It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
2 Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. 3 Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. 4 You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. 5 For through the Spirit we eagerly await by faith the righteousness for which we hope. 6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.
We should note the contrast Paul makes in these verses between false and true believers: in 2-4 the false is underlined, and in 5, 6 the true. First of all, in 2-4, he makes three very strong and blunt assertions as to the consequences of becoming bogged down with the rite of circumcision: (a) Christ shall profit them nothing; (b) they become debtors to the whole law; (c) their relation to Christ becomes severed. These are strong words, indeed, but they were required to be, to meet a very critical situation in the Galatians Church. The point is that if the Galatians accept circumcision, it must be because they consider it to be necessary for salvation, and this would mean that they considered that Christ's death was not enough for their salvation. Put like this, the issue comes clear. And, in fact, rightly understood, it really was an either/or situation. For, to the Jew of Paul's day was 'the first act of obedience to that law which would henceforth, if he was a pious Jew, rule every tiny detail of his life. Through complete obedience to all its precepts he hoped to win merit in God's eyes, and thus attain 'life'' (Cole). To accept circumcision as obligatory, therefore, was a symbol, it was to accept the whole law as obligatory. And this represents a defection from the truth so radical as to cut one off from Christ. Paul is not, indeed, expounding here a doctrine of the possibility of losing one's salvation after being saved, rather, he is simply being blunt and categorical, saying, 'If you place yourselves under the law, it raised the whole question of whether you are saved at all' - as in fact he has already suggested in 4:20, in the words, 'I stand in doubt of you'.