3 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 bythe 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 —
Paul is very forthright and incisive in his dealings with the Galatians, and it is a measure of his urgent concern for their welfare that he should have written as he does here. He puts one question to them, which he regards as decisive in the whole matter: How, he asks, did their Christian life begin? This appears to be the meaning of the reference to receiving the Spirit. Lightfoot takes the words to refer to their reception of the gifts of the Spirit, but the words 'having begun' in 3 incline one to think that it is the beginning of the Christian life that is in view. Receiving the Spirit refers to regeneration by the Spirit (cf Romans 8:8). And we can see from Acts 13: 38 that the answer Paul expects to his question is 'by the hearing of faith', for it is the hearing of faith that is described in that passage, and the 'works of the law' are expressly there denied: justification is not possible by the law of Moses. If, then, salvation is by hearing, not doing, is it likely, or possible, that, a new life having begun that brings a man into a new order (2:20), that new life should revert back for its maintenance and continuance to the pattern of the old order, with its bondage?
Next, in 4, Paul appeals to their continuing experience. It is as if he said to them: 'When you received the Spirit by the hearing of faith, it was all so right, and the right patterns developed in you, and you suffered for the faith, and this was the mark of reality, that which proved your faith's integrity and validity. Is this all to be called in question and set at naught? A powerful argument indeed!