Galatians 3:1. They O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.
Paul is moving past his conversation with Peter and now addresses the Galatians directly, but not without some clear frustration. “Foolish and bewitched.” These are strong words, but the situation demands them. As we just saw from 2:21, this whole church is in danger of nullifying the grace of God and the cross of Christ. The cross of Christ is THE central event of history. No other event, battle, discovery, creation, achievement, or act of heroism comes close to the magnitude of the cross. For the Judaizers to place circumcision (or any of the law’s demands) above the cross is to demonstrate that they are either fools, deceived, or both.
Why do we say this? Because the law is a sign that pointed directly to the cross. Circumcision was a picture, a shadow, not the reality. So, to put the law at the center rather than the cross of Christ is to live within a delusion. It is to walk by sight, not by faith. It is to miss the deepest reality of life—union with Christ. The bottom line is that the Galatians have lost their sense of proportion. The cross has become a trivial event, and circumcision has taken its place at the center. This is a complete reversal of what God intended.
A person in their right mind (not foolish and not bewitched) lives with a sense of proportion. We would give all our money, time, and energy to save the life of our child, but we would not do that for a dying bush in our front yard. We would work hard to clean up the church if vandals destroyed the sanctuary on a Saturday night, but we don’t give a stray cobweb the same attention. To make the cross secondary is to live outside of your right mind. It is to fail to see what truly matters.
The Galatians, and you and I, are saved because someone showed us the cross. Christ was “publicly portrayed as crucified before your eyes”—in a sermon, a book, a radio broadcast, or a child’s lesson. None of us was saved by our moral efforts, and none of us is saved apart from the cross. The essence of Christianity is not “how should I live?” It is “what did Jesus do for me?” And the answer is that he died on the cross for you. Beyond this, you died with him on that cross (2:20).
Christian, do not lose your sense of proportion. Keep the main thing the main thing—Christ died for you. All else is just a picture of that main event.
You: What do you tend to keep at the center of your Christianity? Is it the cross?
You in Christ: How is union with Christ only possible because of the cross, and not anything else (law-keeping, etc.)?
Christ in you: How can your life “portray Christ as crucified?”
Pray: Father, I tend to put lesser things at the center of my life and get out of proportion. Return Jesus and his cross to the center of my life and hope. Amen.
