Paul accents the importance of what he is going to say by the very way he starts. Listen! is emphatic and invites the readers to pay special attention to what follows (New American Bible “pay close attention to me”; New English Bible “mark my words”). The formula I, Paul is present in some other letters of Paul. It does not at this point indicate that Paul is personally doing the writing; one has to wait until 6.11 to learn that. The meaning here is that he is accenting the fact that this information is coming from him, and is therefore authoritative in two ways: (1) he is an apostle and (2) he knows what he is talking about, since he has gone through the pain and agony of seeking the approval of God through the path of circumcision. His audience is clearly the Galatian Gentile Christians, as indicated by Paul’s use of the plural you and the way he talks about circumcision.
It may be important in some languages to combine Listen! with what immediately follows, for example, “Listen to what I, Paul, am telling you,” or “… what I am going to say to you.” In order to emphasize the force of the command, it may be important in some languages to use an idiomatic expression such as “Listen with both of your ears,” “Listen to nothing else but what I am going to tell you,” or, as in one language, “Take the wax out of your ears.”
The way the conditional sentence is constructed in Greek may suggest that the Galatians have not yet taken the step of being circumcised, but that they are considering it and are at the verge of submitting to it. Good News Translation makes this information explicit: if you allow yourselves to be circumcised (Phillips “if you consent to be circumcised”).
Circumcision, as already noted, was the rite of initiation among the Jews whereby a person was accepted into the Jewish fellowship.
The introduction of the subject of circumcision here seems rather abrupt, as Paul has not discussed it at all in the preceding chapters. He does, however, intimate that it is a problem when he mentions the case of (Titus 2.1-5). The passive expression allow yourselves to be circumcised may be changed into an active one by saying “allow others to circumcise you,” or “permit men to circumcise you.”
Apparently, the false teachers have put forth the claim that for the Galatians to be really Christians, they must first accept the rite of circumcision; in other words, they must become Jews before they can become believers in Christ. That would explain the meaning of Paul’s statement: Christ is of no use to you at all. Submission to circumcision would be to adopt the notion that one can win God’s approval through some legalistic ritual or through doing what the Law requires, and this would constitute a complete denial of the fact that freedom and sonship are God’s gifts through Jesus Christ. Paul’s statement, therefore, could mean that the Galatians make meaningless what Christ has done for them in order that they might receive the gift of sonship from God. Since the term Christ as used here refers essentially to what Christ did rather than to Christ as a person, it may be important to say in some languages “This means that what Christ has done for you is of no value at all.” The same thought may be stated in a rather different fashion in some languages, for example, “This means that you cannot benefit in any way from what Christ did.” In some languages the closest equivalent would be “This means that Christ cannot help you at all.”
Quoted with permission from Arichea, Daniel C. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on Paul’s Letter to the Galatians. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1976. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .