You must be in fellowship prior to your Bible study, so that the spiritual information you receive can become a source, of blessing to your soul and produce spiritual growth.
1 O [o] foolish [anoetos] Galatians, [Galates] who [tis] hath bewitched [baskaino]
you, [humas] that ye should [peitho] not [me] obey [peitho] the truth, [aletheia]
before [kata] whose [hos] eyes [ophthalmos] Jesus [Iesous] Christ [Christos] hath been
evidently set forth, [prographo] crucified [stauroo] among [en] you [humin]?KJV-Interlinear
1 You
foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was
publicly portrayed as crucified? NASB
Paul has already explained that pursuing a spiritual life by means of some type of your own effort, is a false pursuit.
The example was circumcision. But the expanded example explained in the previous chapter was in maintaining two standards to live by. The first was the standard of the Jewish tradition or any cultural or emotional tradition, and the second was the standard taught by Christ, which is living by means of faith.
Faith comes in two forms that complement each other. The first is the learning and use and therefore understanding developed by means of doctrine or the detailed content of the scriptures. The second is the faith of confidence that is developed by the understanding and therefore wisdom produced by that same doctrine.
But here Paul addresses the Galatians as foolish, 'anoetos,' which means lack of knowledge and therefore void of understanding. In other words, naïve or foolish or stupid, which is the absence of functional knowledge in the soul.
The Bible is very clear that the spiritual life is by means of faith. And this includes both concepts just mentioned. If you do not learn doctrine, then you will never have faith.
Faith is not an unsubstantiated hope or wish or even luck.
Faith has to have substantive content behind it to support it and to develop it. Faith is confidence through knowledge and understanding of reality through the facts of reality.
Truth is the perfect matching up of facts with reality. It is not interpretation. It is not consensus. It is not developed from compromise or convenience. And, it certainly does not originate from the emotions or feelings.
To pursue the spiritual life by disregarding the work of Christ on the Cross, to pursue the spiritual life by disregarding the accumulation of knowledge developed only through a daily study, is to be void of truth, naïve, ignorant, stupid, foolish. It is to be bewitched, misled by pretense, to be fascinated by the charm of others or the charm of ones own ego.
This then is the disobedience of truth, by yielding your mind to the errors and falsehoods of life.
And this is done in the full sight of the work and intent of Christ.
As Christ has set forth. Set forth, means to have been written down, to write before, to be presented. And the life and death of Christ have been presented clearly and the purpose of His life and death and resurrection has been made clear.
And the work here is, crucified. This is the dramatic effort of Christ that is intended to be made clear. That it was His work, not mans, which provides the way for salvation and the fuller life, and by no other means.
