Charles Spurgeon Commentary Galatians 5

Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

You are not under the law, but under grace. Do not subject yourselves, therefore, to legal principles. Do not live as if you were working for wages and were earning your own salvation.

Do not submit yourselves to the ritual and commandments of man, which would rob you of your liberty in many ways. But having once become a free man, never again wear the chain of a slave: Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free.

Because you are the seed of Isaac, who was born according to the promise, you are not the children of the bondwoman; you are not Ishmaelites. Therefore, as you were born free, as Christ has made you free by virtue of your new birth, stand fast in that glorious liberty.

Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law.

If you begin being saved by the law, you must go through with it. You cannot take the principle of law and the principle of grace, and blend those two together. They are like oil and water; they will never mix. If salvation is of works, it is not of grace; and if it is of grace, it is not of works. You cannot rely on the two contrary principles of merit and of favor.

Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.

You have turned aside from it. You are not standing with one foot upon grace and one foot upon the law, but you have gone completely away from grace. You must cling to one or the other. If you take the law to be your hope, you must keep to it; and the end will be that you will die in despair.

For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision but faith which worketh by love.

It is not any rite, and it is not the neglect of any rite which can produce righteousness. It is as easy to trust in your non-observance of a ceremony as to trust in the ceremony itself, and it will be quite as delusive. It is faith in Christ that brings righteousness, the faith which worketh by love.

Stand firm, therefore, in the liberty with which Christ had made us free, and do not be entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

Behold, I Paul say to you, that if you are circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law. Christ has become of no effect to you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; you have fallen from grace.

If you intend to have anything to do with salvation by works, then be gone; you are the children of the bondwoman.