DEFENSE OF PAUL’S GOSPEL

LETTER TO THE GALATIANS

Defense of Paul's Gospel
Part One

Galatians 3:1-5

INTRODUCTION

Paul has just defended his apostleship by appealing to 4 instances: God Himself calling him to be an apostle, his apostleship was never derived from the apostles and their teaching but from God Himself, the apostles recognized him as an apostle at the great church council in Jerusalem (Acts 15), and finally, Paul’s rebuke of Peter at Antioch.

Paul now will appeal to 2 major factors which support his claim that person is not only saved by faith but should also live the Christian life by faith: an appeal to the way the Holy Spirit Himself works AND an appeal to Scripture, especially to the story of Abraham.

Now why would Paul appeal to the Spirit? According to the OT, whenever the Messiah came, He would prove that He was the Messiah first by being filled with the Holy Spirit (Isaiah 61:1) and second by pouring out His Spirit upon His followers (Joel 2:28, 29; see also Acts 2:17-18). In fact, when John the Baptist came to identify who the Messiah was, he claimed the Messiah was the One upon whom the Holy Spirit would descend and remain. From that point on, the Messiah would carry out God’s work of salvation under the leadership of and in the power of the Holy Spirit. Moreover, once the Messiah received the Spirit, He would become the fountain of the Holy Spirit, pouring out the Spirit upon the lives of His followers. Whoever becomes the fount of the Holy Spirit is the Messiah; upon whomever the Messiah pours out the Holy Spirit, that person is a legitimate follower of the Messiah. Whoever received the Holy Spirit from the Messiah was truly a follower of the Messiah, was truly saved. In other words, a person is truly saved, that is he has believed in Jesus the Messiah properly if the Holy Spirit lives in him. Paul states this requirement 2x in his letters:

         “But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to
         Him” (Rom. 8:9) and “Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith. Ex-
         amine yourselves. Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that
         Jesus Christ is in you, unless indeed you fail the test” (2 Cor. 13:5).

I remember that after Nathan, my son, became a Christian, I was a little nervous about the genuineness of his salvation experience since he claimed that he became a Christian when he was only 7 years old. One night when I was especially worried, I asked him, “Son, how do you know that you are a Christian?” He then gave the best and most correct theological answer possible to that question. He said, “Jesus lives in my heart.” That settled it for me! The presence of the Spirit in your life proves that you have correctly placed your faith in Jesus the Messiah, the fountain of the Spirit.

Paul looks now at the way a person receives the Holy Spirit. Then he will analyze what a Christian has to do in order for the Holy Spirit to work in his life. If a person receives the Spirit only after he has performed a work of the Law, then a person is saved by works of the Law and not by faith. On the other hand, if a person only receives the Spirit after he has exercised faith, then a person is saved by faith and not by works of the Law. Paul will appeal to the Galatians' own experiences with the Holy Spirit to determine the way a person receives the Spirit.

APPEAL TO THE SPIRIT (3:1-5)

1 You foolish Galatians, who has given you the evil eye, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? 2 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? 3 Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? 4 Did you suffer so many things in vain –if indeed it was in vain? 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?

First, Paul asks the Galatians a rhetorical question (a question we already know the answer to; he’s not asking for information): “Who has bewitched you?” We know who bewitched them. The Judaizers. The word translated “bewitching” has behind it the idea of the evil eye which sorcerers would use to cast spells upon people or to control them. (My wife claims that I didn’t have to resort to spanking my kids because I used the evil eye often to control them.) Somebody had to have bewitched them because the crucifixion of Jesus Christ had actually been portrayed to them by Paul's preaching in such a dramatic public fashion that only spiritual witchcraft or sorcery could be behind this. (Paul is equating the Judaizers with the sin of witchcraft!)

Paul continues with a series of rhetorical questions:

“Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith?” In other words, when you became a Christian and received the Spirit, did you have to go out and get circumcised before the Spirit would come into you? OF COURSE NOT! The most dramatic example of this is the salvation of Cornelius and his household. Few Christians today really appreciate the significance of his particular conversion. Often we think of Paul’s conversion as the most important in the book of Acts; however, note that Acts 9 really devotes only 9 verses to Paul’s conversion while it devotes a whopping 64 verses to the conversion of Cornelius. How was Cornelius saved? Cornelius and his family were just sitting there listening to Peter preach about Jesus and then just believing that Jesus was truly God’s Son who came to save the world, and then—bam! The Spirit comes upon them. No circumcision. No law-keeping. Not even any baptism. Just pure belief—and bam! the Spirit comes upon them because they are already saved. Cornelius is the proof that salvation comes only by faith and not by works.
Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Although Paul has not explicitly stated a certain principle here, he nevertheless is basing an argument on a certain principle. That principle is that the way you live the Christian life should be consistent with the way you started the Christian life. In other words, the way you are saved is going to set the tone by which you live the saved life. Since you were saved by faith, you should live by faith. Since you became a Christian by responding positively to the Holy Spirit (and what He said about Jesus), you should live the Christian life by responding positively to the Holy Spirit. [Note what Paul is implying here: living by the Spirit means that you must live by faith; if you live by the Law then, you are living in the flesh which is hostile towards the Spirit (Rom. 8:7).]
Did you suffer so many things in vain –if indeed it was in vain? Hopefully you did not suffer all these things for Jesus in vain.
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? In other words, do you have to go out and circumcise somebody before the Holy Spirit will work miracles through you? Or do you just ask the Spirit in faith to perform miracles and He then performs miracles through you. The answer is obvious.

One of my favorite Christian authors is C.S. Lewis. Lewis experienced so much tragedy in his life—the loss of his mother when he was 9 and the loss of his best friend during WW1 while Lewis was just a young man. In his 50’s he met and married Joy Gresham. Right after they got married, Joy was diagnosed with terminal cancer, given only 10 days to live. Lewis brought in an Anglican clergyman known for faith-healing. After the clergyman prayed over Joy, Joy’s cancer went into remission so that she actually lived for a few years after that. Again, the clergyman didn’t go out and perform some great deed in order for God to work miraculously upon Joy; he just simply prayed IN FAITH!

Since the presence and working of the Spirit in a person’s life proves that person truly is saved, then the life of faith is the only life we should live since the life of faith is the only life the Spirit produces and cooperates with.