Unintelligent And Stupid!
© 10.25.23 By David Eric Williams
You foolish Galatians! Who has cast a spell on you? Before your eyes Jesus Christ was vividly portrayed as crucified! The only thing I want to learn from you is this: Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? Although you began with the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by human effort?(Galatians 3:1-3 NET).
Having provided testimony concerning the revelatory nature of his gospel, Paul turns his attention back to the outlandish behavior of the Galatian Christians. He literally says, “You unintelligent, stupid Galatians! Who has deceived you [or bewitched you by black magic].” This is not an example of a cranky old man frustrated by a display of youthful inexperience. Instead, it is Holy Spirit directed language of the Lord’s apostle, a slave of Christ who recognized the vulnerability of the Believers in Galatia. The Galatians may have been sincere in their embrace of the Mosaic dispensation but their unintelligent, stupid behavior was a denial of Christ and imperiled their possession of the covenant blessings.
When Paul says, before your eyes Jesus Christ was vividly portrayed as crucified, he is referencing the finished work of the faithful Christ. In other words, Paul understood the crucifixion as the hinge upon which history turned. All that came before was looking to the cross for fulfillment. All that comes after finds its meaning in the risen Lord. Before the faithful Christ completed his work, there had been the parentheses of the Mosaic Dispensation. It was not meant to create a permanent class of people. As we will see, it was a temporary circumstance keeping God’s people in waiting until the Messiah appeared. Once He came – one his faithfulness was revealed – everything was [re]defined in Him.
Yet, the Galatians had been convinced they should remain in “the present evil age” of Mosaic ritual. They had been told that God’s people were still demarcated by circumcision and ritual rather than faith. All of this was a denial of Jesus Christ. It made Him nothing more than an “add on.” To our way of thinking, it would be like a trim option on a new car; nice but not the “main event.”
Moreover, Paul could not understand how the Galatians could possible overlook the fact the Holy Spirit had been received by faith. The Holy Spirit did not inhabit them because they had identified as Jewish, but because they had placed faith in the faithful Christ. Why then would they suddenly make an about face and pursue the blessings of salvation by fleshly means? Indeed, “are you so unintelligent and stupid that you think what was started by the power of the Holy Spirit will be brought to fruition by human effort?” Of course not!
We will return to Paul’s letter to the church in Galatia in a couple weeks.
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