Of No Value at All

Galatians 5:2

Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you.

Martin Luther:

This passage is like a touchstone by which we may judge all human doctrine, practice, religion, and ceremony. Whoever teaches that anything besides faith in Christ is necessary for salvation or who devises any practice or religion or observes any rule, tradition, or ceremony whatsoever with the idea that they will obtain forgiveness of sins, righteousness, and everlasting life by these things—this passage contains the Holy Spirit’s sentence against them: Christ is of no value to them at all. If Paul dares to pronounce this sentence on the law and circumcision, both of which were ordained by God himself, what might he not do against the chaff and dross of human traditions?

Nothing under the sun is more harmful than the doctrine of human traditions and actions, for they utterly abolish the truth of the Gospel, faith, the true worship of God, and Christ himself, in whom the Father has ordained everything. In Christ are hidden “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge”; in him “all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form” (Colossians 2:3, 9). Therefore, all those who are either authors or maintainers of the doctrine of works are oppressors of the Gospel. They make the death and victory of Christ useless; they blemish and deface his sacraments, utterly removing their true use. In short, they are blasphemers, enemies, and deniers of God and of all his promises and benefits.