(REFLECTIONS ON Galatians 3:1-5)

1 You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. 2 I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? 3 Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh?

Paul is very direct in his dealings with the church. He doesn’t make things vague, speak in riddles, or make a simple concept complicated by flowery statements. He is direct, and his observations about the issues surrounding the early church also help us live a honest faith today as well.

In today’s Scripture, Paul doesn’t mask his disgust for what is happening in Galatia. He doesn’t hide bad news inside of a fake shell of beauty and elegance. He straight up calls the Galatians, “foolish!” He then follows it up repeating, “Are you so foolish?” He likens there current state in the faith to being bewitched. Being bewitched is someone that is being held under a spell by someone else with no control to think independently.

Someone or something has captured their vision and has put them in a trance, to the point that they have no clue what is happening to them. That is the danger of what happens in our faith when we take our eyes off of Jesus Christ and the cross.

Sometimes we have a heart of faith in us,
but when our eyes turn to something else,
our faith latches on to those things that are not Christ and not the cross.

That is what happened to the Galatians and is also a danger for us, because when we associate faith with something other than Christ and the cross, we sometimes don’t even know what is happening.

There is no hope without believing in the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, because we obtain God’s righteousness through His grace and mercy in this way alone. For the Galatians, they have a heart of faith, but rather than latch on to Christ crucified, which is God’s grace, they have been bewitched and are being influenced to attach their salvation to the work of the law.

As I meditate on today’s Scripture, I find myself asking how the Galatians could be so foolish and so easily bewitched? Perhaps it is because humans have a tendency to feel like they must work for something in order for it to have meaning and be meaningful.

For the Galatians, perhaps they didn’t feel like there was enough substance or personal sacrifice to their faith. However, they forgot that personal sacrifice could never lead to salvation, because it isn’t that they obtained righteousness by observing the law, but rather God’s righteousness was a gift to them through Jesus Christ.

Does this happen to us in our faith as well? Do we feel like we need to work for it to make it meaningful? Are we at times also foolish & bewitched because we can’t believe that salvation is a free gift of God through Jesus Christ? Perhaps we too feel like we need to take control of our own salvation, that our faith needs to be based on something that we do, rather than something that God has done.

Perhaps this is why churches and church life that at first began as pure worship of God in Christ, ends up being full of programs and ministries based on human efforts. In those times, would Paul also say to us, foolish & bewitched, why are you worshiping what you have built, rather than what God has built? Foolish & bewitched why are you putting so much energy, effort, and focus on what you can build with your own hands, rather than on your relationship with God and with others in Christ?

Let us remember today how we were filled with the Holy Spirit. We were filled with the Holy Spirit not by the works of our hands, but by believing what we had heard in the Gospel of Christ. May we not be foolish & bewitched and have what first began as a faith being filled with Holy Spirit now be turned into a faith being filled with our own works and accomplishments alone.

Pastor Michael Lu
Enduring Word Bible Commentary: Galatians 3