Bewitched!

Galatians 3:1-5

ASHAMED

“What’s got hold of you?” she asked and I winced. When I did not answer, she added, “I’ve never been ashamed of you until now.” Then I wanted to dig through the floor and disappear.

My mother had never spoken to me in that way. As her oldest, I had always been her go-to, her confidant, the dependable one. Not now. She was ashamed of me. I was ashamed of myself.

Earlier that afternoon I had arrived at home for Thanksgiving break. My boarding school allowed no weekends off campus, which meant I had not been home since mid-August when I reported for early football. The house looked more decrepit than I remembered, like one good wind would blow it down. White paint was peeling off every exterior surface, screens torn out from the windows, rain gutters dangling off the eaves. The interior was not much better. Every piece of living room furniture was covered with slipcovers the color of chicken gravy. Several floor joists had rotted so that traversing the house was like walking atop a banjo. No phone, no television, and only one faltering floor furnace to heat the entire house.

My boarding school digs were hardly luxurious, 18th century Shaker is more like it, yet coming home felt like a decent into a Jakarta ghetto. Our Birmingham landlord was adamant. He would make no repairs. “You’re lucky I rent it to you at this price,” he threatened. I couldn’t imagine another family waiting in line to take our place. Alone in the house and fixating on the landlord’s greedy intransigence, I became angrier by the minute as I awaited Mother’s return from her work at the hardware store. She had scarcely crossed the threshold with my youngest brother in tow and carrying a bag of groceries, when I blurted out, “I don’t care what I have to do. I will make money and lots of it.” She did not answer at first, only frowned and headed to the kitchen to unpack the groceries. When she emerged, she looked at me, not with anger, but with deprecating pity and said, “Pat, what’s got hold of you? I’ve never been ashamed of you until now.”

I don’t know what possessed me to greet my hard-working mother in that way. Insulting the sacrifices she had made for the four of us children, I sounded like the self-important bigots she loathed. Her words made me want to disappear beneath the banjo floorboards.

SPELL-BOUND! Galatians 3:1-5

¹You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified! ²The only thing I want to learn from you is this: Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law or by believing what you heard? ³Are you so foolish? Having started with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh? ⁴Did you experience so much for nothing?—if it really was for nothing. ⁵Well then, does God supply you with the Spirit and work miracles among you by your doing the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard?

‘Can you hear me now? - Galatians 3:1

Something even worse than my childish selfishness has possessed the Galatian Christians. False teachers show up after Paul left them the year before, and they are quickly undercutting all that Paul taught them. Specifically, these false teachers are insisting that these new believers observe the thirty-nine categories of Sabbath regulations and keep the other tenets of the Mosaic Law, to include the requirement that all the males be circumcised. When Paul hears this disturbing news while 350 miles away from the young congregation, he has no choice but to write them a letter. Midway into his missive, Paul lets loose. He dispenses with niceties. The gloves are off. He is screaming across the miles that separates him from the first church he founded:

‘You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?’

“Bewitch,” basinkō in the Greek, is a term Paul lifts from 1st century witchcraft. It refers to “casting an evil eye” on someone. The angry apostle accuses the false teachers of being sorcerers and the Galatians as being their hapless suckers. If you compare these interlopers to today’s army of swindlers who relentlessly phone elderly Americans to confuse, scare, and defraud them, you will understand the magnitude of Paul’s ire. People he loves are being deviously scammed — bewitched, if you like.

From what are the Galatians being cheated? The living gospel of Jesus Christ as encapsulated in Paul’s statement:

‘Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified.’

Notice the connection of “eye” here with the seduction of the false teacher’s “evil eye.” Paul does not mean that these Galatians, whom Paul only first visited in 47 AD, were actually present for Christ’s execution seventeen years earlier. No, what Paul means is that through his evocative preaching, the people began to perceive the crucifixion as if with their own eyes. Good preaching still summons such riveting pictures. If not, the message is as forgettable as it is lifeless.

Additionally, the image of Christ crucified should remain fixed in the believer’s imagination. Paul, in fact, uses the past participle of the word “crucified” — estaurōmenos, which means this past action, Christ’s crucifixion, continues into the present. This is much the same way as Christians perceive the Eucharist. When we partake of Holy Communion, Christ’s great love for us through his sacrificial death becomes a present reality for us. A person does not have to be Roman Catholic or Orthodox to experience this truth, just hum a few bars of Were you there when they crucified my Lord, and see where the words take you.

The words get under your skin - Galatians 3:2-3

Like a parent exasperated with a child and saying, “Just tell me one thing, young man…,” Paul slaps down a question before the Galatians for which both they and he already know the answer:

‘Did you receive the Spirit by doing works of the Law or by believing what you heard?’

This is the first time Paul mentions the Spirit in his letter. His point is that they have already received the Holy Spirit, and they continue to experience the presence of the Spirit within their congregation. Being circumcised, observing the Sabbath, and keeping elements of the Mosaic Law did not play any part in the Galatians receiving the Spirit of God. Paul’s question for the Galatians is comparable to Peter’s after he preaches a stirring sermon describing Christ’s crucifixion to the household and friends of Cornelius the Centurion, all of whom were Gentiles. As soon as Peter finishes his graphic sermon, the Holy Spirit descended on the entire gathering, leading Peter to ask, ‘Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we (Jewish Christians) have?’ (Acts 10:47).

Thus, the answer to Paul’s multiple choice question is clearly “B.” The Galatians received the Holy Spirit by believing what they heard, which, of course, is identical to the conclusion Peter made at Cornelius’s house. The Greek ex akoēs pisteōs primarily emphasizes the message and secondarily the hearer. Therefore, a more accurate rendering of the phrase is ‘the message that has the power to elicit faith.’ If the emphasis fell primarily on the hearer’s act of believing, faith could subtly become another form of human contribution — something you bring to the table. But by grounding the emphasis in the proclaimed message, Paul is clear that the initiative lies entirely outside the person. The initiator is God; the receiver is the individual. That is why we call it grace, because the message comes to us as a divine gift. The gospel arrives first and faith is awakened in response to it. The Galatians did not work up the Spirit by their religious zeal and elbow grease. No, they received the Spirit because the message of the cross came to them and they trusted it. It is the grace of God’s good news that produces faith, which, in turn, unleashes the gift of God’s Spirit amongst the community of believers. To put the emphasis on the hearer is to slide back to square one, tying our belief and new life in Christ to our personal abilities — like painstakingly adhering to the Law. It is a mad merry-go-round that leads, not to fulfillment, but to exhaustion.

This does not ameliorate an individual’s part in apprehending the gospel. We openly receive the gift of the message which rouses our faith. I can compare this to the semester in grade school when my teacher read us Huckleberry Finn. I did not know such a world existed. For those thirty minutes each day, I was aboard that raft on the Mississippi alongside Jim and Huck. Mark Twain’s words took hold of me in such a way that I had never before experienced.

Paul describes our reception of the gospel message in the same way but even more so. The apostle memorably recasts this truth in Romans 10:17: ‘Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.’ Eugene Peterson adds more clarity to this passage in his brilliant translation:

‘The point is, Before you trust, you have to listen. But unless Christ’s Word is preached, there’s nothing to listen to.’

Continuing into v.3, Paul paints the Galatians a vivid word picture of circumcision in much the same way as he did with Christ’s crucifixion in v.1.

‘Are you so foolish? Having started with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh?’

It is important to note that the literal Greek reads ‘you now seek to be completed by the flesh.’ Even though Paul was well-aware that the rite of circumcision starts with his Old Testament hero Abraham in Genesis 17, he thinks it is patently ridiculous that a person or congregation would begin with a dynamic relationship with the Spirit of the living God and then strive to complete his relationship with God by undergoing a procedure on his penis. Even Abraham was told by God that circumcision would serve as a ‘sign of the covenant between Me and you’ (Genesis 17:11). What could be more of a sign of the relationship of a people with God than sharing His active Spirit among them? Evidence of the Holy Spirit can be seen all about the community of believers, whereas the evidence of circumcision is entirely private and seen by no one. Paul’s insists that the presence of the Holy Spirit in the congregation is a far more indicative sign of God’s presence than circumcision. The Spirit actually edifies, educates, and convicts the community of believers. While the Mosaic Law can aid us in living within the lines, only the Spirit can forge us into God’s people.

Suffering for nothing - Galatians 3:4-5

For those who conclude that Christianity is merely a head trip, Paul has news for them. What drew Paul to Christ in the first place was that from the moment he first believed in him he began to live in a new reality. Christianity is an embodied, existential experience. While it is true that our life in Christ is fueled by the mysterious Holy Spirit, Christianity is essentially a concrete experience, not an ethereal one. Knowing this, Paul asks the Galatians yet another pointed question:

‘Have you suffered so much for nothing—if it really was for nothing?

The Greek verb paschō can mean either “suffer” or “experience.” With Paul’s emphasis throughout his letters on “being crucified with Christ,” suffering may be the better choice (Galatians 2:20; 5:24; 6:14; Romans 6:6; Colossians 2:20). Whether “suffering” or “experience” is the best choice, Paul’s point is unchanged. Why would the Galatians cashier their divinely en-Spirited experience with Christ for a catalog of manmade requirements? Anglican priest J.B. Phillips, during the 1941 Blitz in London, translated this passage for his suffering teen charges in this way: ‘Surely you can’t be so idiotic as to think that a man begins his spiritual life in the Spirit and then completes it by reverting to outward observances?’

Paul is nothing if not persistent. He repeats the central question he earlier posed in v.2 in a cleverly different way:

‘Well then, does God supply you with the Spirit and work miracles among you by your doing the works of the Law, or by your believing what you heard?’

The late Richard B. Hays, long time professor at Duke Divinity School and on whom I have relied for this study, translates the literal Greek here in what I believe is most helpful: ‘Therefore, the One who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles in your midst—from works of the Law or from the message of faith?’ “Supplying,” which is epichorēgōn in the Greek, as well as “working,”energōn, are both participles modifying the Spirit and miracles respectively and thus denote continual action. The Galatians have continually experienced the Spirit and the miracles it produces amongst them since the day a year ago when Paul shared the message of faith with them. To think their intimate experience with God must somehow be ratified by completing acts of the Law, is as absurd as it is a waste of their time. (Hays, Galatians)

Allow me to explain why this is so absurd by using an example from my wife’s vocation. Remarkably, at age nineteen, she became an RN with an associate’s degree from Samford University. Subsequently, she scored the highest grade in her graduating class on her state nursing board examination. For the next five years, she served in Cardiac and Medical Intensive Care Units and was the unit supervisor in a regional hospital. Because of my military duty, she did so in three different states. Regardless of those achievements, when she began her work on her Bachelors of Nursing degree, she was required by the university to re-test in every practical nursing area, and at great expense, I might add. Think about it. Kay had already passed her state boards and had experienced the most demanding areas of nursing, yet now she was being made to ratify her experience through hours of examinations for a second time. This is not far off the false teachers’ demand that the Galatians undertake the voluminous demands of the Law to somehow sanction their life as Christ’s believers, even though they had been experiencing the dynamism of the Holy Spirit in their congregation for months.

And now another word about the Law

I fear my Jewish readers will think I am denigrating the Mosaic Law. I am not. The Law was given to Israel, much like the manna, the quail, and the water during the exodus in the Sinai wilderness — all signs that they were loved by God and belonged to Him. About keeping the Sabbath, the Lord said through Moses, ‘Say to the people of Israel, “You shall keep my sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout generations, that you may know that I, the LORD, sanctify you”’ (Exodus 31:13). The Sabbath, therefore, is a recurring weekly reminder of the covenant bond between God and His people. The Law’s demands were not arbitrary; they are meant to make Israel visibly different, a holy nation set apart for God’s purposes among the peoples of the earth. In this sense, the Law is less a ladder to climb toward God and more a uniform worn by those who already belong to him — an outward mark of election and covenant identity. This is precisely Paul’s point: God’s people have now been given a new more personal and more edifying uniform — the Holy Spirit. Spirit-filled congregations not only share intimate communion with God, but others witnessing their love and self-giving will be drawn to them and subsequently to God. The Spirit, therefore, is the electric, dynamic uniform we wear to give glory to God and draw others into His embrace.

WHO HAS BEWITCHED YOU, AMERICA?

It’s one thing to be called out by your enemies, but it’s quite another when it’s your friend. The Galatian Christians experienced that with Paul. He loved them and had high hopes for them, but he was terribly disappointed with them. The same is true for me. My mother trusted me and had dreamed that one day I would make a difference in a world that had terribly mistreated her — but then I acted as callous and greedy as others. For that, she gave me an earful.

Two Mondays ago, March 23, the same thing happened to the United States. A longtime, devoted admirer told the truth about us, and it really hurt. In an interview with Reuters, Singapore’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan, rebuked our nation. The rebuke was read by more than just a few people. Reuters has the largest readership of any news source on the planet, reaching over 1 billion individuals each day. To put that in stark terms, that is 998.5 million more persons than watch Fox News each day.

I read a synopsis of the interview in Heather Cox Richardson’s March 26th Substack news report. Richardson is an acclaimed author and history professor at Boston College. Her report is titled Letter from an American and is read by 2.5 to 3 million people daily. Richardson’s summary of Balakrishnan’s interview was a gut punch.

Singapore’s Foreign Minister simply told the unvarnished truth about America’s u-turn. She declared that for eighty years the United States has been the international champion supporting the principles of the United Nations, the guarantor of a worldwide free market economy, the protector of independent states, and the bulwark against tyrannical regimes. In a word, our nation has been the role model and the safeguard for smaller nations like Singapore.

Under the aegis that the U.S., Britain, and other nations have provided, Singapore has emerged as the great miracle of the 20th and 21st centuries. In 1965, the average annual wage of a Singaporean was $500. Today it is $80,000 — $90,000. They have risen to one of the highest, if not the highest per capita income in the world. At the same time, the small country, less than the size of Rhode Island and only a bit larger than New York City, is an amalgam of ethnicities — Chinese, Indian, and Malaysian all living in the same neighborhoods. And yet, their parliamentary democracy is eminently successful. Balakrishnan gives America the credit. “Basically the Pax Americana turbocharged reform and opened China for decades. It has been unprecedented. It has been great for many of us. In fact, I will say that for all of us, if you look back 80 years.” She no sooner extolls the U.S. than she lets loose the sucker punch:

‘Now (America) has become a revisionist power, and some people would even say a disruptor. But the larger point is that the erosion of norms, processes, and institutions that underpinned a remarkable period of peace and prosperity; that foundation has gone.’

A “revisionist,” a “disruptor,” and “the foundation is gone.” I read this and felt sick at my stomach as I realized the rug has been pulled out from beneath the citizens of the world. The U.S.A., which has been the hope of the world, the defender of the weak, the setter of democratic norms — has relinquished that role for one far less noble. Under Trump, we are instead aligning the U.S. with Vladimir Putin of Russia, Viktor Orbán of Hungary, Mohammad bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, and we are being pulled around by our noses by Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu. The first three are oligarchs and brazen enemies of democracy and freedom of speech. The fourth is an opportunist desperately trying to stay out of jail. All the while, our traditional, faithful allies are denigrated repeatedly by the White House.

What knocks the wind out of me is not that Trump has aligned himself this way or that he has made billions off the highest office in our land. No, what hurts me the most is that our congressional leaders and so many citizens of our land are bewitched by this man — even as his administration spends a billion dollars a day on an unconstitutional war. What will his supporters see when they finally wake up from his spell?

SOURCES

Bendeich, Mark, “Transcript of Minister for Foreign Affairs Dr Vivian Balakrishnan’s Interview with Reuters Global Managing Editor for World News Mark Bendeich, 23 March 2026,” Singapore Ministry of Foreign Affairs. March 23, 2026, https://www.mfa.gov.sg/newsroom/press-statements-transcripts-and-photos/transcript-of-minister-for-foreign-affairs-dr-vivian-balakrishnan-s-interview-with-reuters-global-managing-editor-for-world-news-mark-bendeich--23-march-2026/

Hays, Richard B., Galatians: The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary, Nashville: Abingdon, 2000.

Richardson, Heather Cox, Letter from An American, March 26, 2026.

March 26, 2026

PHOTO CREDITS

Bewitched, photo by J.J. Jordan, U.K.

Young Jewish Boy Kissing the Torah Scroll, Photo compliments of Patheos

LAPD officers arrest a protester dressed as Lady Liberty in chains, following clashes near the Metropolitan Detention Center during the “No Kings” national day of protest in Los Angeles on March 28, 2026, Photo by The Atlantic