fashion industry might try to tell us. It is not decoration. The cross is not embellishment. The cross is an event that happened in space and time. There was a time when the Son of God hung there. There was a time when the lamb of God was sacrificed there. There was a time when the real Jesus was nailed there with real nails and bled real blood so that you and I might be saved!

The questions naturally arises, “So what? What does this mean? What does it mean and what does it matter that Jesus died on a cross?” It is this that Paul addressed in Galatians 6:14-16. According to our brother Paul, the cross has won a great deal for us indeed.

Because of the cross of Christ, we are now freed from the tyranny of being controlled by the world and the things of it.

The cross represents for all who will embrace it a radical change in the fundamental relationship that we have with this world.

¹⁴ But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

First, we note with amazement that Paul proclaims his intention to boast only in the cross of Jesus. This, it should be remembered, is an amazing thing for somebody in the first century to say! “Paul,” writes Timothy George, “chose something utterly despicable, contemptible, and valueless as the basis of his own boasting – the cross of Christ.” George then goes on to quote Clarence Jordan’s paraphrase of Galatians 6:14. It will help to remember that Clarence Jordan wrote these words in the deep South in the midst of the violent racial tumult of the mid-1960’s. Here is how Jordan paraphrased the verse: “God forbid that I should ever take pride in anything, except in the lynching of our Lord Jesus Christ.”[1]

That had to be a jarring thing to read when Jordan wrote and where Jordan wrote it. What I like about that is this gives the type of jolt that first century readers and hearers of Paul would have felt upon hearing the statement that Paul refused “to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

To boast in a cross in the Roman culture of the first century was to risk being called a madman. The cross was a crude but necessary part of life, the Romans thought, but it certainly was not something to be talked about in polite society. And it certainly was not something to be boasted of! Yet Paul boasted in it. Why?

Paul says that he boasted in the cross because by it “the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” What an astounding thing to say! Because Paul had embraced the crucified cross, the world no longer had a hold on him nor was he any longer beholden to the world.

Paul was free.

Walter Hansen has beautifully written, “absolute renunciation of all prideful boasting because of total identification with the crucified Messiah is the aspiration of every true believer.”[2] This is so very true. This is precisely what Paul was saying he had done or he was striving to do and this is precisely what we must do as well.

The crucified and risen Christ meant and means that we no longer have to live our lives under the tyranny of the world’s expectations or even the rhythms of the world’s discordant song. We no longer have to dance to the song the world plays. Why? Because we have heard a sweeter music and we can never go back.

Christ, the Lamb that was slain, reorients us to see rightly so that we might live rightly in a world that has forgotten which direction is up and which direction is down. The cross is the North Star. We calibrate our compasses to it and its unbelievable implications for our lives. It shows us that this way is the way of true life as opposed to the way that the world presents to us.

So, for followers of Jesus, the cross gives us permission to step out of the herd, to go against the tide, to not have to do and think what everybody else is thinking. In point of fact, the cross does not allow us to do this because the cross shows us that it is only when we die to self that we truly live. The world, of course, says the exact opposite. The world says that above all else we must hold onto our lives as we have defined it and we must, in fact, better our lives by our own efforts to meet standards that we ourselves have constructed.

The world is the antithesis of the cross, but the world is saved only through the cross. The cross, then, presents humanity with a choice: either we walk the way of death leading to life or the way of supposed life that really leads to death. Paul saw the choice clearly, and, having chosen, he was free from the tyranny of the world and its claims and assumptions.

Because of the cross of Christ, we are now a new creation.

One of the reasons why Paul was free from the tyranny of the world was the fact that, through the crucified Christ, he had become and was becoming something new. Here is how he put it:

¹⁵ For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.

Some historical background is necessary at this point. The reason why Paul mentions circumcision is that the Judaizers were plaguing the church of Galatia with the idea that, in order to be truly complete, they needed Jesus plus circumcision. That is, they needed Jesus plus they needed to adhere to the law. They needed Christ and also the physical sign of covenant belonging.

These were not people who were denying Christ. These were people who were functionally denying the sufficiency of Christ alone to save. So circumcision was added to faith.

For Paul, the cross of Christ was the death knell of this kind of thinking. Either Christ had accomplished all that needed to be accomplished on the cross, or Christ had not. That was the issue at stake in the Galatian circumcision debate, and Paul clearly announced that Christ was enough.

Moreso, Paul was saying in verse 15 that what we need is not a patching up of old humanity but actually a death and resurrection of the self into a new creation through Christ Jesus. Thus, “neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision.” It does matter how your body is marked or not marked. It matters only whether or not you have died to self and risen with Christ, whether or not you have become and are becoming a new creation.

What this means is that the gospel of Christ, the good news of salvation, has less to do with renewal and reformation than it has to do with resurrection. Jesus does not come to fix up the old you. He comes to create a new you.

Consider, for instance, the beautiful image of Revelation 21.

¹ Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. ² And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. ³ And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. ⁴ He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” ⁵ And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” ⁶ And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. ⁷ The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son.

Christ is the beginning and the end and He creates for us a new beginning! “Behold, I am making all things new!”

Paul put it like this in 2 Corinthians 5:

¹⁷ Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

This is why the world was crucified to Paul and Paul to the world: his old life was no more. Therefore, in Christ, there was nothing now for the world take hold of in his life! It could no longer get a foothold. That life had died and buried. The life that Paul was now living he was living as a new creation in Jesus!

This is precisely what is offered to you and to me in Christ at this very moment: new life and new creation!

Because of the cross of Christ, we now have peace and mercy and can now offer peace and mercy.

There is more. Paul also proclaimed that, as a result of the cross, we can now have peace and mercy.

¹⁶ And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God.

What is “this rule” that Paul says we should “walk by”? In context it is the rule of exalting Christ as enough, as sufficient to save in and of Himself. This is the only rule whereby we can have peace. And this makes sense. To add anything to Christ is to say that Christ is not enough, and if Christ is not enough then what exactly must we add for it to be enough?

The Stoic philosopher Epictetus once said:

While the emperor may give peace from war on land and sea, he is unable to give peace from passion, grief, and envy. He cannot give peace of heart for which man yearns more than even for outward peace.[3]

How very true! Man does indeed yearn for peace of heart “more than even for outward peace.” And, true enough, “the emporer…cannot give peace of heart.”

But Christ can.

This rule still applies: true peace of mind and heart can only come through absolute dependence on Jesus Christ and on Christ alone. This rule provides peace and it also provides mercy, for Christ alone is able to give mercy. D. Martyn Lloyd Jones put it like this:

You will never have true peace until your mind is satisfied. If you merely get some emotional or psychological experience it may keep you quiet and give you rest for a while, but sooner or later a problem will arise, a situation will confront you, a question will come to your mind, perhaps through reading a book or in a conversation, and you will not be able to answer, and so you will lose your peace. There is no true peace with God until the mind has seen and grasped and taken hold of this blessed doctrine [peace through Christ alone], and so finds itself at rest.[4]

Look to Christ crucified and you will see the source of all peace, for Christ on the cross has abolished the stranglehold of sin. Look to Christ crucified and you will see the source of all mercy, for it is through His death on the cross that Christ offers us forgiveness and gives us grace. Then, when this happens, we are able to become instruments through which peace and mercy come to others, for we become heralds of the gospel of Christ, we bear witness to the peace-giving, mercy-giving cross through which we are saved.

Church, we have nothing to boast in but the cross of Christ!

We have nothing to proclaim but the cross of Christ!

We have nothing in which to place our hope but Christ and Him crucified.

And, thanks be to God, it is enough! It is enough!

 

[1] Timothy George, Galatians. The New American Commentary. New Testament. Vol.30 (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publisher, 1994), p.436.

[2] G. Walter Hansen, Galatians. The IVP New Testament Commentary Series. Vol.9 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994), p.200.

[3] Warren W. Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary, “An exposition of the New Testament comprising the entire ‘BE’ series” (Wheaton, Ill.: Victor Books, 1996, c1989).

[4] Martin Lloyd Jones, “Peace with God and False Peace.” https://www.peacemakers.net/ unity/ mljromans5-1-2-c02.htm