7 You were running a good race. Who cut in on you to keep you from obeying the truth? 8 That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you. 9 “A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough.” 10 I am confident in the Lord that you will take no other view. The one who is throwing you into confusion, whoever that may be, will have to pay the penalty. 11 Brothers and sisters, if I am still preaching circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been abolished. 12 As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves!
From false and true believers Paul now turns to false and true teachers. His words here reveal a very penetrating discernment into the true nature of error. The 'persuasion' which had led the Galatians astray was not something intellectual, and the question at issue was not one of 'believing' a doctrine, but one of 'obeying' the truth, i.e. submitting to its moral demands on one's life. It is in this sense that the word 'hinder' must be understood in 7. This is the real problem that lies behind every deviation from the truth. Scholars tells us that the root idea behind the word 'heretic' is that a man 'chooses on his own' to depart from the truth and propagate different teaching. It is thus that heresy comes to mean false teaching. But the important thing to see, in the original meaning of the word, is that heresy begins with a moral problem, self-will, self-assertion, self-display. It is significant that in this connection Paul speaks in 11 of 'the offence of the cross'. In this wrong 'persuasion' at work in the Galatians, there was a challenge they were baulking at, because of its cost in terms of moral submission to the divine will. There was a death they were refusing to die. This sheds more light than we might realise on the question of lack of understanding or apprehension of spiritual truths, either in the unbeliever or in the believer. We sometimes refer to Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 4:4, 'The god of this world hath blinded the minds of them that believe not', and this is of course true - but it is a willing blindness that prevents the light from breaking through. There are none so blind as those who will not see, and at the end of the day this will be the condemnation - not that men could not see the truth, but that they would not.