Galatians 6:15 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision avails any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature. There is such a thing as what we call reformation. This necessarily presupposes the indulgence in some bad habit, or the following in some wicked course of life. When it is said a man has reformed, it is well understood that he has abandoned his previous evil habits, and become a different man. And you may suppose this reformation to be so complete and radical, that the man may be regarded as being a new creature as touching all his relations to human society. He will, if he is thoroughly reformed, be a different husband, a different father, a different friend, a different member of society; and his influence, in all these relationships of life, will be for good. In this sense we understand what reformation is. He may be all this without becoming a religious man. He may be all this, and yet remain an absolute stranger to the renewing power of that Divine grace which alone constitutes him a Christian, and places him in a condition of safety before God. If we were to trace the origin of this reformation, we should see that it sprang from some prudential policy; we should see that the man had been influenced by the power of external relationships, or that such influences were brought to bear upon him, that he was enabled to realize the terrible end to which the course of life he was pursuing must inevitably lead. Or he may have felt the growing effects of these vicious habits, and that they were taking away even the power of self-indulgence, and the capacity for relishing forbidden pleasures. And so he changes his course of life. But that does not constitute him a religious man. Many mistake reformation for reformation, a new creation; but there is a great difference between the two. The change of which we have spoken does not constitute a man a new creature. It merely affects his relations with his fellow-men; it does not produce the slightest change in his relationship to God. He is no safer in his virtue than he was in his viciousness. If he is to be saved, he must be made a partaker of God's renewing grace. (Wm. Y. Rooker, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature.WEB: For in Christ Jesus neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. |
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