A Steel Fist in a Velvet Glove

Introduction

Back when some of you were raising your children, James Dobson wrote a book called Dare to Discipline. In it he said that after discipline, you should hold your child in your arms and let him know that you love him — that you have not chastened him in anger, but in love. That's a special time. Another word from that generation put it this way in a public announcement: “Get hold of yourself before you take hold of your child.” Good advice — some people just weren't able to do that. That's true in the physical family, but it's also true in the spiritual family.

Paul has chastened the Galatians. That's all we've seen so far. Paul is saying, “You people, what are you doing? You're foolish. I brought you the gospel of the grace of God, and look what you've done. Why, you're bewitched — someone put a hex on you.” Everything he has said has been very sarcastic. He has used exhortation and confrontation. He has put guilt on them. He has also used a lot of logic and Old Testament illustrations to help his Galatian friends understand the danger they are in — that if they keep going down this slippery slope of works-law, it is going to take them in the wrong direction.

So if we stopped at the end of chapter 3, we would say Paul was a pretty mean guy — that all he did was hammer on people. But no — as we come to chapter 4, we see Paul doing something else. He didn't call them brothers before; he didn't call them anything good. But now he is going to call them brothers. We see a tenderness. Also, in verse 19, he is going to call them “my little children.” That doesn't sound like the same guy from chapters 3 and 4. It's almost as though we could call the writer of the first three chapters someone else — we could call him Deuteropaul, the way they did with Isaiah. They say Isaiah wrote the first part, and then another writer — a second Isaiah, a Deutero-Isaiah — wrote the last part. It's almost like that. But we know it's not, because we find that Paul has another side to him, and we're going to find it here. He wraps his arm around these Galatians and says, in effect, “I want you to know I am becoming vulnerable to you, because you are a part of me.” So in this passage we are going to see Paul the man — not Paul the teacher, but Paul the man, Paul the pastor, Paul the passionate lover of souls.

This passage starts with Paul's affection for the Galatians. You see it in your outline — verses 12 to 16.

I. Paul's Affection for the Galatians — 4:12–16

A. Paul's Plea — 4:12a

“Brethren, I urge you to become like me, for I became like you.”

He begins by writing, ‘Brethren, I urge you, become like me.’ He is not commanding — he is urging, exhorting them to be like him. ‘For I became like you.’ That sounds like a little conundrum, doesn't it — become like me because I became like you? No, what he's saying is: become like me — how? Because I am free from the Law. I am free in Christ. Become like me, because I became like you.

Paul had been one of the Judaizers — not so much a Judaizer as a Pharisee, a Judaistic person who went around and even threw people in jail. People were killed because of Paul's zeal for the Law. He says, ‘No, I became like you. I became like the Gentiles, no longer living under the Law.’ It is ironic that the very man who did all of that now has his own people — the ones he led to the Lord — going back under that same kind of law he had been freed from. Paul knows firsthand what it's like. He knows firsthand what it is to live in the misery and the bondage of the Mosaic Law. He lived in it, and he was up to his neck in it. That was Paul more than anyone else we know.

So that was Paul's plea: be like me, because I became like you.

B. Paul's Problem — 4:12b–13

“You have not injured me at all… because of physical infirmity I preached the gospel to you at the first.”

Then we have Paul's problem, in verses 12b and 13. He says in 12b, ‘You have not injured me at all.’ And that's a little strange — people take that different ways. What does it mean? Here's what I think it means: 12b goes with the verses that follow, not the ones before. He is saying, ‘You have not injured me at all,’ and then he goes on to talk about when he came to their place, when he came to Galatia — you didn't hurt me there. That's what he's talking about, not the other way. So he is not saying, ‘You did not hurt me when you put yourselves back under the Law.’ Rather, he is saying, ‘When I came to you with my debilitating illness, you did not treat me with contempt.’

Apparently there was something about whatever Paul had that made him look strange. Maybe his eyes were watering — I don't know. I had a professor in college; I can't think of his name now, but his eye bulged, and he looked at you strangely. His wife would write his notes out in real large letters so he could see them — a little bit like me — and then he'd hold them up like this when he preached in chapel. I don't think I ever had him for a class, but it was strange. He said some really fine things, though — he taught Romans, and he said some really great things in Romans. Well, all I'm saying is there was something about Paul that was physically repulsive, and he says, ‘You didn't hurt me. You didn't treat me with contempt because of that.’

Then in verse 13 he says, ‘And you know that because of my physical infirmity, I preached the gospel to you at the first.’ What does ‘because of’ mean there? I preached to you because of my physical infirmity? Again, people go different ways on this. Here's what I think it means. Sir William Ramsay — a great historian — suggests that Paul had malaria combined with severe headaches. We talked about this in the book of Acts: on the first journey, Paul left the wet lowlands of Perga, where he had landed on the mainland, and went up to the drier elevations of Galatia, to Antioch, where he preached first in that region. He preached there because of his illness — that's where he was. He probably should have or could have preached in Perga, but he didn't; because of his illness he preached there instead.

He later writes to Timothy about this. In 2 Timothy 3:10–11 he says, ‘But you have carefully followed my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, longsuffering, love, perseverance, persecutions, afflictions, which happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra — what persecutions I endured. And out of them all the Lord delivered me.’ Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra are towns or cities in Galatia. So Paul brought some of his afflictions with him — his eyes, or whatever it was — and he received still more afflictions at the hands of the Jews in Galatia.

C. Paul's Approval — 4:14–15

“And my trial which was in my flesh you did not despise or reject, but you received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus.”

And my trial, he said, which was in my flesh, you did not despise or reject, but you received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus. What then was the blessing you enjoyed? Now get what he's saying here — he's asking, why were you so happy to have me there at that time? What blessing did you receive from me? — because now you have rejected me. That's his whole point. See, they did not reject him because of his afflictions; they received him. As what? As an angel of God — even as Jesus Christ Himself. I haven't had that happen to me yet, and I'm not likely to either, somebody said. Okay, fine. But his question was, ‘What then was the blessing you enjoyed?’ You treated me so well — there must have been some reason for doing that. And the answer he suggests is: it must have been the message I delivered to you, the Gospel of the Grace of God. Isn't that great? That's why they did it — because of his message. If we just listen to the message and forget the idiosyncrasies — he's always reading from his notes, can't memorize anything, can't remember his own name — it's the message, not the way a person delivers it, not the little strange things he does, but the message. It must have been the message. You liked me because of the message. I love that.

‘And I bear you witness that, if possible, you would have plucked out your own eyes and given them to me.’ Some believe Paul needed eyes — that his problem was in his eyes, and so they would have given him their own if they could have. Back then they couldn't; nowadays they probably could, though they probably wouldn't offer, because of what's involved. But whatever that disease was, some people feel it was his ‘thorn in the flesh’ (2 Corinthians 12:7). Remember, Paul said he went up to heaven and saw things he was not permitted to utter — and because of that, lest he should become exalted and go write a book about what heaven is like and get on television, lest he should get a tent and start healing people and go around telling everybody, God gave him a thorn in the flesh. It doesn't say what it was; we don't know. But it was a messenger of Satan — God let Satan use it to remind Paul, ‘Don't tell what you saw.’ So some people think that must be what it was. I don't know. But that would help us understand Galatians 6:11, where he says he took the pen from the scribe.

You know, Paul didn't write his letters himself — he dictated them to someone who wrote for him, his trusted assistant. At this point, in Galatians 6:11, Paul took the pen and said, in effect, ‘Let me write the rest of it myself.’ Here's what he wrote: ‘See with what large letters I have written to you with my own hand.’ Why large letters? We'll talk more about that when we get there, but I think he is saying that he had to write large because his eyesight needed to be able to see what he was writing. That seems to be what it was. So he wrote in large letters. Then in 2 Thessalonians 3:17 he says, ‘The salutation of Paul with my own hand, which is a sign in every epistle; so I write.’ He did this in all his letters — you will find Paul's own handwriting in each one. Well, we don't always see that, since it's all printed now, so we don't see Paul's actual hand. But that's what he says: he signed every letter in case someone tried to forge one. Here in Galatians 6, he is writing in large letters, perhaps because of his eyesight.

Now, after all of this, he says, you are throwing your freedom away because of some men who don't care about you at all. ‘I cared about you — you saw that I did. You received me as an angel, even as Jesus Christ. And because I cared for you, I had my arms around you the whole time — and yet you go off after some other people into bondage. And those people don't care a bit about you.’

So that was Paul's plea, Paul's problem, and Paul's approval.

D. Paul's Persuasion — 4:16

“Have I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth?”

Now Paul's persuasion. He says, ‘Have I now become your enemy because I tell you the truth?’ Looking at the facts, Paul can come to only one conclusion. Here are the facts, in a kind of syllogism — not strictly logical, but a syllogism: I told you the truth. Now I am your enemy. What's the conclusion? I became your enemy because I told you the truth. That's what he's saying. He's saying, ‘I can't understand what you're doing. Why would you do this to me?’

That's Paul's affection. He loved the Galatians.

But then we also see Paul's allegiance to them, because if you love somebody, you have allegiance toward them. Now his allegiance is in verses 17 to 20.

II. Paul's Allegiance to the Galatians — 4:17–20

A. An Artificial Loyalty — 4:17

“They zealously court you, but for no good; yes, they want to exclude you, that you may be zealous for them.”

He talks first about the artificial loyalty of the Judaizers — they say they love you, but they don't. He says in verse 17, ‘They zealously court you, but for no good; they want to exclude you, that you may be zealous for them.’ Now, the Judaizers were zealous — is there anything wrong with being zealous? No, of course not. It's okay to be zealous. They were zealous; they really worked at it, like the false cults of our day. While we're sitting here, the false cults are going through the neighborhood, knocking on doors, because they know the believers, the Christians, are at church. So they go knocking on doors and finding the people who are not church people — people who are probably not believers — and going after them. That's where they are, and they are very zealous. We could use that kind of zeal in giving out the Word of God, telling people about Christ, going door to door, whatever it takes. I don't think we have to go door to door, frankly — people come to us. They come to us every day. I was in my office on a Friday. Two men had been working on this slab outside. They came in and sat down and wanted their check. We made a little small talk — what were they going to do, get up and run out while I still had their check? So we kept talking, and one of them was being very serious, so I asked him the question: what would you do if God said to you, ‘Why should I let you into My heaven?’ — a bit like James Kennedy's approach. It was a good chance for them to face the truth. One of them, I'm convinced, believed on the Lord right there — it was amazing. The other one, I'm not so sure, but I'll have a chance to be with him later, and there he is. What I'm saying is that people come to us if we watch for them. People will come to you. People are around you all the time — always an opportunity, if we look for it. Ask the Lord to open up opportunities for us. Be zealous — there's nothing wrong with that.

These people, the Judaizers, were zealous — but they were doing it for their own evil purposes, not for your good, he says. Their purpose was to alienate you, to lock you out, to lock the Galatians out from Paul's teaching, from Paul's influence. They would say, ‘Okay, come with us,’ and what would the cults do the first thing they got hold of you? Don't go back to that church. Don't talk to your friends. Just come and meet with us. They mother you; they smother you. That's what cults do, and that's what these Judaizers had done — gotten hold of them so they could lock them out of Paul's place and put them into their own influence. Or to put it another way: the Judaizers were zealous over the Galatians, so that the Galatians would be zealous for them. They can get you going pretty soon — you'll be out there walking the street with the Watchtower and all that. That's what they wanted — that the Galatians would be zealous for them. They had ulterior motives. So that's the artificial loyalty.

B. An Authentic Loyalty — 4:18–20

1. The Certainty of Paul's Loyalty — 4:18

“But it is good to be zealous in a good thing always, and not only when I am present with you.”

Now, the authentic loyalty of Paul is in verse 18. First, the certainty of Paul's loyalty: ‘It is good to be zealous in a good thing always, and not only when I am present with you.’ See, he recognizes that he, too, sought the Galatians — he was doing the same thing. He is saying, ‘These Judaizers are after you, trying to get you to believe what they believe, to do what they do, to be with them all the time and let them influence you.’ Paul might think, ‘Wait — I do that too.’ And we do too — we ought to be just as zealous as the cults are in doing what they do. There's nothing wrong with doing that, he says. The question is, what's the difference, then, between you and the Judaizers? And the answer is zeal — zeal is not the problem; the reason for the zeal is the problem. Is it a zeal for truth? Is it a zeal for the good of the people to whom you are witnessing? And Paul says yes to both. When Paul was zealous for them, he had the truth — he gave them the truth — and he also did things for their own good. So Paul answers yes on both counts. The Judaizers answered no on both counts — they were zealous, but not with the truth; they had a falsehood, and they also had false motives, so they were wrong on both counts. That's the certainty of Paul's loyalty. He was certainly loyal to them.

2. The Compassion of Paul's Loyalty — 4:19a

“My little children,”

And the compassion of Paul's loyalty. Here we come to that verse we mentioned earlier: ‘My little children.’ You can't be mean to little children — if you see them as your little children, you want to hug them, hold them close. That's what he's saying. We talked about this earlier: he sounds more like John, the apostle of love, than Paul the great theologian. But Paul has this side too — he just hasn't shown it so far in Galatians. Most of Paul's epistles are doctrine, but notice that in Paul's epistles there is also a practical portion. Ephesians: the first three chapters are doctrine, the last three are application. Colossians is much the same. What he's saying is that the first half is something of a scolding or a commanding, but then he says, ‘Now let's do this.’ Dr. Ryrie calls it ‘doctrine and duty’ all through there.

3. The Check on Paul's Loyalty — 4:19b

“for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you,”

And now the check of Paul's loyalty: ‘for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you.’ I don't know much about this — I don't believe anyone would volunteer to go through childbirth a second time for the same child. And Paul is saying, ‘I went through the pains of childbirth for you Galatians once; now I am having to do it again. I am in labor again until Christ is formed in you.’ He labored over them to bring them the gospel of the grace of God, and he was sick, but he kept going — he wasn't really able to do what he was doing, but he did it anyway. He got up out of bed — a little bit of mind over mattress — and got it done. So now he is saying, ‘I must have the same birth pangs again, to bring you to the truth of the gospel a second time.’

Now, the word ‘formed’ — ‘until Christ be formed in you’ — refers to something's essential form, not a superficial outward shape. In Romans 12:1–2 he says, ‘I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed’ — there's that word ‘formed’ again: be transformed, metamorphosed. His picture is like a worm that gets into a cocoon and comes out as a butterfly. That's what he's saying — that's why the hymn ‘At the Cross’ refers to ‘such a worm as I.’ That's a good picture — we are worms being formed, coming out into the picture and the life of Christ. So he is saying: have real Christ-like character.

Remember the Great Commission — I've said this before, and I'll say it again: the Great Commission is not just to make believers. That's part of it — the first part — but it's not the most important part, and it's not all there is to it. We are also to make disciples: ‘Make disciples of all nations.’ You haven't done the job until you've made disciples. Making believers is only the smaller part of the job. Making disciples — that's conforming to the image of Christ. That's why we were saved: we're saved to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, Romans 8:29. And we are saved to be holy and without blame before Him, Ephesians 1:4. That's the purpose. It's not the purpose just to get your name on the roll and get to heaven with a little fire insurance — no. It's to be like Jesus Christ.

Now, in contrast, the Judaizers just wanted them to ‘fill a pew,’ or to ‘be a number to send in to the home office’ — it'll be in a magazine, and everybody will say, ‘How many? All that.’ I was in a church one night — in fact, the church where I was saved. I went back there; our church wasn't having a meeting that night, so I went to that church, and they were having a revival. I went in and sat down in a pew, and one man says, ‘Hey, would you come over and sit in my pew? This is Pack-a-Pew Night — if anybody asks you, just tell them I asked you to come to church.’ What? Packing a pew? Well, that's what the Judaizers were doing — get a notch on my spiritual gun, or whatever. They were doing it for totally wrong motives.

He wants them to have an inside-out faith, not an outside-in one. It's impossible to have it the outside-in way. It's like the fruit of the Spirit — a believer ought to have the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, and the rest — nine of them, all the fruit of the Spirit. How do you get fruit on a tree? That's the figure he's using — how do you get fruit on a tree? Well, let's say you get a bag of apples and tie them on the tree — now you've got an ‘apple tree.’ No, you can't do that; it doesn't work. You get the apples from the inside out. First, you make sure you have an apple tree, and then you do whatever is necessary, and the apples will come from the inside out. That's where our Christianity ought to be — from the inside out. That's what Paul is saying: don't try to do it from the outside in — it won't work.

He tells them in Philippians 2:5, ‘Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus’ — have the mind of Christ. That's his desire for them, and his desire for us. That's the certainty of his loyalty, the compassion of his loyalty, the check on his loyalty.

4. The Character of Paul's Loyalty — 4:20

“I would like to be present with you now and to change my tone; for I have doubts about you.”

Now the character of Paul's loyalty, verse 20: ‘I would like to be present with you now and to change my tone, for I have doubts about you.’ That's a shame — he wanted to be with them. They are his children in the faith, and he knows that if he were with them, he would be able to talk with them face to face, one on one. And he is confident that he could change them — could move them to the right place — and then he could change his tone about them. Or perhaps, if in some way the word he has been getting about them is not quite the truth, he would learn something about that too. But in any case, he would change his tone and not be so hard on them about what they are doing.

Conclusion

Well, Paul has given us his life. He has shown his love for them, his allegiance to them. Now, we started off by saying, ‘Dare to Discipline.’ We need to do that — there needs to be a daring to discipline. We need to tell people — we need to tell ourselves, really — ‘You need to get this done, and if you don't, you're in a position where you need to be having the discipline for others.’ Dare to discipline — it's necessary. But we also need to bear them in our arms, loving the person who needs the discipline. That's what Paul is after — he's after a change in their lives only because he wants to see them blossom into the believers, the disciples that they can be, until the Lord comes and takes us all home with Him and makes us like Jesus Christ.

Lord, thank You.