Paul’s Direct Warning: To Become Circumcised Is to Be Divorced from Christ

5:2  Now Paul turns up the heat with a direct address—Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you. No longer using Scripture, Paul states forthrightly: if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. The options are clearly laid out: either circumcision without Christ or Christ without circumcision. While Paul has referred to the “circumcision group” (2:12) as those who are opposed to the “truth of the gospel” and has particularly through the references to Abraham alluded to circumcision as a divisive concern in the Galatian congregation, this is the first time he has named the issue and tackled it.

Paul’s warning not to be circumcised reads in the Greek as something that the Galatians are tempted…