§12 Paul’s Appeal to the Gospel the Galatians Have Known and Experienced (Gal. 3:1–5)
3:1–2 / The apostle begins this section of his letter by addressing his readers as foolish Galatians! This designation appears to have been a common one for the Galatian tribes who were often considered barbarians and “foolish.” The ancient Greek writer Callimachus (c. 305–c. 240 B.C.), for instance, uses the word as if it were a standard epithet, writing: “the foolish tribe of the Galatians” (Hymn 4, To Delos [Mair, LCL]).
Paul uses this epithet to remind the Galatians that they need not be as they once were and that in listening to the rival evangelists they are acting from their former ignorance instead of from their new life in Christ. In 3:3 he will repeat the word “foolish,” where it is used to stress a turning away from what the Galatians know.
Paul is on the side of his converts, for he asks Who has bewitched you? To be bewitched is to be victim of someone’s “evil eye,” to be under another’s spell. Paul is using language that will go straight to the pagan heart of his converts and thereby distance them somewhat from Jewish influence. Furthermore, Paul may have chosen the word “bewitch” to denigrate his opponents by casting them as magicians (see Betz, Galatians, p. 131). Here as elsewhere in the letter Paul does not deign to name his opponent(s).
The central and determining feature of the gospel for Paul is Jesus Christ … crucified. This is Paul’s shorthand for reminding his readers of the gospel and that there is no need for Gentiles to adopt the law. As he said in the previous verse, “if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!” For Paul, the death of Christ proves his point: the death of Christ means that the law is no longer the means by which to live for God or to live righteously.
Paul reminds the Galatians that while their vision may at the moment be obscured by their acceptance of a false gospel, they have seen the truth. For before their very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. Here Paul asserts what may be the very thing that his opponents are hiding—the scandal of the cross. Paul boldly identifies his gospel and the basis of his converts’ faith with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Paul’s gospel is a gospel that preaches the crucified one, who was unexpected, although continuous, with God’s activity with the Jewish people. And Paul will go on to underscore for the Galatians that the truth of this gospel was demonstrated for them in their own experience—reception of the Spirit.
When Paul identifies his gospel with the cross he is identifying himself and believers in the gospel with a way of life that asks not for the certainty of rules or of social status but for the certainty of living in God, free to be for others because one is already crucified with Christ (2:20). Paul challenges his hearers to recognize that they have already acknowledged the power inherent in living a life that has died to the world. Their present desire to find security in the sign of circumcision and identification with the Jewish nation can only be explained as a form of bewitchment.
Paul further appeals to the Galatians on the grounds of what resulted from believing his gospel—he asks them how they received the Spirit. Paul presents his question respectfully: he wishes, he says, to learn from the Galatians. Having just called them “foolish,” this is a remarkable rhetorical move. Paul indicates that he is on their side and is committed to them despite their actions at the moment. The one thing he wishes to learn is: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? Obviously the Galatians received the Spirit through believing his gospel; there is no need, then, for adding the law. Paul constructs this question by setting up a mutually exclusive contrast between “observing the law” and “believing.” In the Greek the contrast is even more evident. The syntactical constructions are exactly parallel in the first (“observing the law”; ex ergōn nomou) and second (“believing what you heard”; ex akoēs pisteōs) phrases.
This is the first time in the letter that Paul refers to the Spirit, who will become a central feature of his appeal to his Galatian converts. He will remind them not only that they received the Spirit at the beginning of their Christian life (3:3) but also that this is to be understood as a sign of a new stage in God’s plan of salvation. As he says in 3:14, the promise to Abraham is fulfilled in the reception of the Spirit. To remind the Galatians that they have received the Spirit is to remind them that their experience marks them as those who are partaking in the fulfillment of God’s promise.
Paul refers to the Spirit also when speaking positively about the character of the Christian life. The Spirit is in the hearts of believers (4:6); the Spirit accompanies, encourages, and undergirds our faith as we wait for the hope of righteousness (5:5). In fact, the Spirit is the life and guide of the Christian (5:25).
3:3–5 / Paul asserts that the Galatian believers have continued confirmation that God is at work among them apart from their following the law. The one who gave them his Spirit and work[s] miracles among them does so because they believe what they heard (3:5), not because they observe the law.
Paul stresses God as the one who supplies the Spirit and works miracles. Both Paul and his converts around the Mediterranean world experienced the gospel as a gospel of power, accompanied, as Paul says in Romans, “by the power of signs and wonders … the power of the Spirit” (Rom. 15:19).
The Spirit is central to the Galatians’ self-understanding of their Christian life. Both Paul and the Galatians can agree that they received the Spirit, and neither of them want to downplay such an experience. This may be one of the features of the Christian life upon which Paul and the Galatians can still agree, and so on the basis of the Galatians’ experience of the Spirit Paul seeks to persuade them not to adopt the law.
The phrase “believe [believing] what you heard” occurs twice (3:2, 5), both times in opposition to “observe [observing] the law.” The ability to hear means the Christian stands in the tradition of the OT figures who heard the word or the revelation of the Lord. Hearing means more than noting that something has been spoken; it means understanding and responding to what is heard (cf. Rom. 10:16; 1 Thess. 2:13). It bears the same meaning in Paul and in the rest of the NT (e.g., Mark 4:23; 1 John 1:1; Heb. 2:3) as in our modern context when a person might say “I hear you,” meaning “I accept what you are saying.” The phrase “believe what you heard” emphasizes that the activity of the Christian is to believe. This way of being open to God’s revelation, to being shaped and transformed by conforming to Christ, is characteristic of the Christian life.
Paul repeats that the Galatians are exhibiting sheer folly (are you so foolish?) in being influenced by the rival evangelists. To follow the direction of these people will mean that the spiritual journey begun with and characterized by the divine Spirit will be reduced to mere human effort.
Paul appeals to what the Galatians have already invested in their Christian life—have you suffered so much for nothing? The word “suffer” has two possible meanings: neutral experience, and suffering. Although there is no indication in the letter that the Galatians had experienced persecutions, it very likely that they paid a social cost as a result of their conversion. Beyond appealing to his converts’ positive experience of the Spirit (3:5), Paul appeals to the fact that they have already experienced losses on account of the gospel. How foolish it would be now to lose the gospel also; then they would have suffered for nothing and would end up with nothing.
Nevertheless, Paul still holds out hope that the Galatians will come to their senses—if it really was for nothing. The emphasis in this construction is on “if.” Paul is doubtful that the Galatians could turn away from his gospel. He hopes that they will recognize the significance of the fact that God’s miraculous activity among them did not result from following the law. Their new attraction to the law cannot garner them anything more wonderful than what they currently have—the Spirit and righteousness.
3:1 / R. B. Hays has made clear how Paul’s reference to “Jesus Christ crucified” is both the central point of the story of Jesus and the image capable of reminding his hearers of the whole gospel. As Hays puts it, the phrase “Jesus Christ crucified” “would be meaningless outside the frame of reference provided by the gospel story, [it] stands for the whole story and distills its meaning” (The Faith of Jesus Christ, p. 197).
Crucifixion in the Greco-Roman world was the form of capital punishment used almost exclusively for society’s less privileged. It was rare for a Roman citizen or a wealthy person to be executed by means of this barbaric form of execution, except in the most extreme cases of high treason (see M. Hengel, “Crucifixion,” in The Cross of the Son of God [trans. J. Bowden; London: SCM, 1986], pp. 93–185). As Hengel notes, the Roman government used crucifixion as a means of social control: “the chief reason for its use was its allegedly supreme efficacy as a deterrent” (ibid., p. 179). This form of public, lengthy, excruciating death was a warning against civil disobedience.
Hengel suggests that “the earliest Christian message of the crucified messiah demonstrated the ‘solidarity’ of the love of God with the unspeakable suffering of those who were tortured and put to death by human cruelty” (ibid., p. 180). N. Elliott argues that Paul’s conversion to the crucified Messiah was at the same time a “conversion to the cause of the crucified” (Liberating Paul: The Justice of God and the Politics of the Apostle [Maryknoll, N. Y.: Orbis, 1994], p. 227). That is, Paul became at once committed to Christ and to society’s poor and disenfranchised. Elliott regards the centrality of the cross to Paul’s gospel as a symbol of his political commitment, or to put it another way, his commitment to preaching God’s justice. This is one of the reasons that Paul seeks to create a community of equals that includes slave and free, male and female, Jew and Greek.
3:2 / Paul sets up a contrast between observing the law and believing. The phrase “observing the law” is a translation of the Greek phrase ergoi nomou (“works of law”). This Pauline phrase has been variously understood. M. Luther interpreted the phrase to mean “good works” and used the phrase to criticize the religious practice of his day. R. Bultmann described “works of law” as “the righteousness which man exerts himself to achieve” in distinction from “the righteousness from God which is conferred upon him as gift by God’s free grace alone” (Theology of the New Testament [trans. K. Grobel; New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1955], p. 285). In a somewhat similar vein D. P. Fuller suggests that the phrase “represents an all-out rebellion against God” because the law could be “in service of sin (and cause) a man to sin and gratify his ego” (Gospel or Law: Contrast or Continuum? [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980], p. 96). L. Gaston suggests that” ‘works of law’ is a normal subjective genitive” and so means that the law is the means by which works are done (“Works of law as a subjective genitive,” Studies in Religion 13 [1984], pp. 39–46). J. D. G. Dunn argues that by “works of law” Paul means all that the law requires of those who are bound by it. The phrase refers not so much to works done seeking to earn God’s favor but to observances that mark the Jewish people off from other people. “Works of law” are the “badges” that distinguish God’s people, so the phrase refers to “works which betoken racial prerogative” (“The New Perspective on Paul,” p. 200). E. P. Sanders states that “in the phrase ‘not by works of law’ the emphasis is not on works abstractly conceived but on law, that is, the Mosaic law” (Paul, the Law and the Jewish People, p. 46; italics his). S. Westerholm argues that the phrase “works of law” refers to the same thing as the Mosaic law, for since the Mosiac law required works this phrase referred simply to the law (Israel’s Law and the Church’s Faith: Paul and His Recent Interpreters [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988], p. 121). The two latter interpretations make most sense of the phrase since they see “works of law” as another way of saying Torah.