SPITTING IMAGE

                                                                    SPITTING IMAGE

Galatians 4:¹² Brethren, I urge you to become like me, for I became like you. You have not injured me at all. ¹³ You know that because of physical infirmity I preached the gospel to you at the first. ¹⁴ And my trial which was in my flesh you did not despise or reject, but you received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus. ¹⁵ What then was the blessing you enjoyed? For I bear you witness that, if possible, you would have plucked out your own eyes and given them to me. ¹⁶ Have I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth? ¹⁷ They zealously court you, but for no good; yes, they want to exclude you, that you may be zealous for them. ¹⁸ But it is good to be zealous in a good thing always, and not only when I am present with you. ¹⁹ My little children, for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you, ²⁰ I would like to be present with you now and to change my tone; for I have doubts about you.

Introduction

Paul is urging the Galatians to become his spitting image. Previously, the had received him as a true messenger of God, as an angel. He says that they had received him, “even as Christ Jesus” (Gal. 4:14). In other words, they could see Christ Jesus in him.

He calls the Galatians, “My little children” (4:19). Children image their parents. Sometimes they are more than similar, they may even be the spitting image of their mother or father.

The Galatians have seen Christ Jesus in him, and now he wants to see Christ manifest Himself in them. “My little children, for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you” (4:19). So, it’s all about Christ Jesus in him and in them.

Clear Image

Who is Christ Jesus? “He is the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15a). “He is the express image of [God’s] person” (Heb. 1:3). We use the vernacular, “spitting image” to mean the same as “express image.” This, of course, should instantly bring to our mind the words found in the Cultural Mandate, “Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness” (Gen. 1:26a).

Now, we don’t want to get too hung up on the etymology of the term spitting image, whether it really has to do with spit or is a corruption of splitting image. To say “splitting image” where the idea is that the image is split, divided in two, like when you look in a mirror, there is both you and your image, may lead us away from the true source of spitting image. However, it does help us to understand what is going on here. The Galatians, the “foolish” Galatians, “before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified” (Gal. 3:1), are forgetting what they saw in Paul and his message.

“For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does” (James 1:23-25). The Galatians had looked into “the perfect law of liberty” when Paul had shown them “Christ and Him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2) but now, under the evil influence of the Judaizers, were becoming forgetful hearers.

Adam was tempted or tested in the Garden. He failed the test. Christ Jesus was tempted or tested in the wilderness and passed the test. The Galatians, by imaging the fallen Adam instead of the righteous “last Adam” are failing their temptation or test.

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Whether he appears as a serpent or in person or uses men such as the Judaizers, the devil is the tempter, the tester. The Galatians were failing badly. Why? They were looking to themselves instead of looking to Jesus. Like doctors and nurses looking after a pregnant woman while watching monitors and listening to electronic beeps until the child is born, so the Galatians were now observing the things that pointed to the Christ that was coming instead of the Christ that has come. “But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman” (4:4).

Corrupted Image

The Galatians were returning to observing the signs that point to Christ and His coming, i.e., the law. The ceremonial law was the umbilical cord. This was cut because it had become obsolete when Christ was born of a woman. When Christ was crucified, the ceremonial law was cut away like the circumcisional foreskin. That previous covenant with its administrations, at the time of the Galatians, was being phased out as the old covenant transitioned into the new. The Book of Acts records this period of transition with all its teething troubles.

The Galatians were corrupting the gospel by reintroducing those things that the gospel had put paid to. “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith working through love” (Gal. 5:6). Bloody circumcision was already transitioning into unbloody water baptism. “In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead” (Col. 2:11-12). Thus, although administered differently, Old Testament circumcision and New Testament water baptism mean the same thing – the “putting off the body of the sins of the flesh.”

Circumcision was the Old Testament “mark of Christ.” Water baptism is the New Testament “mark of Christ.” Both are the application of the covenant promise of God. The Old Testament saints believed in the Christ to come. We New Testament saints believe in the Christ who has come. Therefore, to be “buried with Him in baptism” is more about having the “mark of Christ” affixed than about being lowered into a six-foot hole in the ground and having dirt shovelled on top of you, apparently depicted by immersionist baptism! Can you imagine being held under water for three days and three nights?!

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We are “buried with Christ” (funeralized) through baptism. However, Christ was never buried the way we do burials in Western nations. The sprinkled or poured out water on the baptismal recipient represents the finished work of Christ. It signifies the same as that which circumcision pointed to. The foreskin of our sin has been removed by Christ. We shed no blood (as happened in circumcision). He shed His blood, the “blood of sprinkling” (1 Pet. 1:2) that cleanses us of all our iniquities. Christ is the High Priest who sprinkles us, not with the blood of bulls and goats, but with His own blood (Heb. 9:11-15). Therefore, “let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water” (Heb. 10:22).

Corrected Image

The blood Christ poured out while on the cross is applied by the poured out Holy Spirit depicted in water baptism. The Galatians, by misunderstanding the true nature and intent of circumcision, were in danger of severing Old Testament circumcision from New Testament baptism. They were about to make their circumcision the profession of their faith, much in the same way as many today view their baptism as their profession of faith rather than it, like circumcision, being the covenant promise of God.

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Just as circumcision did not make anyone a Jew under the old covenant, neither does baptism make anyone a Christian under the new covenant. As a sheep was daubed with dye to identify its owner, so these are simply signs that God’s covenant promises have been applied to you. A sheep’s bleating does not identify the owner. The dyed wool does. The bleating only identifies you as a sheep and therefore are a possible candidate to be daubed with dye.

Just as many today look to their baptism as the sign of their faith, so the Judaizers looked to their circumcision. To view things this way is to look to our own works, things you have done/are doing. However, these are only reminders, signposts. The writer to the Hebrews says that we should be “looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith” (Heb. 12:2a). The signposts of Old Testament circumcision and now New Testament baptism show us where to look. We are to look away from ourselves to the One they depict, i.e., the Owner.

There are two sacraments in the new covenant: baptism replacing circumcision and the Lord’s Supper replacing the Passover. Each of these ceremonies transitioned into the other via Christ. Though some Protestant denominations are guilty of doing much the same thing, the Roman Catholic denomination, with the doctrine of its mass, elevates the Lord’s Supper over the gospel. For Rome, the elements literally become what they are only supposed to represent, viz., Christ and Him crucified. However, some Protestant denominations do something similar with baptism. Instead of receiving the sign and seal of the covenant, they make it all about something they do, something they give, i.e., their profession of faith. Therefore, baptism becomes more about a person’s profession of faith than the promise of God. Thus, we are back to what the Judaizers were doing with the fulfilled ceremonial law. They saw their participation in the ceremonies as that which saved them rather than the Christ depicted therein. The law only pointed to Christ, but the Judaizers want to use it as a means of salvation.   

The Judaizers want to form the Galatians in their own image, “they want to exclude you, that you may be zealous for them” (4:17b). However, Paul corrects them. He wants them to conform to the image of Christ. He is like the midwife monitoring a woman giving birth, nay, he himself is like the one who is given birth, “My little children, for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you” (4:19).

Paul wants the Galatians to be the image of Christ and not the Judaizers. So, he has to correct the image that has been distorted, corrupted by the legalistic Judaizers. Some Christians do not like to have their errors corrected. “Have I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth?” (4:16). However, we ought to follow Paul’s example, just as he is following Christ’s example. Christ corrected everyone including the devil. “Jesus answered and said to them, “Are you not therefore mistaken, because you do not know the Scriptures nor the power of God?” (Mark 12:24). “Then Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.’” (Matt. 4:10).

We get our doctrine of Christ and His gospel from what is written in Scripture. The Scriptures are about Him. “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life” (John 5:39-40). They saw their salvation in the use of the Scriptures rather than in the One the Scriptures reveal. For them it was sign over substance.

Whether it is circumcision and all the rest of the ceremonial law or the mode and meaning of baptism, the old and the new covenant, we must diligently search the Scriptures for the answers and we must correct anywhere that we have got it wrong. That’s what Paul is doing with the Galatians. They are in error.

Paul reminds them, “You know that because of physical infirmity I preached the gospel to you at the first” (4:13). Some tend to think that Paul’s injury or illness had something to do with his eyes because he says, “For I bear you witness that, if possible, you would have plucked out your own eyes and given them to me” (4:15). This may be true, but by these words are we not being reminded what he has written earlier to them? “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified?” (Gal. 3:1).

The Galatians have gone from loving Paul to the point of plucking out their own eyes to help him, to becoming his enemy because he is correcting their error. Why? Because they have taken their eyes off Christ and Him crucified! And by doing so they are in danger of totally rejecting the gospel.

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Paul has been using the stick with the Galatians when he would rather be using the carrot. “I would like to be present with you now and to change my tone; for I have doubts about you” (4:20). We see then why he has been using the stick, “for I have doubts about you.”

If you have doubts about other Christians, then let God’s Word be the judge of that. Paul knew what he had taught the Galatians. He could see that, under the influence of the Judaizing Party, they were beginning to reject the clear teaching of the gospel. They were beginning to reject the finished work of Christ in favour of ceremonies, yeah, their own “good” works.

Conclusion

We must listen to the Spirit speaking in the Scriptures. We must conform to what is taught therein. For by doing so Christ will increasingly be formed in us, and we, like Him, and like Adam when he was first created, will again become His image and likeness, His spitting image.

Therefore, seek a church that faithfully preaches Christ and Him crucified, properly administers the two sacraments, administers discipline, a church that does not neglect to preach the whole counsel of God (of which the gospel is the heart). Pray that our teachers and preachers, like Paul, will love us by being bold enough to correct our errors.