Praise the Lord! - is the glad shout of the Christian even as this Season draws to a close:
For unto you is born...a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
Lk 2 KJV
Our recent study of Galatians has powerfully revealed depths and complexities of belief in Jesus -Messiah, and the message of the gospel for each believer.
How exciting and profound that in the end, after all of these examinations, with Paul, we simply affirm that compared to the transformation experience in the life of a converted sinner, acts of holiness, works of obedience and devotion, are nothing - in themselves:
in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature. (Gal 6.)
A key passage at the end of chapter six, from verse 11 to its close, passionately speaks a credo that invigorates and strengthens my faith and practice: that the Christian's glory lies in the transforming reality of a bloodied Cross, and that our lodestar in this life, and our highest meaning is a changed mind, heart and life - the transformation into a new person.
The Scripture adds these truths: that by the Cross the world is crucified, by the Cross the Christian becomes himself crucified to worldly things, and the light shed by this sacrifice reveals that inner, heart change is the key to this victorious and joyful new existence. There is a fascination in looking at my own changes - some unwanted! - as I allow the Lord to have His way in fitting me for a heavenly future. Yes, the world must be put to death - its unlovely, repellent ways and values must be exposed and become the picture that presents itself, more and more, when I look at it. I see more and more my own awkwardness in the midst of sin, both within me and around me. I become more and more dependent on that cleansing flood to wash me, to cover me and transform me day by day. I must radically, brutally separate myself from a lost world, so that I am more and more open to the life and Spirit of Jesus to work in me.
Out of the Cross experience, that new person becomes a person with peace, a person who understands that they have experienced the mercy of God in heaven, as the scripture says. Not a person following unnecessary and perhaps legalistic rites and rituals, such as circumcision, nor a person ignoring and resisting any guidelines and standards - or, for that matter, making up their own - but a new creature:
Though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet henceforth know we him no more. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. (2 Cor 5.)
God's way is not our own. We are to follow His leading to enter into newness. The need to follow Him, to plumb the depths of His Spirit reveals the reason that He is our lodestar - it is through His literal Person that we find our way forward every moment. Here is the meaning of picking up our Cross daily, of dependence, and of unceasing prayer. And so Paul's credo is mine, is all of ours, believers, as we go ever forward into God's will. It is not circumcision, or forms, nor is it the simple absence of ritual or new self-created ritual, that moves us forward: it is our deeper experience of the indwelling of God's Spirit, transforming our experience in this world and in him now and forever.
