God’s Word for You

Galatians 3:1-2 By works or by faith?

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Wednesday, July 3, 2024

In this chapter, Paul points the Galatians to their own experience: Salvation is by faith alone. Did the Holy Spirit come to you to dwell in your hearts because of things you did that were imperfect tasks under the law, or did he come because you believed the message that was preached? He takes up the case of Abraham, who lived and died before there ever was a Law of Moses. And then he explains the passage from Habakkuk, that the righteous will live by faith. He reaches the key passage in the letter at the end of the chapter (the midpoint of the book) by saying clearly and simply: “Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law” (3:25).

3:1 O you foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? I presented a picture of Jesus Christ crucified before your very eyes. 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?

You foolish Galatians! Paul uses a strong word, anóetoi (ἀνόητοι), a word that Jesus used with the disciples walking to Emmaus (Luke 24:25). The Galatians weren’t dummies, but they weren’t thinking through what they had learned. Luther puts it this way: “I have brought you the true Gospel, and you received it with eagerness and gratitude. Now all of sudden you drop the Gospel. What has got into you?”

Again Paul says, “Who has bewitched you?” He brings in a spooky word from Greek superstition. We can try to identify this word with a phrase like “who has led you astray” or something like that, but he really means, in their own language, that they’re acting like they’ve had a witch’s hex laid upon them to dull their understanding, like a curse that makes everything a man tries in business or in love end in failure. The word baskaino (βασκαίνω) “being bewitched” was described by the poet Theocritus and the historian Pliny as something you can ward off by spitting three times (this is not a definition I would use in the pulpit). Luther again says: “This bewitchment, then, is nothing other than a demeaning by the devil, who inserts into the heart a false opinion, one that is opposed to Christ. A bewitched person is one who is taken captive by this opinion.” I knew a poor woman once who was convinced that God had turned away from her, that her sins were too terrible for God to bear. Who am I to judge? But I would have said that this dear, sweet and pious woman’s sins would have been far outweighed by half the guilt of a mere schoolchild! She believed that Christ could never forgive her. She completely despaired of this world. She gave up, despite the pleadings and consolations offered by all of her pastors and many friends. She had become confused and in Paul’s words bewitched by an alien Jesus, a Jesus who is a judge and not a friend. It was the devil’s work and it was dreadful. In the end she died tragically and pitifully, a smoldering wick we pray that Jesus did not snuff out (Matthew 12:20).

Paul has “presented a picture” of Jesus Christ crucified. This was certainly done with words, but Paul might even mean that he physically drew a sketch of the crucifixion for the Galatians, the way we teachers often do for our classrooms, or that he even acted it out for them as he described the terrible scene, holding out his arms as if nailed to the crossbeam, grimacing in agony, reciting the Seven Words, and dropping his head to his chest as he depicted the Lord’s holy death. His point here is that the Galatians knew the facts about Jesus’ death. So how could they have dropped this gospel?

“I would like to learn just one thing from you.” By saying this, Paul shows that he understands exactly what the gospel-twisting Judaizers were saying. They were setting themselves up as Paul’s teachers. He was wrong about oh so many things! What a poor wretch is Paul, who has such a high opinion of himself but wasn’t one of the Twelve Apostles, not one of the pillars of the church! They know better, because they have heard the gospel… what, from the Apostles? From James? In the city where Jesus was crucified? In Solomon’s Colonnade where Jesus taught? Because some of them were in the crowd on Palm Sunday, or on Good Friday? Whatever their reasons, they were making Paul into their pupil. So Paul turns their underlying, almost unspoken theme (“We will teach Paul!”) and he sets it out in the sunlight for everyone to see and to think about. “All right,” he says, “Be my teachers. But I want one lesson. Tell me this one thing, and if you’re right, then I, Paul, have been wrong about absolutely everything!”

This is the lesson he requests: “Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard?” Did the Holy Spirit come fluttering down to you and land upon your shoulders because of how good and holy and beautiful were your good deeds? Did he say to you, “Well done! You are keeping all of the Law so perfectly, not one of you has a single crumb of sin in his beard; not one of you has a single stain of guilt on the hem of his robe! I, the Holy Ghost, would be honored to land here and dwell for a while! O magnificent Galatians! May I? Please say that I can!” To be clear, when he says “the Spirit” he means the dwelling of the Holy Spirit that comes with regeneration when faith is created, and also all of the gifts of the Spirit that follow this. He isn’t making any distinction here between such things.

And Paul is not talking about just one part of the law, either, such as the ceremonial law as opposed to the moral law, when he says “law” here. That wouldn’t be a clear division of a “this or that” argument such as the one he is making. He means “law” in all of its forms: the law, period. Paul had drawn the crucifixion for them, and now he draws and at the same time crucifies their devotion to the law. “You taught and heard the Law of Moses every Sabbath. But it was not experienced or seen that the Holy Spirit was ever given to anyone, whether teacher or pupil, through the teaching of the Law… You should have received the Holy Spirit if He had been granted through the Law, since you were not only teachers and pupils of the Law but doers of it as well (James 1:22). Yet you cannot show that this ever happened” (LW 26:203). But after the Gospel came, and before they had performed any good work or fruit of the Spirit at all, they received the Holy Spirit, by nothing more than hearing the message and believing it.

What could possibly be more passive than hearing something? What could possibly be easier than thinking, “That news I just heard—I believe it!” As Luke reports about Peter: “While he was still speaking the words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message” (Acts 10:44). Faith and all of the presence and presents (the dwelling and the gifts) of the Holy Spirit come through hearing, not through doing. This is the simplest thing for a child to grasp in all the world. It is the hardest thing in all the world for some adults, perhaps most adults, to trust. But the Lord says: “I will give you rest.” He said it to Moses (Exodus 33:14), and he said it to David (2 Samuel 7:11), and he says it as well to us (Matthew 11:28).

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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