Life is a cycle. In the movie Lion King, it’s described as a circle. All things start in one place and come back to that place in the end. We’re interconnected.
When we’re frustrated, we decry that what goes around comes around, meaning that what we do to others will return to happen to us. We’ll get our just desserts.
The riddle of the Sphinx in Greek legend asks the question, “What is the creature that walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three in the evening?” The correct answer was given by Oedipus: Man, as a baby, an adult, and an old person.
It is indeed the cyclic nature of life for us to return to our origins. The Bible tells us in Genesis 3:19 that we are dust, and to dust we will return. How we start is exactly the way we will end.
How do we start in life? As babies, of course, fed, bathed, and cared for by others. Then, as the story of the Sphinx suggests, we mature into a life of independence. At the end of our days, however, we return to the simplicity of childhood again, once more needing the helping hand of another.
If we’re unlucky, senility even steals the ability to think from us.
Paul cautions us to not get caught up in this same cycle in our walk with Christ. He’s aware that as believers, we face the same conundrum in our spiritual lives that we deal with in the natural world. The circular nature of living can drag us once again into sin.
Galatians 4:9 tells us:
“But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more?”
Let’s restate Paul’s words into modern parlance. “Now that you’ve matured out of diapers and have become a spiritual adult, you are falling into senility, unable to think rationally. You are returning to your childhood behaviors, and once more wear the diapers of sin.”
What brought about Paul’s crushing diatribe? The church at Galatia had cast aside their idols when they came to the truth of Christ. Yet, they now turned to ceremonies, observances, and rituals to replace the saving grace of our Lord.
They now walked with the three legs of the Sphinx, and soon they would be exactly where they started, wallowing in the vanity of the world, assured in their own ways, but outside of the eternal truth of the cross.
It’s a cycle they couldn’t afford to fall into then, and one we cannot allow ourselves to fall into now. We must cling to the standards of Christ and present ourselves as perfect in him, a people without spot or wrinkle, ones who trust in his power to save, and in nothing else.
We must step out of the natural circle of life and into the spiritual circle of Christ. We must be standards of maturity for our Lord and King.
Let’s circle back to Jesus. It’s the natural thing to do.
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