All Works of the Flesh Cannot Get One into Heaven! Satan Wants You To Perform Good Works! But Salvation is of the LORD and by GRACE ALONE by FAITH ALONE! Ponder That . . . !

All Works of the Flesh Cannot Get One into Heaven! Satan Wants You To Do Good Works! But Salvation is of the LORD and by GRACE ALONE by FAITH ALONE! Ponder That . . . !

A Devotional for Wednesday July 29, 2026

From the pen of John Bunyan

Author of The Pilgrim's Progress

Satan Encourages Circumcision

“Look: I, Paul say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you” Galatians 5: 2.

Satan will yet go further; he will make use of something that may be at a distance from a moral precept and therewith bring souls under the law. Thus, he did with some of old; he did not make the Galatians fall from Christ by virtue of one of the ten words, but by something that was aloof [from them]. By circumcision, days, and months, that were Levitical ceremonies; for . . . [Satan] knows it is no matter, nor in what Testament he found it, . . . he can . . . hide Christ from the soul— “Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law” (Galatians 5: 2-3). Why so, seeing circumcision is not one of the ten words [commandments]? Why, because they did it in [good] conscience to God, to stand just before him thereby.

Now here we may behold much cunning of the devil. He begins with some at a distance from that law which [is] cursed. So . . . little . . . [by] little [he] brings them under it; even as by circumcision the Galatians were . . . brought under the law that condemned all men to the wrath and judgment of God. But I . . .  [understand] by Paul that by these things a man may reject and condemn the Lord Jesus. Which those do, that for life set up aught [anything else], whether moral or other institution, besides the faith of Jesus. Let men therefore warily distinguish betwixt names and things, betwixt statute and commandment, lest they by doing the one transgresses against the other.