Galatians 3:1-4
1 O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified? 2 This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? 3 Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh? 4 Have you suffered so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain?
1 O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified? 2 This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? 3 Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh? 4 Have you suffered so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain?
Paul used the word for “casting an evil eye,” or bewitched, to show how the Galatians were fooled into not obeying the gospel of grace by faith in Christ alone who was clearly crucified for their sin. Still they bought the lie that they had to earn salvation by being good enough through keeping the Law instead, the very thing Christ came to do for us since we are infinitely unable to do so ourselves. They forgot they had God’s Spirit to rule over and transform their flesh to sanctify them, to make them more like what God intended in Eden, as a daily work of God in us. All they suffered was never for nothing, but all for their discipline and growth, yet they wanted to work out their salvation by their own will and effort instead of relying on God’s work in and through them (Phil.2:12-13). Let us not be likewise foolishly bewitched.
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