Bewitched: A
Defense of
Justification by
Faith from
Experience (3:1-5)

You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? This is the only thing I want to find out from you: did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? Does He then, who provides you with the Spirit and works miracles among you, do it by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith? (3:1-5)

Defection and desertion are contemptible because they involve disloyalty and betrayal. Few things are more tragic or disappointing than a Christian who deserts the purity of the gospel for a false form of Christianity that presumes to improve on the finished work of Christ. Yet that is what many believers in the Galatian churches had done or were in danger of doing because of the Judaizers.

Throughout the history of the church some believers have begun well but later have been pulled away from the truths they first believed and followed. They receive the gospel of salvation by grace and live for the Lord in humble faith, but then fall prey to some system of legalism and works righteousness that promises more but produces much less. Some fall into formalism, substituting external ceremonies and rites for the internal reality of personal growth in the Lord. Others fall into legalistic systems of do’s and don’ts, proudly hoping to improve their standing before God by doing or not doing certain things. Still others look for a second blessing—a spiritual secret to unlock some higher plane of spirituality, an additional experience of grace—hoping to receive more of God than they imagine was granted to them at conversion.

Paul had been used by the Lord to introduce the gospel of sovereign grace to the Galatians, first to bring them the truth that salvation is received by faith in Christ’s atoning work on the cross plus nothing else. Now they were drifting away from the way of pure grace and had accepted an inferior and impotent substitute based on the old Mosaic rituals and ceremonial standards that the New Covenant in Christ had made invalid—and that, even under the Old Covenant, had no power to save. The defecting believers had not lost their salvation, but they had lost the joy and freedom of it and had returned, deceived, to the uncertainty and bondage of a self-imposed legalism. They were still in Christ and right with God positionally, but they were not practically living in conformity to the truth by which they had been made righteous. They substituted a form of religion that had no power or joy for the fullness of life in Christ they once enjoyed. Because they allowed themselves to be deceived, they also projected to the deceived unbelievers around them the thinking that Christianity was a matter of law rather than faith. They had robbed themselves of the fullness of God’s blessing and were in danger of robbing their world of the knowledge of the only way of salvation.

Satan never ceases his effort to destroy God’s way of salvation, and because God’s way is by His grace working through man’s faith, Satan’s is the opposite, the way of man’s own effort and work. From the time of Cain’s first works-righteous offering of a grain instead of an animal sacrifice, unbelieving man has sought to make himself right with God through his own goodness and merit.

When Paul first came to Galatia, he marvelled at his gracious reception. He was physically afflicted, yet “that which was a trial to you in my bodily condition,” he said, “you did not despise or loathe, but you received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus Himself” (Gal. 4:14). Now the apostle marvelled at their defection from the gospel he had preached to them. “I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you, and want to distort the gospel of Christ” (1:6-7). Having received new life in Christ by faith, they had been persuaded to live out their new lives by the old way of works. They had turned back from grace to law, from faith to works, from Calvary to ceremony, from freedom to bondage.

In chapters 3-4 Paul gives a classic defense of the doctrine of justification by faith, a defense he had introduced in 2:16-21. In 3:1-5 he defends the doctrine from the standpoint of personal experience, and in 3:6-4:31 from the standpoint of scriptural revelation.

In 3:1-5 the apostle reminds his readers that a believer’s experience of the Lord Jesus Christ, of the Holy Spirit, and of God the Father are incontrovertible evidence of having been graciously made acceptable to God through personal faith in the perfect, complete work of Christ, apart from any human supplement.

Although experience in itself is not entirely reliable evidence of spiritual reality, it is nevertheless a powerful apologetic when closely linked with and built on scriptural truth. Because genuine Christian experience verifies the gospel of grace, the inspired apostle was led by the Holy Spirit to use it as an effective means of defending the doctrine of justification by faith.

THE BELIEVER’S EXPERIENCE WITH CHRIST

You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? (3:1)

You foolish Galatians reflects a combination of anger and love mixed with surprise. Paul was incredulous, hardly able to believe what the Galatians had done. Like many believers before and after them, they had been victimized by Satan and induced to slip away from the moorings of the truth by which they had been saved. Those believers were especially foolish because they had been so carefully and fully taught, having been on many occasions over the years privileged to sit under the teaching of Paul himself, whose very heartbeat was the gospel of God’s grace.

Anotos (foolish) does not connote mental deficiency but mental laziness and carelessness. The believers in Galatia were not stupid; they simply failed to use their spiritual intelligence when faced by the unscriptural, gospel-destroying teaching of the Judaizers. They were not using their heads.

The Greek term frequently carried the idea of a wrong attitude of heart, a lack of faith that clouds judgment. Paul wrote of greedy people who think that a lot of money will enhance their lives and bring happiness and fulfillment. In seeking to get rich, such people “fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction” (1 Tim. 6:9). Paul confessed that before salvation he, too, had been “foolish . . ., disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending [his] life in malice and envy, hateful, hating” (Titus 3:3).

Jesus used the word to rebuke the two disciples He encountered on the road to Emmaus: “O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken!” (Luke 24:25). The disciples’ basic problem was not mental but spiritual. Because they had not carefully studied to believe the prophets, they failed to understand that, as the Messiah, Jesus not only had to die but that He would be raised and return to His Father in heaven (see v. 26). Their understanding failed because their faith had failed.

The Galatians had foolishly fallen into Judaistic legalism because they had stopped believing and applying the basic truths of the gospel Paul had taught them and by which they had been saved. By sinful neglect of their divine resources, they compromised the gospel of grace. They followed their whims and impulses rather than God’s revealed truth, and in so doing forsook the basic truth of the gospel, that men come to salvation and live out salvation only by faith in the Person and the power of Jesus Christ. The Christian life is neither entered nor lived on the basis of good feelings or attractive inclinations but on the basis of God’s truth in Christ. Christians who rely on self-oriented emotions instead of Scripture-oriented minds are doomed to be “tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming” (Eph. 4:14). When they judge an idea on the basis of how good it makes them feel or how nice it sounds rather than on the basis of its harmony with God’s Word, they are in serious spiritual danger.

Most cult members did not become involved because they were intellectually convinced the doctrines of the cult were true but because its teachings and practices were appealing. Their minds were not persuaded; their emotions were victimized.

Paul pleaded with the Roman believers, “I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, . . . not [to] be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom. 12:1-2). He urged the Ephesian believers to “be renewed in the spirit of [their] mind” (Eph. 4:23) and the Colossians to “put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him” (Col. 3:10). Godly faith and obedience are established by the mind, not by the emotions. Being told that one can please God by certain behavior is very appealing to the ego, which is always looking for means of glory, ways to tell itself and others how good it is.

The faithful, effective Christian life, however, is not simply a great emotional adventure filled with wonderful feelings and experiences. It is first of all the humble pursuit of God’s truth and will and of conformity to it. The obedient Christian experiences joy and satisfaction beyond measure, far exceeding that of superficial believers who constantly seek spiritual “highs.” Life in Christ is not sterile and joyless. But true joy, happiness, satisfaction, and all other such feelings are by-products of knowing and obeying God’s truth.

The Galatians were actually bewitched by the Judaizers. Bewitched is from baskaino, which means to charm or fascinate in a misleading way, as by flattery, false promises, or occultic power, and clearly suggests the use of feeling over fact, emotion over clear understanding of truth. “Who tickled your fancy?” Paul asked rhetorically, fully aware of the answer. “Who could have dragged you away from the solid foundation of truth in which you were once so well grounded?” Although bewitched can carry the idea of sorcery, that is not the idea here. The Galatians were not victims of a magical spell or incantation, but were misled pupils of teachings they should have instantly recognized as false. They were willing victims who succumbed to the flesh-pleasing works righteousness of the Judaizers. They had been convinced that faith was not enough, that something was lacking that could be fulfilled by returning to the ceremonies and requirements of the Old Covenant. But as William Hendricksen has said in his Galatians commentary, “A supplemented Christ is a supplanted Christ.”

The Galatians’ own experience of salvation should have prevented their falling for the Judaizing falsehood. First of all, they had experienced the powerful, transforming, mind-changing truth of the gospel in the crucified Christ. They were people before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. They saw clearly the meaning of the cross. The gospel had come to them with the full clarity and power of Christ’s sacrifice on their behalf, and by faith they had believed and received it.

Publicly portrayed translates prographo, a word that was used of posting important official notices on a placard in the marketplace or other public location for citizens to read. Jesus Christ had been figuratively placarded before the Galatians by Paul himself for everyone to see clearly. Paul was a dynamic preacher, and perhaps dramatic as well. Those who sat at his feet perhaps could almost hear the ringing of the hammer as it drove the nails into Jesus’ hands and feet. They may have been able to visualize the blood flowing from His thorn-pierced brow and wounded side. They were convinced of Jesus’ atoning death, convicted of their sin, and ushered by grace through faith into the kingdom.

Paul’s preaching of Jesus Christ and the Galatians’ acceptance of Him by faith was all done publicly. The believers there were witnesses to each other’s salvation by faith in Him alone. But by turning to legalism they were denying the absolute saving power of Christ and the cross by which He had paid the penalty for their sins and bought their salvation.

Crucified translates a perfect passive participle, indicating that the crucifixion was a historical fact that had continuing results. John declares that “if we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). A more literal translation is, “He is still righteous to keep on forgiving our sins.” No ritual, ceremony, regulation, or any other thing devised or accomplished by men can pick up where the cross leaves off—because the cross never leaves off. The cross is the continuing and eternal payment for all sin, and every sinner who puts his trust in the cross is forever and continually being forgiven. A believer can no more stay saved by works than he could have been saved by works in the first place. The cross keeps moving powerfully and relentlessly through history, and it will stand forever as living proof that men cannot redeem themselves.

It is tragic that even much religion that goes under the name of Christianity rejects the substitutionary work of Christ and replaces it with some form of works righteousness. Churches who go by the Lord’s name but reject His righteousness in favor of man’s are guilty of establishing a form of godliness that has absolutely no power.

Paul had proclaimed that justification is only by faith in Jesus Christ from the time he first set foot in Galatia. “And by him [Christ] all that believe are justified from all things,” he told his Jewish hearers in Antioch of Pisidia, “from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses” (Acts 13:39, KJV). That is essentially the message of the book of Hebrews, which was written primarily to Jewish believers, some of whom, like those in Galatia, were in danger of turning back to Judaism. “For, on the one hand,” the writer says, “there is a setting aside of a former commandment because of its weakness and uselessness (for the Law made nothing perfect), and on the other hand there is a bringing in of a better hope, through which we draw near to God. . . . Jesus has become the guarantee of a better covenant” (Heb. 7:18-19, 22).

Later in the Galatian letter the apostle implores his readers, “Behold I, Paul, say to you that if you receive circumcision, Christ will be of no benefit to you. And I testify again to every man who receives circumcision, that he is under obligation to keep the whole Law You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace” (Gal. 5:2-4). The person who puts his trust in the law obligates himself to keep the entire law, which is humanly impossible, and he also cuts himself off from the benefits of the cross, whereby sins are forgiven and obligation to the law is fulfilled.

THE BELIEVER’S EXPERIENCE WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT

This is the only thing I want to find out from you: did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? (5:2-4)

Paul’s next appeal was to the Galatian believers’ experience with the Holy Spirit. “Don’t you remember what the Spirit accomplished in your lives when you trusted in Christ for salvation?” he asks. He narrows his focus right to the issue when he pleads, “This is the only thing I want to find out from you: when you received Christ, did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith? Did you have to fulfill some further requirements, go through some special ceremony, or perform some additional rites? Or did you receive the Spirit by God’s grace at the same time you received Christ as Lord and Savior?” The question was rhetorical and the answer obvious: They received the righteousness of Christ and His Holy Spirit at the same time.

The gift of the Holy Spirit is the believer’s most unmistakable evidence of God’s favor, his greatest proof of salvation and the guarantee of eternal glory. “The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Rom. 8:16), Paul assured the Roman Christians. Conversely, “If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him” (v. 9). John writes, “By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit” (1 John 4:13; cf. 3:24).

It is therefore ludicrous to maintain, as some Christians do, that the full gift of the Holy Spirit comes through an additional work or experience. A person who does not have the fullness of the Holy Spirit does not need a second blessing; he needs salvation. The indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit is inseparable from the new birth. At no time before salvation can a person have the indwelling Spirit, and at no time after salvation can he not have Him. “Having also believed” in Christ, Paul explained to the Ephesians, “you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance” (Eph. 1:13-14). “Pledge” is from arrabon, which originally referred to a down payment or earnest money given by a person intending to make a purchase, as a guarantee that the full amount would be paid. In modern Greek a form of the word is used for engagement ring. The Holy Spirit is the believer’s divine guarantee that, as part of Christ’s church, His bride, he will one day participate in the marriage feast of the Lamb.

When Paul met some disciples of John the Baptist at Ephesus, he sought to determine the completeness of their faith by asking, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” When they replied no, he presented the gospel of Jesus Christ to them and they then received the Spirit (Acts 19:1-6). In his speech before the Jerusalem Council, Peter said, “Brethren, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He also did to us” (Acts 15:7-8). Peter had first witnessed Gentiles’ receiving the Holy Spirit when he preached to Cornelius and his relatives and friends at Joppa. “While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who were listening to the message. And all the circumcised believers who had come with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out upon the Gentiles also” (10:44-45).

Though probably not in so dramatic a way, every true believer in Galatia had received the Holy Spirit the moment he received Jesus Christ as Savior. “Don’t you remember,” Paul asked, “that you received the Spirit . . . by hearing with faith? How, then, can you be duped by the Judaizers into thinking that He came to you, or will eventually come to you, by works of the Law?”

Like the Judaizers, many groups and movements today want to introduce special conditions or requirements that supposedly add blessings to the finished and perfect work of Christ—such as a greater fullness of the Spirit, speaking in tongues, or a more complete salvation. But all such things are forms of works righteousness, adding things that men can do to what Christ has already done and that only He could have done.

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” Paul declared. “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit” (Rom. 8:1-4).

The Holy Spirit is not the goal of the Christian life but is its source. He is not the product of faithful living but is the power behind it. A higher level of living does not bring the Holy Spirit; rather submission to the Holy Spirit, who already indwells the believer, includes a higher level of living.

“Having begun by the Spirit,” Paul continues, “are you now being perfected by the flesh? How could you think that your weak, imperfect, still sinful flesh could improve on what the divine Spirit of God began in you when you first believed?” Drifting from the provisions of grace into the efforts of law is ludicrous.

For the sake of balance it should be noted that James warns that a faith that does not produce good works is not saving faith at all. “What use is it, my brethren,” he asks, “if a man says he has faith, but he has no works? Can that faith save him?” (James 2:14). That is, can that kind of faith bring salvation? No. “Faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself” (v. 17). When he later says that “a man is justified by works, and not by faith alone” (v. 24), he is speaking of works verifying, not producing, salvation. Works that are pleasing to God—such as visiting “orphans and widows in their distress” and keeping “oneself unstained by the world” (1:27)—give evidence that one’s profession of faith in Christ is genuine.

The validity of good works in God’s sight depends on whose power they are done in and for whose glory. When they are done in the power of His Spirit and for His glory, they are beautiful and acceptable to Him. When they are done in the power of the flesh and for the sake of personal recognition or merit, they are rejected by Him. Legalism is separated from true obedience by attitude. The one is a rotten smell in God’s nostrils, whereas the other is a sweet savor.

The prayer offered in humble faith, seeking God’s will and glory, is pleasing to the Father, whereas a prayer uttered by rote or to impress God or other people is anathema to Him (Luke 18:10-14). Going to church to worship God sincerely with fellow believers is pleasing to Him, whereas going to the same church service and being with the same fellow believers is not acceptable to Him if done in a self-righteous, self-serving, legalistic spirit.

Even the best and most acceptable works do not increase our standing before God or elevate us to a higher spiritual status. How would it be possible to be more than a child of God and fellow heir with Jesus Christ, who is the Heir of all things (Rom. 8:17; Heb. 1:2; cf. Gal. 4:7; 1 Pet. 3:7)?

Did you suffer so many things in vain? Paul asks next. Suffer is from pascho, a word that carries the basic idea of experience and sometimes that of pain or hardship. Since the context suggests nothing of suffering or hardship, it seems best to take the word here to refer to experience, the believers’ personal experience with Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, and God the Father. Paul is asking, “Did you experience so many things in vain? Did you learn nothing at all from them? Can’t you think things through and see that the claims of the Judaizers cannot possibly square with the gospel you have been taught and have experienced yourselves?”

Paul softens the blow by adding, If indeed it was in vain, leaving open the possibility and hope that it was not. In other words, “I hope what I have heard about you is not true or that you have come back to your senses.” The apostle uses the same approach several other times in the letter, hitting hard at an error or failure and then softening his tone (see, e.g., 4:9-14, 20; 5:2-10).

THE BELIEVER’S EXPERIENCE WITH THE FATHER

Does He then, who provides you with the Spirit and works miracles among you, do it by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith? (3:5)

The third appeal to experience is with God the Father, He . . . who provides you with the Spirit and works miracles among you.

Just before His ascension Jesus commanded the disciples “not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father had promised, ‘Which,’ He said, ‘you heard of from Me’” (Acts 1:4). Through the Son, the Father had promised to give “the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him” (Luke 11:13). And “when He, the Spirit of truth, comes,” Jesus explained on another occasion, “He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak” (John 16:13).

Provides is from epichorege, which means to supply abundantly and with great generosity. It was used of patrons of the arts who underwrote productions of Greek plays and of patriotic citizens who gave of their wealth to help support their country’s army or government. It was also used of a groom’s vow to love and care for his bride.

In His superabundant generosity to His children, God provides them with the Spirit and works miracles among them. Miracles translates dunamis, which refers basically to inherent power or ability. Paul may have been referring to miraculous events God had worked among the Galatian believers, or he may have been referring to the spiritual power over Satan, sin, the world, the flesh, and human weakness that the Father bestows on His children through His Spirit. Paul’s preaching in Corinth was “in demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (1 Cor. 2:4). He even boasted in his own weaknesses in order that the power of Christ might dwell in him (2 Cor. 12:9). God, he says, “is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us” (Eph. 3:20). In each of those passages dunamis is rendered “power” and refers to the Father’s divine gift to His children.

Paul’s argument is itself powerful: If a person has received eternal salvation through trust in the crucified Christ, received the fullness of the Holy Spirit the same moment he believed, and has the Father’s Spirit-endowed power working within him, how could he hope to enhance that out of his own insignificant human resources by some meritorious effort?