You who want to be justified by the law have cut yourselves off from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. (Gal 5:4 NRSV)
This is just one of many texts cited by proponents of the thesis that a truly justified believer can lose their salvation, as it speaks of one having “fallen away from grace,” something that would presuppose they were in a gracious/salvific relationship with God before they “cut [themselves] off from Christ.”
Commenting on this text, Don Garlington, a New Testament scholar and leading advocate for the New Perspective on Paul, wrote the following which supports this thesis:
Paul is worried not about circumcision as an isolated act or as a thing in itself, but rather what it will lead to: the endeavor to be justified “in the law.” The most emphatic element of the verse is placed forward into the clause: “You have been severed from Christ” (NASB). The verb translated “severed” (katargeÅ) frequently means to make ineffective or nullify (BDAG, 525). In the present cast, it signifies the dissolution of a relationship, namely the Galatians’ former (covenant) relationship to Christ. But commentators point out that the verb can mean “cut off.” If this usage was in Paul’s mind at all, then there would be a deliberate play on circumcision: those who “cut” the flesh are “cut off” from Christ. A formal commitment to the Torah through circumcision is equivalent to ending the relationship with the Christ of Paul’s gospel . . . If those who want to be justified in the law have severed their relationship with Christ, they have, but the nature of the case, “fallen away from grace.” The verb “fall away” (ekpiptÅ) is used of a withering flower falling from its stem to the ground (Jas 1:11; 1 Pet 1:24) or of a ship failing to hold its course (Acts 27:26, 29). “God’s grace in Christ . . . is like the stem which supports the flower and through which the life-sustaining sustenance flows. Or like the channel which leads to safety between the rocks of disaster, a course from which they were in danger of being driven, by dangerous currents and cross winds” (Dunn, Galatians, 268-69). (Don Garlington, An Exposition of Galatians: A Reading from the New Perspective [Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf & Stock, 2007], 299-300)
In spite of the repeated mantra that their theology is reflective of “biblical Christianity,” Evangelical Protestants who hold to a variation of eternal security (e.g., the Reformed doctrine of the Perseverance of the Saints) are instead purveyors, not of true Christianity, but a perverted form that falls under the anathema of Gal 1:6-9.
