Galatians and Circumcision

The people to whom Paul wrote the epistle to the Galatians had been early converts by him to Christ. They had received the Gospel and been baptized. Sometime thereafter, however, certain men, Jews, came among the Galatians and explained that what Paul had taught (Christ) was good... it just wasn't sufficient. They insisted that only those who followed the Law of Moses and Christ could be saved. The Law, to these Jews who professed to follow Christ, was still mandatory in their minds, and they could not understand why Paul would preach otherwise. Paul, rightly, saw this as an attack on the very faith in Christ he had helped nurture in these people, and, like any good missionary would when his investigators are attacked, immediately wrote to them to shore up their faith and correct the false doctrine.

The main point of false doctrine appears to have been Circumcision. The Jews contended that the gentiles who now professed Christ needed to be circumcised to follow the Law of Moses. Paul strongly denounced this doctrine. If one can be saved by the Law of Moses, as these Jews said, then why had Christ been sacrificed by our Father? Circumcision was not necessary, and never would be again. More then not necessary, circumcision, as a ritual, took emphasis off of Christ who should be must be the center of our religion. Several revelations had been received, by Peter and by Paul, showing that the Gentiles need not convert to Judaism to become Christians. If the Christian Church were to insist on circumcision after receiving these revelations, they would have stood condemned.

This issue was a large stumbling block for many early Jewish converts to the Church. Eventually, this lead to a conference in Jerusalem, in which the Church officially made it their policy to not require circumcision from gentile converts or new Jewish children. The church swiftly sent out letters explaining this policy to the Church, and condemning the actions and doctrine of the Jewish trouble makers. One can only wonder if there were some upset gentile converts for whom the correcting letters came to late.