“As many as desire to make a fair show in the flesh, they compel you to be circumcised; only that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. For not even they who receive circumcision do themselves keep the law; but they desire to have you circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh.” (Galatians 6:12–13, ASV)
Motives are important. Motives drive what we do. There are noble motives and ignoble motives that drive what everyone does. The noble motives are those of a higher plane. They seek the greater good. They are not self-centered but are others focused.
However, many actions are driven by the ignoble motives. These are the opposite of noble motives. They are of a lower plane. They are not concerned with the greater good. They are generally self-seeking.
In my own life, I have made many important and life altering decisions. Some were from ignoble motives and others from noble motives. I have engaged in various activities just to serve my own wants and desires. In pursuing these, I disregarded the needs and the emotions of others. What did I benefit from such? On the short term a little perhaps. However, on the long term very little.
Yet something happened in me that changed this. In 1983, the Lord gloriously saved me while reading a Bible in a Minneapolis hotel room. It is then that my perspective on life changed. My motives in life were transformed. Yet there was still a lot of the old Steve that functioned in the flesh. So, the process of spiritual transformation began on that day of salvation and with it the inner motives that drove my actions. The motivations of life moved from ignoble to more noble.
At the end of this letter to the Galatians, Paul wrote of motivations. Here he wrote of the motivations of the false teachers, the legalists who were influencing the Galatians. Their ignoble motives stood in stark contrast to Paul’s noble motives in ministry. The motives of these influenced the content of their message.
Of the false teachers’ motives, Paul stated a couple key things. First, he indicated that they wanted “to make a fair show in the flesh.” There was something about appearances that made their motives ignoble. They were concerned with how they looked to others. They were men pleasers.
Second, they taught circumcision as necessary for justification so “that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ.” They understood that there were negative ramifications for them personally, if they held to a doctrine of grace salvation. They did not want to endure the persecution that was being levied against true believers in Christ.
Third, they wanted bragging rights. Paul wrote, “they desire to have you circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh.”They wanted to boast in themselves based upon the number of converts they could win to their particular point of view.
So, their motives were all fleshly based. It was a motive to be seen by others, to avoid the hardships endured through persecution, and to be able to boast about numbers. These motives of the flesh were in total contrast with Paul’s motives of the Spirit.
This problem of motives is a reality in today’s professing Christendom as well. Sometimes it is overt and sometimes subtle. It is what can happen in churches when the flesh is in control. It can result in compromising the truth proclaimed, in making compromises in the Christian walk, and in the prideful pursuit of numerical goals. No church or believer is totally immune to these temptations of the flesh. Thus, we all must be diligent to walk by the Spirit and not by the flesh. One way that we can tell if we are walking by the flesh or the Spirit is to examine our inner motives. Are they ignoble motives or are they noble motives?
Renewing the Heart 