Southern Hills
Church of Christ
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The experience of suffering. Note, verse 4, "Have you suffered so much for nothing-if it really was for nothing?" Paul gave birth to the Galatian churches in the arena of suffering. Acts 14:2 describes the turmoil Christians faced in the city of Iconium, which was one of the Galatian population centers. "But the Jews who refused to believe stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brothers." Later on Paul was stoned in Lystra and left for dead. It was in the midst of Galatian tribulation that Paul said, in Acts 14:22, "We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God." These people knew what it was like to suffer for Jesus and some of them had suffered at the hands of Jewish persecutors. Were they now going to say the suffering was for nothing?
The experience of the miracles. Notice the question in verse 5. "Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believe what you heard?" The answer is obvious. They experienced miracles as a result of the gospel message they had believed. In the first part of his rationale, Paul then asked his readers to concentrate on four different areas of their experience with Christ - their response to the proclamation of the gospel, the reception of the Holy, their history as a suffering people and their experience with miracles.
THE PERSPECTIVE OF SCRIPTURE
Apparently, the arguments presented by Paul's opponents had been textually based. You can use scripture selectively and make it teach what it was never intended to teach. That's what the Judaizers among the Galatians had done. Paul's task was to meet fire with fire and show how the false teacher had not really presented a Biblical message. Instead they had used Bible verses to pervert God's intended message.
He started his discussion with the justification of Abraham "Consider Abraham: "He believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness" (Galatians 3:6). That was a direct quote from Genesis 15:6. He made the point that Abraham was justified on the faith principle. That same principle governs the justification of the Christian. "Understand, then, that those who believe are children of Abraham" (Galatians 3:7). Once he introduced the subject of Abraham, he stayed with that model all the way through chapter 4.
Why did Abraham loom so large in the picture? In the Hebrew mind, there was no more solid ground for confidence than Abraham. In John 8:32, Jesus said, "Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." We often quote that verse as one of the great maxims of Scripture, but to the Jews who first heard it from the lips of Scripture, it was an opportunity to cast a reflection on the integrity of Jesus. They said in verse 33, "We are Abraham's descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?" To them his promise of freedom on the basis of truth carried no weight at all. They were already free because they had the genes of Abraham. The Judaizing teachers in Galatia, would have reasoned precisely the same way. "If you want to be free," they would have thought, "then you've got to be circumcised." Paul would say, "You missed the point entirely. You completely overlooked what the Bible says about the justification of Abraham. He was not justified because he was circumcised. It's true that God commanded circumcision, but it was not technical obedience to a command to remove a small piece of tissue from the body of male babies that justified either Abraham or his descendants. Abraham was justified on the faith principle and Paul reminded them of the text that proves it.
He extended the study of scripture to include Gentile conversion. Note verses 8 and 9. "The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: 'All nations will be blessed through you.' So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith." Paul was dealing with teachers who considered themselves Bible scholars. However, they had overlooked a very fundamental statement in God's promise to Abraham. It said plainly that God would bless all nations, no just all the Hebrew tribes.