and my temptation, which [was] in my flesh, ye did not slight nor reject with contempt; but ye received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus.
Paul reminds the Galatians how he first came to them: sick, weak, and unimpressive — and they welcomed him anyway. The question behind the verse is why people who once received him as heaven's own messenger later turned against him.
Older Bibles call this trial a "temptation," but the word means a test. It points to a real physical affliction that Paul carried.
"God did tempt Abraham" when He told him to offer up Isaac. Gen. 22:1. God tried him, putting his faith to the test. Paul speaks of his thorn in the flesh as his 'temptation': it was a trial or test. Gal. 4:14.
What is clear is not what it was, but when it came and why.
Far from arriving with any air of self-confidence and authority, he came as a suffering man... We are not told what it was. We know it was something connected with his bodily state: it was "in his flesh." But this is clear, and moving: the more God led him on and blessed him, the deeper the marks of suffering, weakness and shame he wore in his person. The thorn in the flesh came after God took him up into the third heaven. This messenger of Satan struck him, and God turned it to excellent account: it kept the apostle low in his own eyes, and even in the eyes of others.
The weakness may well have been the reason he stopped in Galatia at all. It also put the people who took him in to the test.
It seems Paul had not intended to preach the good news to the Galatians. But sickness of some kind kept him among them... We do not know what this weakness was. But it clearly hindered the apostle in his journey, and kept him in the place where he "happened" to be. It was one of those interruptions to our plans which often make us so cross. But let us remember that God orders these interruptions... It was a trial to them — "your trial in my flesh," he calls it — but that made no difference to their love and their welcome.
His condition gave them every excuse to look down on him. They did not, and that points to what held their attention.
His thorn in the flesh was a real trouble to the devoted apostle, and made some people look down on him as a speaker. But when the Spirit is at work, souls are occupied with the message, not with the messenger. So it had been in Galatia. Had he been an angel straight from heaven, or even Christ Himself, they could not have welcomed him more warmly or with more thanks.
Nothing in his appearance drew them. What drew them was the love that reached them through a frail man.
No show of personal strength or ability had attracted them. Yet they received him as an angel of God, and more, "as Christ Jesus" (v.14). He came to them in grace, as Christ had come to the world. They received him, not because of power, but because of love and grace. The energy and warmth of the love of God only shone the more brightly in the weakness of the vessel.
Writers have wondered what his trouble was. The Galatians looked past it to the One who sent him.
Paul ended the letter with some words in his own hand, which may suggest a problem with his eyesight, but Scripture gives us no further word on this. There are also signs that he may have had a speech difficulty, and that people would naturally tend to despise him for it, but we cannot be sure about this either. When Paul came to Galatia, they did not reproach him. They did not reject or despise him. They received him "as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus." Paul was truly there as Christ's representative.
Paul brings up this memory because the welcome had collapsed. That collapse was more serious than a broken friendship.
The apostle starts by expressing his amazement at the inconsistency of the Galatians. There was a time when they had received him "as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus" (Gal. 4:14). Now their attitude had changed completely. They were questioning his authority. But something even more serious was happening. In rejecting him they were also rejecting the gospel he preached — the only true gospel.
- Trial. The word translated "trial" means a test. Abraham faced the same kind of testing. Paul's was physical, real, and never named for us.
- Timing. The thorn came after the greatest revelation of his life. The more God blessed him, the deeper the marks he carried — and they kept him low in his own eyes.
- Interruption. Sickness, not planning, seems to have kept him in Galatia. God orders the interruptions that wreck our plans.
- Reception. His condition tested them, yet they welcomed him. Strength and ability never drew them; love did. God's love shone brighter, not dimmer, through a weak man.
- Reversal. A welcome fit for Christ's own representative turned into suspicion. In turning against the messenger, they turned against his gospel.
What then [was] your blessedness? for I bear you witness that, if possible, plucking out your own eyes ye would have given [them] to me.
Paul is not scolding the Galatians. He is reminding them of what they have lost: a gladness they once talked about, and a love for him so warm that no sacrifice seemed too great. His question asks them to compare what they were with what they have become, and to name what caused the change.
The word is not vague happiness. One commentator ties it to Paul's own use of the same term in Romans:
That had been a happy situation, "blessedness." This is the same word Paul used in Romans 4:8, where he spoke of the blessedness of the believer: "blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin." That is the blessedness the Galatians had when they believed the gospel.
Another writer points to what produced it:
What then was this blessedness of which their hearts and lips were once so full?… With grateful and joyful gladness these Galatians gave voice to the peace and happiness that filled their hearts. It was the effect of the righteousness that Paul had preached.
Paul asks where it went. Something took its place.
"What then has become of your blessedness?" Paul asked his Galatian converts. Ah, where has it gone? They had bartered the blessedness of grace for the blight of legal observances. They traded liberty for bondage, joy for sorrow, and Christianity for Judaism — a sad exchange indeed. How easily the power of life is frittered away, and the Spirit of God slighted.
Paul points to how they once treated him. He arrived weak and unimpressive:
He then reminds them of their love to him when he first came among them preaching the gospel. In those days they received him as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus. They did so even though he was among them in weakness, without "lofty speech or wisdom" to appeal to the natural man (1 Corinthians 2:4)… Their love for him was so great that, if possible, they would have given him their own eyes to meet his bodily weakness.
Did that weakness involve his eyes? One writer leaves the question open and hears the words first as strong feeling:
The apostle's strong, unusual words fit the very expressive and excitable character of the Gaulish people. There may or may not be a reference to eye disease in them, as a feature of the "weakness of the flesh" he had mentioned. People speak like this in ordinary life when they feel deep gratitude and personal attachment. Outbursts of real feeling are seldom limited to literal truth, and the more eager the speaker's nature, the more extravagant the words.
So where did the gladness go? One writer names what they exchanged, and what it cost:
The cause was all too clear. They had exchanged God for man in turning back from grace to law, and the natural consequences followed. Love is of God, and it lasts only while we know and enjoy Him. In other words, only faith can produce it or keep it alive. And the law is not of faith… They spoke of blessedness no longer, because the dew of God's blessing was no longer on their souls.
The question is not an accusation but a summons back. It belongs with other places in Scripture where God recalls His people to what they once knew:
He makes us know that as we cannot do without His love, so neither can He do without ours. It is truly wonderful; yet so it is. He will keep the soul up to the old terms. Listen to those touching appeals of the Spirit of Christ to His people in earlier days. "You have abandoned the love you had at first." "Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first" (Revelation 2). "Recall the former days" (Hebrews 10:32). "What then has become of your blessedness?" (Galatians 4:15).
What they lost was no small thing:
We do not know the power of the thought that God's favour is toward us — the greatest lever that can be put under the soul. The Galatians knew it at the time the apostle looked back to.
- Received. The blessedness is the one Romans describes: the gladness of a person whose sin God does not count against him. It came from the righteousness Paul preached.
- Spoken. It was so real that their hearts and lips were full of it — a joy they talked about, not just held.
- Given. It overflowed into love for the messenger. They welcomed a weak, unimpressive preacher as an angel of God, and would have handed him their own eyes.
- Bartered. Nothing stole it; they traded it. Grace went for law, liberty for bondage, joy for sorrow — and love does not last once we stop knowing and enjoying God.
- Recalled. God holds the soul to the old terms. His question wins wandering hearts back to His favour — the greatest lever under the soul.