Commentary - Galatians 3:1-5

Bird's-eye view

In this blistering passage, the apostle Paul drops all pleasantries and confronts the Galatian believers head-on. Having established the divine origin of his gospel and his apostolic authority in the first two chapters, he now turns to the sheer irrationality of their backsliding. The Galatians had been seduced by Judaizers, legalists who insisted that Gentile converts must adopt Jewish ceremonial laws, particularly circumcision, to be truly right with God. Paul sees this not as a minor theological disagreement but as a fundamental abandonment of the gospel of grace. He fires off a series of sharp, rhetorical questions designed to expose the absurdity of their new position by appealing to their own conversion experience. The central issue is this: is the Christian life begun, continued, and perfected by the power of the Holy Spirit through faith, or by the striving of the flesh through works of the law? For Paul, the answer is not just obvious; to get it wrong is to be under a spell, to be bewitched.

This section is a master class in pastoral polemics. Paul's goal is not to wound, but to heal; not to condemn, but to restore. He reminds them of the clarity and power of the gospel he first preached, a gospel centered on the public, substitutionary death of Jesus Christ. He forces them to recall the moment they received the Holy Spirit, not as a wage earned for religious performance, but as a free gift received through the simple hearing of faith. The argument is simple and devastating: if God began a supernatural work in you by His Spirit when you believed, what kind of foolishness is it to think you can complete that divine work through your own fleshly efforts?

Outline

Context In Galatians

Galatians 3:1-5 marks a significant shift in the letter's tone. In chapters 1 and 2, Paul has been defending his credentials and the content of his gospel. He recounted his personal history to show that he received his message directly from the risen Christ, not from the other apostles in Jerusalem. He described his confrontation with Peter in Antioch to illustrate how easily even a great leader could slip into the hypocrisy of legalism. Now, with his authority and the purity of his gospel firmly established, he turns his full attention to the Galatians themselves. The argument moves from autobiography and history to direct, pastoral confrontation. This passage is the heart of the crisis. It is where Paul puts the Galatians in the dock and cross-examines them, using their own spiritual history as the primary evidence against the false teachers who have led them astray.

Commentary on the Text

Galatians 3:1

O foolish Galatians, who bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?

Paul opens with a cannon blast. The term foolish is not a casual insult about their intelligence. In the Bible, foolishness is a moral and spiritual category. It means acting without understanding, contrary to the revealed wisdom of God. They had seen the truth in the plainest possible terms, and were now acting as though they had seen nothing. Their actions were not just wrong; they were nonsensical.

He then asks, who bewitched you? This is not mere hyperbole. Paul is suggesting that their defection from the gospel is so irrational that it can only be explained as a kind of spiritual enchantment, a dark spell. The Judaizers were not simply offering a different opinion; they were casting a glamour, peddling a lie that mesmerized them into abandoning the truth. Legalism is a form of witchcraft. It promises power and control through human effort, but it delivers only bondage.

The antidote to this bewitchment was the very thing they were forgetting: that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified before their very eyes. When Paul preached to them, he did not offer them esoteric secrets or a complex system of self-improvement. He placarded the cross. He put up a giant billboard of Christ's bloody, substitutionary death. The gospel is a public proclamation about a public event with public consequences. To turn from this graphic, glorious, saving reality to the minutiae of ritual law was to trade the sun for a flickering candle.

Galatians 3:2

This is the only thing I want to learn from you: did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith?

Paul now narrows the entire debate down to a single, unanswerable question. He is a brilliant prosecutor, and he is leading the witness to the only possible conclusion. He appeals directly to their conversion, to the moment God made them spiritually alive. He asks them to be historians of their own souls. How did it happen?

The question presents a stark antithesis. Was it by the works of the Law? Did you earn the Holy Spirit? Did you present God with a resume of your obedience, your circumcision, your dietary purity, and as a result, He rewarded you with His presence? The very idea is laughable. No, the alternative is the only possibility. You received the Spirit by hearing with faith. The gospel was proclaimed, you heard it, and you believed the good news. Faith is not a work; it is the empty hand that receives a gift. The Holy Spirit is the ultimate gift, the seal of God's ownership and the down payment of our inheritance. He is received, not achieved. This one question demolishes the entire foundation of the Judaizers' system.

Galatians 3:3

Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?

He calls them foolish again, because the first foolishness has led to a second, even greater one. Their starting point was glorious, and their current trajectory is pathetic. Having begun by the Spirit refers to the supernatural miracle of regeneration. God the Holy Spirit took up residence in them, gave them new hearts, and united them to Christ. This was an act of pure, divine power.

Now, he asks, are you now being perfected by the flesh? The word for "perfected" means to be brought to completion, to reach the goal. Do you really think that a work initiated by God Himself is going to be brought to its glorious conclusion by your own weak, sinful, human effort, which is what "flesh" means here? It is a category error of the highest order. It is like being rescued from a sinking ship by a helicopter and then, once safely in the cabin, insisting that you can help the helicopter fly better by flapping your arms. The power that saves you is the power that sanctifies you. The Christian life is lived from beginning to end in dependence on the Holy Spirit, through faith.

Galatians 3:4

Did you suffer so many things for nothing, if indeed it was for nothing?

Paul brings up another aspect of their past experience: their suffering. Becoming a Christian in the first-century Roman world was not a ticket to an easy life. It often brought ostracism from family, persecution from the authorities, and economic hardship. The Galatians had paid a price for their initial confession of faith in Christ. Paul's question is pointed: what were you suffering for? Was it for the gospel of grace in a crucified Savior? If so, and if you now abandon that gospel, you have rendered all that suffering meaningless. You bled for a truth you no longer hold.

He adds a note of pastoral hope: if indeed it was for nothing. He holds out the possibility that it is not too late. Their suffering does not have to be in vain. They can repent, return to the truth of the gospel, and in so doing, validate their earlier confession. Their past faithfulness can be reclaimed, but only if they return to the faith they once professed.

Galatians 3:5

So then, does He who provides you with the Spirit and works miracles among you, do it by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith?

He concludes this section by bringing the argument into the present moment. God's work among them is not just a past memory of their conversion; it is an ongoing reality. God is the one who continually provides or supplies the Spirit to them. The Christian life is a life of constant dependence on God's provision. Furthermore, God is the one who works miracles among them. The supernatural power of God was an evident reality in the Galatian churches.

And so he repeats the core question, applying it now to their present experience. How does this happen? On what basis does God continue to pour out His Spirit and work powerfully among you? Is it because you are keeping the checklist of the Judaizers? Or is it on the basis of the hearing with faith? The answer is the same, and it is inescapable. God's power operates on the principle of grace through faith, not law through works. From start to finish, the Christian life is a supernatural work of God, received by faith alone.

Application

The Galatian error is not some dusty, first-century heresy. It is the default setting of the fallen human heart, and it is a constant temptation for every Christian. We begin in the Spirit, rejoicing in the free grace of God in Christ. But then, subtly, the bewitching whispers of the flesh begin. We start to believe that our standing with God, or our spiritual growth, depends on our performance.

For us, the "works of the Law" may not be circumcision or kosher foods. They might be our quiet time, our theological precision, our church attendance, our political engagement, or our moral scrupulosity. These can all be good things, but the moment we believe they are the means by which we are "perfected" or by which God's power is activated in our lives, we have become foolish Galatians. We have traded the jet engine of the Spirit for the lawnmower motor of the flesh.

The antidote is the same now as it was then. We must constantly return to the public portrayal of Christ crucified. We must look away from our own performance and look to His perfect performance on our behalf. We must answer Paul's question every day: How does God work? By our striving, or by our believing? The life of freedom, joy, and true holiness is found only in remembering that we began by the Spirit, we are sustained by the Spirit, and we will be perfected by the Spirit, all through the hearing of faith.