Trinity and Humanity

A Trinitarian, Christ-centered reading of Galatians 5.1-12

(5.1) Why did Master Jesus smash the walls that divide us?  To set us free from isolation, free for community!  So grow yourself a spine, and don’t back down to those that want to stick you back in your cell! (2) PLEASE listen to me: Wang surgery is no substitute for Jesus.  If you’re expecting to receive his gift by submitting to a scalpel, you will be SORELY disappointed.

(3) I’ll say it one more time: This surgical procedure is JUST ONE PART of the whole Torah arrangement.  If you wanted to live by the rules of Torah, you’d have to keep ALL of them flawlessly.  And we all know you can’t and you don’t.  (4) If you rely on Torah observance to make you right with Papa, you have stopped relying on Jesus.  You have judged his grace unnecessary, and you are sorely mistaken!

(5) For it is by grace that we have been included in Jesus’ right relationship with Papa. It is only through the Holy Spirit that we can believe this, and live in the secure hope that this gift will find full expression in our life together in the world. (6) In this context, the context of Master Jesus and what he has done for us, wang surgery isn’t even an issue; the topic is utterly irrelevant.  The only thing that matters is loving God and loving others, which happens ONLY as we become willing to see reality accurately.

(7) You guys were doing GREAT; you were seeing reality accurately and living in accordance with it.  Who talked you into shutting your eyes? (8) Whoever it was, it was not the One you Know in your soul. (9) One bad apple ruins the whole bunch. (10) It’s true, and you know it. But whoever the bad apple is, there are consequences for fogging the brains of Papa’s children.

(11) Come ON, guys, THINK! Why in the world would I ever start preaching the “circumcision gospel”?  And if I did, do you think I would still be getting attacked every day by the wang-obsessed religion-Nazis?  If I preached their ‘gospel,’ they would have no reason to be scandalized by the cross. (12) If they’re so obsessed with genitalia, I wish they would just chop off their own and leave you guys the hell alone!

~ John Stonecypher