“But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.” (Galatians 6:14)
The final chapter of Galatians includes instructions for how free people in Christ and those walking by God's Spirit should treat each other. Christians should restore those caught in sin, and we should bear each other's burdens. Only those who plant the fruit of God's Spirit by faith in Christ will harvest eternal life. Believers should not get tired of doing good for each other. The harvest is coming. Paul concludes the letter by writing in large letters that circumcision means nothing. Only our salvation through our faith in Christ matters and is worthy of our boasting.
Many able scholars believe that our text verse was written by Paul himself. He took the pen from his scribe and wrote these words with his hand in oversized letters, which speaks to the importance of this teaching. This remark is one reason some scholars think Paul might have had a problem with his eyesight. We knew that his letters were generally taken by dictation, except for the salutation which he wrote personally. (II Thess. 3:17) Once again, Paul reveals the motives of false teachers pressuring the Galatians to be circumcised. They are only promoting themselves. Now that Christ has come, circumcision does nothing. The Galatians should trust Christ, instead, to be made into new creations.
In verse 13, Paul proclaims the foolishness of the Jewish teachers who preached the necessity of circumcision but did not wholly and entirely obey the Law of Moses as it was given in Exodus. If they were circumcised and shouted about the importance of it, they brought themselves under obligation to keep the whole law of God. But they did not do it because no person perfectly observes the entire law of God, and the Jewish nation, as such, was very far from keeping it. The people teaching this probably did not even pretend to keep the entire Law of Moses.
Paul insists that if they were circumcised and depended on that for salvation, they were thus under an obligation to keep the whole law, which they didn’t. They likely didn’t offer sacrifice or join in any of the numerous observances of the Jewish nation, except some of the more prominent, such as circumcision. This, says Paul, is inconsistent to the highest degree, and they thus show their insincerity and hypocrisy. They may glory in the flesh, but as true Christians, we will glory in something better.
Proud, vain, and carnal hearts are content with just so much religion as will help to keep up a good outward show. But the apostle professes the grounds for his faith, hope, and joy and that his principal glory was in the cross of Christ, or His sufferings and death on the cross - the doctrine of salvation by a crucified Redeemer. The world is saved by Christ or by the cross of Christ. The more we consider the sufferings of the Redeemer on the cross, the less likely we will be to love the world.
There is a stress upon the pronoun “I” at the opening of verse 14, which starkly contrasts the party who had been the subjects of the last verse. They boast in the things of this world but far be it from the true believer to boast in anything but the cross of our Lord; that is, in the death and passion Christ underwent for us. It is the ground of our salvation and should be the cardinal object of all our hopes and aims. It is the intense contemplation of a crucified Savior through which the Christian dies to the world. By “unto the world,” Paul means the world of sense, the sphere of outward and sensible things, at once with its manifold temptations to sin and its inadequate methods of escaping from them.
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