Matins Devotion: September 11, 2024
When St. Paul urges the Philippian Christians to watch out for the dogs and those who mutilate the flesh, he’s speaking about the Judaizers, a group insisting that you have to essentially become a Jew before you can become a Christian, a group insisting that you have to offer God some works of obedience if you wish to be saved. And if you think about this for a moment, this is utterly insane. Paul is overseeing the conversion of scores of gentiles, of uncircumcised men. Paul is telling these men they don’t need to be circumcised, and yet he’s losing many to the other side, to the side telling grown men, “you must undergo just about the most painful thing you can imagine if you want eternal life.” How? How is Paul losing?
Well, this just underscores how desperate man is to be responsible for his own salvation, to earn eternal life. This shows how desperately our sinful nature hates the free gift of the Gospel. We’ll choose pain over comfort if it means we’ve earned eternal life rather than receive it as a free gift, as the Judaizers and their followers did. We’ll choose sacrificing our children to idols over cradling them in our arms, as the worshippers of Baal and Molech did. We’ll throw away peace on earth and a free salvation for death and violence and cruelty and destruction to possess a salvation we merited. That’s how much your sinful nature hates the Gospel.
But Christ has given you a new nature, a new heart that rejoices in the free salvation He has placed into your hands. So rejoice. The dogs cannot devour you. God does not demand that you sacrifice a single cell of your skin to Him because He has already given you the sacrifice that makes you holy and pure and perfect. He has already torn apart the flesh that makes for peace, the flesh of His Son Jesus Christ. And through the waters of your baptism, you have received the greater circumcision, the circumcision made without hands, the cleansing, the renewal. Through Christ, you have been given all the obedience your Father requires, the obedience you could not offer. Don’t listen when your sinful nature tells you to throw this all away to trust in dead flesh when, through Jesus Christ, you already have the free gift of eternal life resting in your hands.
Comments