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!
Two further points should be noted in these verses before we proceed. The first concerns 'persuasion' in 8. It is a strong word. They were 'fully persuaded', Paul means to say. It had amounted to a conviction, and what Paul is implying - indeed, asserting - here is that a man can be terribly convinced that he is right and still be completely wrong. There is something very frightening about this, but it is true to experience. One of the things that strikes one very forcibly about adherents of the heretical sects is the utter, even fanatical, conviction that grips them. They are totally convinced that they are right, and nothing will budge them. And Paul says here that even a persuasion like that does not necessarily mean that it comes from God. But, apart from heresies, this raises interesting and important questions for believers. It is possible to be very convinced about something, and still be wrong. 'Try the spirits', says John, 'whether they be of God'. The second point concerns what is said in 12. The AV rendering makes what is said a statement similar to that in 10b. But, the scholars tell us, this can hardly be the meaning of the word Paul uses, which, literally translated, should read, 'cut themselves off'. The reference is to a custom prevailing among heathen priests in Galatia and elsewhere by which bodily mutilation was practised in order to gain merit with the gods, and Paul is scornfully comparing the Judaisers' preoccupation with circumcision with the mutilation practised by the heathen votaries (cf the similar strong language of Philippians 3:2).