C.S. Lewis wrote this, “An open mind, in questions that are not ultimate, is useful. But an open mind about ultimate foundations either of Theoretical or Practical Reason is idiocy. If a man’s mind is open on these things, let his mouth at least be shut.” Though the Galatians had the benefit of excellent teaching, they still lacked discernment—the ability to distinguish true teaching from error. In their abundance of knowledge, they had lost the central point that God’s grace and Jesus’ death were sufficient for salvation. It was at this point that they probably would have reaped great benefits from James’ counsel. “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.” (James 1:5—NIV) We must ask God for help. We must depend on His assistance as we seek to discover and apply the principles from His Word. If you have questions about the power of grace or the forgiveness He offers through Christ, begin by asking God to show you His wisdom. When we ask God for His assistance He will help us begin to understand the Gospel and freedom.
I. Questions for those losing their grasp of the concept of grace.
A. You foolish Galatians who has bewitched you?
1. This is the first time since 1:11 that Paul has addressed the Galatians by name. Now it is by the impersonal term "Galatians" rather than by the word "brothers" he used earlier and it sets a sober tone for the formal argument to follow.
2. To call the Galatians “foolish” (The Greek means literally “not having a mind”) was to call them irrational, unthinking, or lacking in understanding.
3. The word “bewitched” comes from an early superstition based on “the evil eye”: a person might be enticed to stare at someone who could bewitch him or cast a spell on him through the magic arts and then would do things totally foreign to his natural behavior.
4. A doctrine of salvation by works foolishly denies the necessity for grace and declares the death of the Lord Jesus Christ unnecessary. This idea is totally irrational. Yet this is what the Galatians were on the verge of embracing.
5. They were being intellectually inconsistent, self-contradictory. How can such nonsense be explained? Paul suggests facetiously that perhaps they have been placed under a spell by some magician.
B. Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard?
1. The answer would have been obvious to Paul’s readers, they became Christians only through faith, through believing what they heard.
2. Paul begins a series of devastatingly logical arguments to prove the gospel is superior to the law.
3. Like a good trial lawyer Paul asks questions and designs arguments to force an admission of the truth.
4. By their own experience they know that the Spirit became active in their lives and in their Christian community when they put their faith in Christ.
C. Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?
1. In verse three Paul once again reminds them of their foolishness in embracing these ideas.
2. Having begun by faith, they must continue in faith. It cannot be otherwise, because the two ways—faith versus works—are in conflict.
3. The NIV phrase “by human effort” (literally, “by flesh”) should be understood as the best efforts which man in his fallen state can produce.
4. Men’s failure to receive the Holy Spirit before they accepted Christ was not because they had not tried hard enough. The failure came from the inability to achieve perfection, due to the weakness of the flesh.
D. Have you suffered so much for nothing—if it really was for nothing?
1. While we do not know what specific hardships and persecutions the Galatians may have endured for the sake of the cross, we do know that some turned to circumcision as a means of escaping that persecution.
2. While there is no positive evidence that the Galatian Christians actually suffered such external persecutions, it is not unreasonable to suppose that they would have been subjected to the same kind of harassment and violent assaults that Paul and Barnabas experienced when they first brought the gospel into that region.
3. By accepting circumcision, however, they might well have reduced the brunt of such persecution since they would then have appeared more as normal proselytes in submission to the Jewish rituals of the synagogue.
4. So Paul is probably saying something like this: “Having received with me the brand marks of Christ in your bodies, being persecuted for the cause of Christ, are you now going to accept a practice that could have spared you all these persecutions in the first place? Has all this been for naught?”
E. Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believe what you heard?
1. What would become a theological controversy for Christians in the 21st century was easily settled for those in the 1st century. When the Holy Spirit came into new territory and created a community of believers in that century, there were regularly spectacular results.
2. For the Galatians this happened when they became believers, not when they tried to keep the law. While not every believer began working miracles, of course, they could all easily observe what the message of the Apostle Paul was doing in the Christian community.
3. For the Galatians God has generously “supplied” his Spirit in response to their faith. The present tense of the participle in Greek implies, moreover, that this is a continuing activity.
II. The reality of Paul’s concern for the Galatians.
A. You must not confine yourselves by rules nor cramp your personality by regulations, laws or injunctions.
1. As long as we confine our Christian experience to “doing what is expected” according to the law or traditions we miss out on the great growth and freedom Christ intends for us.
2. Like the Pharisees one could congratulate themselves on their piety but they have missed out on genuine freedom in Christ.
3. It is evident that blessing in the Christian life comes just as the Christian life began—through faith, and not as the result of any human attainments.
4. If we fall into the trap of trying to base our Christianity on anything but faith in Christ we are turning our back on tremendous blessings.
B. You must walk in faith, in confidence and freedom and at peace with one another.
1. When our walk is different from this in essence we have turned our backs on Christ.
2. Joy and peace are a result of walking in the right relationship with Jesus Christ.
3. We must guard against the spiritedness of our walk with Christ becoming extinct.
C. You would do well to follow the example of Abraham.
1. Abraham, a believer, will be Paul’s prime exhibit that faith in Christ saves and works of law do not.
2. When God told him the incredible promise about future offspring, Abraham believed him! Abraham believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.
3. Paul has divided mankind into two groups, depending on how they seek right standing with God. Some are “of works” and some are “of faith.” It was the “of faith” group that the Spirit blessed.
4. No longer could men count on their Jewish ancestry to save them; no longer could they rely on how well they kept the Jewish law. Now they must realize what was true from the beginning: the true sons of Abraham are those who inherit and practice his faith.
III. Understanding the two choices that the Galatians needed to decide between.
A. One can choose to walk in faith following the example of Abraham.
1. Scripture, as the word of God, is here personified “as an extension of the divine personality,” and thus it “foresaw” what God planned to do. God’s plan from the beginning was to justify Gentiles by faith. The plan was not an afterthought or a desperation measure taken after God’s dealings with Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Moses fell through.
2. Not until Christ came could one fully understand what God’s plan had always been. God never intended to bring all the Gentiles into the Jewish nation as circumcised proselytes. Instead, God planned to use the offspring of Abraham to bless those who are like Abraham: people of faith.
3. From the creation of Adam and Eve until the second coming of Christ, God has provided one and only one way of salvation for all peoples everywhere: the atoning death of his Son on the cross applied to all of the elect through the regenerating ministry of the Holy Spirit. Thus Paul could claim that the faith of Abraham was the same as ours with this noticeable difference: he believed in the Christ who was to come, just as we trust in the One who has already come.
B. One can choose to earn their own salvation through the keeping of the law and traditions.
1. Anyone who does not keep all the laws, all the way, all the time would be under the curse.
2. Anyone who depends on earning God’s approval by keeping all his laws is haunted by the thought that one slip brings certain doom.
3. The curse of the law, introduced in verse 10, hangs over the entire human race. All who do not succeed in keeping the law perfectly are doomed. But Christ has “redeemed” his people.
4. But how did Jesus redeem us? Paul explains that Jesus so completely identified himself with our sins that he “became a curse for us.”
A story is told about Fiorello LaGuardia, who, when he was mayor of New York City during the worst days of the Great Depression and all of WWII. One bitterly cold night in January of 1935, the mayor turned up at a night court that served the poorest ward of the city. LaGuardia dismissed the judge for the evening and took over the bench himself. Within a few minutes, a tattered old woman was brought before him, charged with stealing a loaf of bread. She told LaGuardia that her daughter’s husband had deserted her, her daughter was sick, and her two grandchildren were starving. But the shopkeeper, from whom the bread was stolen, refused to drop the charges. "It’s a real bad neighborhood, your Honor," the man told the mayor. "She’s got to be punished to teach other people around here a lesson."
LaGuardia sighed. He turned to the woman and said "I’ve got to punish you. The law makes no exceptions—ten dollars or ten days in jail." But even as he pronounced sentence, the mayor was already reaching into his pocket. He extracted a bill and tossed it into his famous sombrero saying: "Here is the ten dollar fine which I now remit; and furthermore I am going to fine everyone in this courtroom fifty cents for living in a town where a person has to steal bread so that her grandchildren can eat. ’Mr. Baliff, collect the fines and give them to the defendant.’"
So the following day the New York City newspapers reported that $47.50 was turned over to a bewildered old lady who had stolen a loaf of bread to feed her starving grandchildren, fifty cents of that amount being contributed by the red-faced grocery store owner, while some seventy petty criminals, and New York City policemen chipped in the rest.
