Galatians 6:12-18 reveals that we may experience and enjoy Christ as the Creator of the new creation, which is the ultimate issue of His cross and His grace.
Through His cross, Christ crucified not only the flesh but also the religious world with its rituals, including circumcision.
The cross of Christ did away with religion. In Galatians 6:14-15 Paul says, “Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. For neither is circumcision anything nor uncircumcision, but a new creation is what matters.” The cross was truly an abasement, but the apostle made it his boast. The world has been crucified to us and we to the world. This has taken place not directly but through Christ, who was crucified. The word for at the beginning of verse 15 indicates that this verse is an explanation of the previous verse. Circumcision mentioned in verse 15, being a religious matter, shows that the world in verse 14 must be mainly the religious world, not the secular world. In Galatians Paul dealt with religious people who were concerned for the things of God but who also were misguided and in error and whose religion had become a world. On the one hand, the religious world was crucified to us; on the other hand, we were crucified to the religious world. By the cross we are separated from the religious world and are thus qualified to live in the new creation.
Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything to God. A new creation is what matters, and this new creation was brought forth by the cross of Christ. The old creation is our old man in Adam (Eph. 4:22), our natural being by birth, without God’s life and the divine nature. The new creation is the new man in Christ (v. 24), our being that is regenerated by the Spirit (John 3:6), having God’s life and the divine nature wrought into it (v. 36; 2 Pet. 1:4), having Christ as its constituent (Col. 3:10-11), and having become a new constitution. This refers to the nature, the inward and intrinsic organic constituent, of the church. Thus, the new creation is composed of sons; it is a corporate, divine sonship (Gal. 3:26; 4:5, 7) brought forth through Christ’s redemption, the Spirit’s regeneration, and God’s dispensing of Himself into us, and through our entering collectively as this new man into an organic union with the Triune God.
The old creation was old because it did not have God’s element; the new creation is new because it has God as its element. Although we are still the old creation, we experience the reality of the new creation when we walk according to the Spirit (5:16, 25). We are the new creation, and we should live by the new creation through an organic union with the Triune God. This new creation fulfills God’s eternal purpose, which is to express Himself in His sonship.
Circumcision is an ordinance of the law; the new creation is the masterpiece of life with the divine nature. The former is of dead letters; the latter is of the living Spirit. Hence, the new creation is what matters. Galatians exposes the impotence of both the law and circumcision. The law cannot impart life (3:21) to regenerate us, and circumcision cannot energize us (5:6) to live a new creation. But the Son of God, who has been revealed in us (1:16), can enliven us and make us a new creation, and Christ, who lives in us (2:20), can afford us the riches of His life that we may live the new creation. The law has been replaced by Christ (vv. 19-20), and circumcision has been fulfilled by Christ’s crucifixion (6:14). Hence, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything, but a new creation with Christ as its life is what matters. To be the new creation is the reason for and result of sowing unto the Spirit (v. 8). The keeping of the law and the practicing of circumcision are a sowing unto the flesh; they do not change the old creation. But sowing unto the Spirit makes us a new creation, which is re-created by the Spirit, transformed by the divine life, and constituted with the rich element of the processed Triune God by His mingling of Himself with us.
If we would live the new creation, we need to experience the cross. If we are still involved with the religious world, we will not be able to live a new creation. We should be able to say that the religious world has been crucified to us and that we have been crucified to the religious world. We should be able to testify that even if we were to try to go back to that world, we would be rejected by it, for we have been crucified to it. Even if Paul had desired to return to Judaism, the religionists would not have accepted him. Rather, they would have commanded him to leave, for he was in another world. To Judaism Paul had been crucified, and Judaism had been crucified to him. Between him and the religious world there was the separation of the cross. It is this separation which qualifies us to live a new creation. Everything practiced in the religious world is part of the old creation. But through the cross of Christ, we are finished with religion and are in another world, another realm. In this realm we live a new creation by the Spirit, not the old creation by the flesh.