O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. 2 Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by 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 Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith— 6 just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”?
7 Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. 8 And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” 9 So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.
10 For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” 11 Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.” 12 But the law is not of faith, rather “The one who does them shall live by them.” 13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— 14 so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.
Mr. Gow (not his real name) was my high school chemistry teacher. He would present something to us in class and make the comment, “Seems pretty clear to me, huh!” Well it was clear as mud to me. I just couldn’t get it. I never understood what it was all about. My parents even hired a high school boy to tutor me in chemistry. I’m thinking it wasn’t Mr. Gow’s fault. My high school tutor couldn’t get it through my head either. It was “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma” to quote Winston Churchill. It was “about as transparent as a brick wall” to quote my chat gpt friend. I just didn’t get it.
This seems to be the case with the Galatians and the Judaizers, and those of the circumcision party. They didn’t get the idea that “the just shall live by faith.” While it may not immediately clear what that phrase means, it seems likely that the difficulty on the part of the Galatians and others was a bit more than their ability to comprehend. They had too much at stake personally for that phrase from the Bible to make sense and shape their faith and religious practices.
Some of the religious leaders of Paul’s day were convinced that he was wrong. He had sold out in their minds to this new upstart religious movement. They were convinced that Paul was leading people away from God. Afterall, their Jewish rituals, laws, and sacrifices had been part of their religious practices for centuries. They had been taught that this is the way we do things. They couldn’t believe that all they had been doing was now supplanted by a new way – the way of faith.
This reminds me of a scene in the movie Martin Luther Heretic. Luther is teaching his students about salvation by grace through faith. “Faith!” one German student exclaims. “Every German peasant has faith.” “Yes?” says Luther. “Is heaven going to be filled with German peasants?!? The student wasn’t happy about that potentiality. “It can’t be that easy,” he mutters. Luther hears him and says, “You think faith is easy…”
There are those who think little of God’s love for all people. There are those who are not pleased to think of sinners, prostitutes, tax collectors and others of that ilk will be in heaven with them. This would be the challenge of the Judaizers. They were not so such that everyone who believed should be accepted into God’s kingdom. They had little awareness of their own brokenness. They thought they were superior.
The just shall live by faith may have been confusing to them. But it doesn’t have to be. It means that we who believe the promises of God, believe that he is good, believe that his grace is fully given in Jesus of Nazareth, God’s Son, are right with God. It’s a matter of what we think of God. And the enlightenment of those things comes from God’s Holy Spirit, working in our hearts.
It is totally confusing, confounding, silly, despisable, and worthless to those without the Holy Spirit. Our natural condition thinks little of God and his goodness. But we live with childlike faith, trust, belief in God’s word and promise. That doesn’t have to be confusing if we are willing simply to believe.
David Bahn - Reflections 
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