Galatians 3:1 O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as having been crucified.
Paul uses strong language now to wake up the Galatians to the dire situation in which they were. He calls the foolish because they have forsaken the truth of the gospel and followed a lie. They have been deceived into taking upon themselves the burden of the law and forsaking their freedom in Jesus Christ. Foolish can also be translated as unintelligent, not thinking clearly, being unmindful about a situation. They had not thought through the implications of what these infiltrators were teaching. This letter attempts to clear up this misguided thinking so that the believers will know the truth of the gospel.
Bewitch means to use evil to influence someone. The agitators in Galatia were influencing the Galatians in the wrong direction. The Galatians needed to wake up to this situation and return to the gospel Paul preached to them. They should know better. Paul clearly preached the message and they received it. But now, these other people had come to the area and were leading them into legalism, of thinking that they needed to do various practices and keep the Jewish law, particularly circumcision, in order to be considered righteous.
Paul reminds them at the end of this verse of the heart of the gospel, that Jesus died for their sins. They had clearly and publicly heard the gospel of Jesus crucified for their sins. This is the message Paul preached everywhere (1 Corinthians 2:1-5). This was the gospel. Jesus died in our behalf because we were lost in our trespasses and sins. There is no hope outside of Jesus. We can never make ourselves good enough to be considered righteous by God and worthy of eternal life. We must rely on the grace of God revealed and experienced through Jesus Christ. This was explained before them all. There were many witnesses to this preaching. Paul is calling them back to their first faith.
It is never too late to return to faith. Sometimes, however, we need to be shaken up to see our wrong choices. This letter has strong language because the issue is critical. Paul had fought this legalistic righteousness for sometime. If this is indeed his earliest letter or one of the earliest, we can see in later letters that this issue did not disappear but continued in other churches. The danger of legalism is present even today. We must keep our focus on God’s grace in Christ and our total dependence upon this grace.
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