Galatians — Chapter 3

Authorship & Background

Deep Dive

Setting: Paul writes to the churches of Galatia, a Roman province in central Turkey today. Most scholars think these are the churches he planted on his first journey (Acts 13–14): Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra and Derbe. On that reading the letter dates to about AD 48–49, just before the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15. Others place the churches farther north and date the letter to the mid-50s. Either way, teachers had arrived after Paul left, telling Gentile believers they must be circumcised and keep the law of Moses to be full members of God's people. Chapters 1–2 defended Paul's gospel by telling his story: it came by revelation, Jerusalem's leaders approved it, and he even rebuked Peter at Antioch for drifting from it. Chapter 2 ended on the line "if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose" (2:21). Now Paul turns from his story to theirs, and then to Abraham's and Scripture's.

By Faith, or by Works of the Law? (vv1–9)

• "O foolish Galatians!" (v1). The word is anoētos, "not understanding," the same word Jesus used for the two on the Emmaus road who were "slow of heart to believe" (Luke 24:25). It is not an insult about intelligence. They had the facts in front of them and failed to think them through.
• "Who has bewitched you?" (v1). The verb baskainō appears only here in the New Testament. In ordinary Greek it meant to cast the evil eye, to put someone under a spell. Paul is not saying the Galatians were literally under sorcery. He is saying their change of mind is so irrational that it looks like enchantment, and it came through persuasive teachers. The image is pointed, because the cure for the evil eye was to look elsewhere, and the next phrase tells them where to look.
• "Publicly portrayed as crucified" (v1). The verb prographō can mean to post a public notice, like a placard in the marketplace, or to paint a vivid picture. The lexicon allows both. Either way, Paul's preaching made the cross so plain that the Galatians, who never stood at Golgotha, saw it "before your eyes." Many Galatians would also have seen Paul's own scars from Lystra (Acts 14:19; Gal 6:17).
• "Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?" (v2). Paul asks for one piece of evidence: their own experience. They received the Spirit before anyone told them about circumcision. "Works of the law" means doing what the law of Moses commands, especially the badges that marked Jews off from Gentiles, such as circumcision, food laws and sabbath. "Hearing with faith" means hearing the gospel and believing it.
• "Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?" (v3). "Perfected" (epiteleō) means to complete or finish. The contrast is between what God does by his Spirit and what humans do in their own strength. "Flesh" carries a double edge here, because circumcision is literally done to the flesh. Their new "completion" was an operation.
• "Did you suffer so many things in vain?" (v4). The verb paschō usually means to suffer, and Acts records persecution in exactly these towns (Acts 14:2, 5, 19, 22). But the lexicon notes it can also mean simply "experience," and the context is about the Spirit's work, so some translations read "Have you experienced so many things in vain?" Both readings are possible. "If indeed it was in vain" holds out hope: Paul has not given up on them.
• "He who supplies the Spirit… and works miracles among you" (v5). The present tense matters. God was still giving the Spirit and still working miracles in Galatia. None of it was waiting on circumcision.
• "Abraham 'believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness'" (v6). Paul quotes Genesis 15:6. "Counted" (logizomai) is an accounting word, to reckon or credit to someone's account. Abraham was declared righteous when he believed God's promise of descendants as many as the stars. Circumcision does not come until Genesis 17, years later, a point Paul makes explicitly in Romans 4:9–11. The teachers likely held Abraham up as the model of circumcision. Paul holds him up as the model of faith.
• "Those of faith who are the sons of Abraham" (v7). Abraham's real family is defined by trusting God as he did, not by physical descent. Jesus made the same point to his opponents (John 8:39).
• "The Scripture… preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham" (v8). The verb proeuangelizomai, "announce good news ahead of time," appears only here. Paul speaks of Scripture as if it could see and preach, because for him Scripture is God speaking. The promise "in you shall all the nations be blessed" (Gen 12:3; 18:18) was gospel from the start. God always intended to bless Gentiles as Gentiles through Abraham, not by turning them into Jews first.
• "Blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith" (v9). Gentile believers are not second-class guests in Abraham's house. They share his blessing on the same terms he received it.
• Commentators: All three agree that Paul is pointing the Galatians back to their own experience of the Spirit. Henry: "Those are spiritually bewitched who, when the truth as it is in Jesus is plainly set before them, will not thus obey it." JFB takes "bewitched" as "fascinated you so that you have lost your wits" and has Christ "graphically set forth" in Paul's preaching. Guzik links "bewitched" to the evil eye and urges keeping the cross at the center. He also draws a sharp contrast between anoētos and another word for fool (mōros), but the lexicon simply gives "not understanding, foolish" and does not support pressing the difference. JFB reads v4 as persecution. Guzik and the Tyndale notes lean toward spiritual experiences, though Guzik also mentions the persecution of Acts 14. Guzik adds a careful note that calling Gentile believers Abraham's sons does not cancel God's promises to Israel (Rom 11).

The Righteous Shall Live by Faith (vv10–14)

• "All who rely on works of the law are under a curse" (v10). Paul quotes Deuteronomy 27:26, the last of twelve curses Israel spoke aloud at Mount Ebal when entering the land. The key words are "everyone," "all things" and "do them." The law offered blessing for obedience and curse for disobedience (Deut 28). Since no one keeps all of it (Rom 3:9–20), anyone who stakes his standing with God on keeping it stands under the curse it pronounces.
• "The righteous shall live by faith" (v11). From Habakkuk 2:4. Habakkuk was waiting for God to deal with Babylon, and the answer was to trust God's promise while waiting. Paul quotes the same line in Romans 1:17, and Hebrews 10:38 uses it too. The three uses lean on different words: who the righteous are, how they live, and that it is by faith.
• "The law is not of faith" (v12). Paul quotes Leviticus 18:5: "The one who does them shall live by them." He is not calling the law bad. He means the law, taken as a way to life, works on the principle of doing, while the promise works on the principle of believing. These are two different routes, and only one has ever brought anyone to God.
• "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law" (v13). The verb exagorazō means to buy out, used especially of buying a slave's freedom. Paul uses it again in 4:5. The price was not money but Christ himself, "by becoming a curse for us." He took the curse that rested on lawbreakers. Compare 2 Corinthians 5:21 and 1 Peter 2:24, "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree."
• "Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree" (v13). From Deuteronomy 21:23, where an executed criminal's body was hung on a post for public display as a mark of God's curse, and had to come down by nightfall. The first Christians spoke of the cross as a "tree" (Acts 5:30; 10:39). For a Jew, a crucified Messiah was a contradiction, proof that Jesus was cursed, and "a stumbling block" (1 Cor 1:23). Most scholars think Paul once used this very verse against Christians. Here he turns it around: Jesus was cursed, yes, but for us.
• "So that… the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles" (v14). Two purpose clauses. The curse removed opens the way for the blessing to reach the nations, and for all believers to "receive the promised Spirit through faith." The argument circles back to v2. The blessing promised to Abraham turns out to include the Spirit himself (compare Isa 44:3; Ezek 36:26–27).
• Commentators: Henry ties v13 to 2 Corinthians 5:21: "Being made sin for us, he was made a curse for us." JFB stresses that the law demands perfect, continuous obedience that no one gives, and on the cross writes: "Hung between heaven and earth as though unworthy of either!" Guzik notes that some Jewish teaching made allowance for small sins, but Paul's quotation says "all things." Guzik also explains redemption through ancient practices of buying back war captives, slaves and condemned prisoners, which fits the lexicon's sense of exagorazō.

The Law and the Promise (vv15–29)

• "To give a human example" (v15). The word diathēkē can mean a covenant or a last will and testament, and Greek readers would know both senses. Once a will is ratified, no one can cancel it or tack on new conditions. If that holds for human agreements, it holds even more for God's.
• "It does not say, 'And to offsprings'" (v16). This verse puzzles many readers, because Paul knows perfectly well that "offspring" (sperma, Hebrew zera') is usually a collective word for many descendants. He uses it that way himself in v29. His point is that God's promise narrows down through history to one representative descendant who sums up the line: Isaac rather than Ishmael, Jacob rather than Esau, David's son, and finally Christ (compare Gen 22:18; 2 Sam 7:12). The promise is fulfilled in one person, and then everyone who belongs to him shares it (v29).
• "The law, which came 430 years afterward" (v17). Exodus 12:40 gives 430 years for Israel's stay in Egypt. The Greek Old Testament reads it as covering the time "in Egypt and in Canaan," which would measure from the patriarchs. Paul uses the familiar round figure. The exact count is not the point. The point is that the promise came first and the law came centuries later. A later addition cannot undo an earlier, ratified promise.
• "God gave it to Abraham by a promise" (v18). "Gave" is charizomai, related to charis, "grace," meaning to give freely or show favor. An inheritance received as a gift cannot also be wages earned.
• "Why then the law?" (v19). If the law cannot justify, the obvious question is why God gave it. Paul answers in four parts. First, "because of transgressions," to expose sin as rebellion against God's stated will and to restrain it (Rom 4:15; 5:20). Second, it was temporary, "until the offspring should come." Third, it was given "through angels." The Greek Old Testament of Deuteronomy 33:2 has angels with the LORD at Sinai, and Stephen and Hebrews mention the same tradition (Acts 7:53; Heb 2:2). Fourth, it came "by an intermediary," Moses, who stood between God and the people (Deut 5:5).
• "An intermediary implies more than one, but God is one" (v20). This is one of the most debated verses in Paul, and commentators have counted hundreds of interpretations. The most common reading: a mediator (mesitēs) stands between two parties who each have obligations, which describes Sinai. The promise to Abraham had no go-between. God spoke it himself and bound only himself. In Genesis 15 God alone passed between the pieces while Abraham slept. "God is one" echoes Israel's creed (Deut 6:4) and also hints that the one God is God of Gentiles as well as Jews (Rom 3:29–30).
• "Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not!" (v21). Law and promise are not rivals. They have different jobs. The law was never designed to "give life." If it could, righteousness would come that way, and Christ would not have needed to die (2:21).
• "The Scripture imprisoned everything under sin" (v22). "Imprisoned" (synkleiō) means to shut in on every side, used of fish caught in a net (Luke 5:6). Scripture's verdict closes every exit except one, so that the promise comes "by faith in Jesus Christ." Some scholars translate the Greek phrase "the faithfulness of Jesus Christ" (the ESV gives this as a footnote at 2:16). Either way, the promise is "given to those who believe."
• "Held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith" (v23). "Held captive" (phroureō) means kept under guard. It can mean confinement or protection, and the same verb describes God's peace guarding hearts (Phil 4:7). The law did both: it hemmed Israel in and kept them safe until Christ came.
• "The law was our guardian until Christ came" (v24). The paidagōgos was not a teacher. He was usually a trusted household slave who walked a boy to school and back, watched his behavior, and disciplined him, until the boy came of age, around his mid-teens. The old rendering "schoolmaster" (KJV) misleads a little. The Greek "until Christ" can mean the time limit (the ESV) or the goal, the law leading to Christ (KJV, "to bring us unto Christ"). Both are true to Paul.
• "No longer under a guardian" (v25). Grown sons do not go back to the slave who walked them to school. Paul does not mean that God's moral will has expired (5:14 summarizes the law in love). He means the Mosaic covenant, as a system that governs God's people, has done its job.
• "In Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith" (v26). Paul switches from "we" (Jewish believers like himself under the law) to "you all," meaning the Gentile Galatians. They are not children under supervision. They are sons, full heirs, with all the standing that implied in the Roman world.
• "Baptized into Christ have put on Christ" (v27). "Put on" (endyō) is the ordinary word for getting dressed. A Roman boy coming of age put on the adult toga in a public ceremony. Baptism is the outward sign of being joined to Christ (Rom 6:3–4), and the new clothing is Christ himself. Compare Romans 13:14 and Colossians 3:10–12. Traditions differ on how closely baptism and faith are tied here. Sacramental traditions see baptism as the means of union with Christ, while Baptist and many evangelical readers see it as the public sign of a faith already given. All agree that Paul is speaking of baptized believers, and that union with Christ is the point.
• "Neither Jew nor Greek… slave nor free… no male and female" (v28). A well-known Jewish morning prayer thanked God for not making the worshiper a Gentile, a slave or a woman, and some Greek writers had a similar saying. Paul names the same three divisions. In Greek the last pair changes pattern, "no male and female," echoing Genesis 1:27 word for word. In Christ these categories no longer decide anyone's standing before God or place at the table, which was exactly the issue at Antioch (2:11–14). Paul does not mean that ethnicity, social status or sex disappear. He still writes to slaves and masters and to husbands and wives (Col 3:18–4:1). Christians disagree over how far v28 bears on roles in the home and church. Egalitarian readers see it as a principle that opens every ministry to women. Complementarian readers see it as about equal standing in salvation, with role passages handled elsewhere. Both agree on the central claim: one family, equal heirs.
• "Heirs according to promise" (v29). The argument lands. Christ is the offspring of Abraham (v16). Those who belong to Christ are therefore Abraham's offspring too, and heirs of the promise. Circumcision adds nothing to that status. They already have everything the teachers were offering, and more.
• Commentators: Henry's outline of v19–24 gives three purposes of the law: it "was added because of transgressions," it was "to convince the world of the necessity of a Saviour," and it served as "a schoolmaster, to bring us to Christ." On v26–28 he writes that believers are "no longer accounted servants, but sons," and "they all stand on the same level, and are all one in Christ Jesus." JFB gives a vivid picture of v25: "Moses the lawgiver cannot bring us into the heavenly Canaan," and so "he is superseded by Joshua, the type of Jesus." On v27 it writes, "Christ is to you the toga virilis," the garment of the grown man. JFB counts the 430 years from Jacob's descent into Egypt, the end of the patriarchs' period, not from the first promise. Guzik notes that "gave" in v18 comes from the word for grace, and the lexicon confirms that. He is careful that v28 removes divisions in standing before God, not every difference of role. He presses the point that believers still draw lines by race, class or politics that Christ died to remove. Guzik and the Tyndale notes both describe the paidagōgos as a custodian or guardian rather than a classroom teacher, and the lexicon agrees.

Pointing to Christ

Every line of this chapter runs through Jesus. He is the crucified one placarded before Galatian eyes, the one who became a curse on the tree so that Abraham's blessing could reach the nations, and the single Offspring in whom God's ancient promise lands. The law's long guardianship was always pointing toward him. Those who trust him receive his Spirit, wear him like a garment, and share his inheritance. They are Abraham's children and God's sons, with nothing left to add.

Commentary

• Enduring Word (David Guzik): enduringword.com Guzik examines the argument from experience, from Abraham, from the Law's curse, from the Law's purpose, and the unity in Christ.
• Jamieson-Fausset-Brown (1871): blueletterbible.org A critical and explanatory commentary on the whole Bible, more concise than Matthew Henry and closer to the Hebrew and Greek, with attention to historical and geographical detail. Public domain.
• Matthew Henry's Exposition (1710): blueletterbible.org A devotional verse-by-verse commentary in the Puritan tradition, still among the most widely read three centuries on. Public domain.

Videos

Articles

• GotQuestions.org: gotquestions.org What 'neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free' claims, and what it is often made to claim.
• GotQuestions.org: gotquestions.org Being baptized into Christ in this chapter, and whether the water is in view.
• GotQuestions.org: gotquestions.org On the whole book: an overview of the book of Galatians -- who wrote it, when, why, and how it fits the rest of Scripture.

Links open on the publisher's own site. Nothing here is reproduced on this page.

Reflection

• Started by Faith, Not Finished by Works (v.2) — Paul reminds the Galatians they received the Spirit by believing, not by keeping the law. What tempts you to add works onto a faith that already saved you?
• The Impossible Weight of the Law (v.10) — Anyone who relies on law-keeping is bound to keep all of it perfectly or fall under its curse. How does that impossibility push you toward depending on Christ instead of your own effort?
• Christ Became the Curse (v.13) — Christ took on the law's curse himself so its penalty would fall on him instead of us. Do you live like someone who has actually been set free, or do you still carry guilt Christ already paid for?
• A Guardian, Not a Savior (v.24) — The law's role was to expose sin and lead people to Christ, not to save them itself. Are you still trying to please a guardian whose job is already finished?
• One in Christ (v.28) — In Christ, every worldly division of ethnicity, class, and status is transcended by a shared identity. What divisions still shape how you see or treat other believers?
• Heirs by Promise, Not by Blood (v.29) — Belonging to Christ makes you an heir of Abraham's promise through faith, not lineage. What would it look like to actually live like someone who has inherited God's promises?