What does it mean to be bewitched?

The Son of God loved me, and gave Himself up for me. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. It was grace, all unspeakable grace: but the Galatian Christians had "set aside God's grace" and had chosen the law. The Galatian Christians had turned their eyes away from Christ crucified, and were looking for righteousness to come by the law. If this is true, "then Christ died for nothing!" The very thought makes Paul indignantly exclaim, "O senseless Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Who has fascinated you? Who has cast on you 'the evil eye'?" How well can we in China understand this question! How many a mother is afraid that someone may "cast the evil eye" on one of her children! How many are frightened of witchcraft! So was it in Galatia. The Galatians also knew all about these things of heathendom; and Paul uses this that they will so well understand, to show that it was the devil's evil work, not the work of God to turn their eyes away from Christ to the law. These false teachers were nothing better than the heathen fortunetellers about them, practicing witchcraft, and they had bewitched the Galatians.

THE APOSTLE CALLS them "foolish" or senseless, for they had not themselves had the spiritual sense to see whither these false teachers had been leading them. They had been like men bewitched, and under a spell of evil, and they had been led to the brink of the awful conclusion that Christ had died for nothing — that His death had been in fact a huge mistake! On the edge of this precipice they were standing, and the Apostle's pungent reasoning had come as a flash of light amidst their darkness, revealing their danger!

"O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified, among you?" Every word of scripture is important. "Who hath bewitched you?" How little they had been aware that those false brethren who had turned their eyes from Jesus Christ crucified, to something else, were under the power of witchcraft. That is, that they were the ministers of Satan, under the power and guidance of a false, evil spirit. To Paul it was either this witchcraft or the Spirit of God.

‘What has happened?’Paul asked, “Who has bewitched you?”but he did not answer it. We do not know exactly what Paul referred to here; perhaps the Judaizers had even used witchcraft in order to influence the Galatians. We do not know but what we can be certain of is that there had been a strong influence and that they had been carried away. They were fascinated by the new teaching of these Judaizers just as they had been fascinated by Paul’s teaching, as we see in the same verse as indicated by this expression, “Jesus Christ has been portrayed and crucified among you.”They had been even ready to give their own eyes in order to help Paul (4:15). They had been very impressed at the time that Paul had been there. However, a merely intellectual or emotional impression can easily be replaced and that is exactly what happened.

In this section Paul is asking six questions. This is the first one. The answers are so obvious they are not given. They were bewitched, they were fascinated by this new kind of teaching that had come after Paul had left them, that which Paul called “another gospel,”a counterfeit. The enemy was at work then, and he is at work also in our days in many circles, in many ways, and we are not immune. So we have to cast ourselves on the Lord, that He will protect us and that we might have the right attitude so that we do not do things just because we are impressed but rather because Christ has gotten hold of us. “Christ crucified”would be a study in itself, to see what that means, Christ taking the place of the curse.

There was folly in looking to the law for righteousness after they had known the grace of the gospel. The grace of the gospel had been presented to them most conspicuously in the doctrine of the Cross of Christ, but there was a 'bewitching' power which drew them off from the Cross, and made them turn to the law for righteousness. It was as though the law had set its eyes on them, like the snake on its victims, so that they were utterly powerless to get away from it. No language can more forcibly present to us what the law really is; whether moral or ceremonial, we need not enquire, for the Scripture regards the law as a whole. Some would fain add their own moral righteousness as a make-weight in the scale of their justification; others have recourse to a system of ordinances, to make up for the defect of moral righteousness; but, in either case, it is the fascinating power of law which prevents them from looking to Jesus Christ, as the object which God proposes for righteousness to every one that believeth. Again, how strong is the expression, "before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you." The publicity and prominence which the apostle gave to the doctrine of the Cross, was that of a proclamation set forth by authority in the most frequented parts of the city. Such appears to be the force of 'set forth.' Had the eye of the Galatians been fixed on the cross of Christ, they would not have turned to law for righteousness. When the doctrine of the Cross is set forth in all its stern truth, it is God's verdict against man's pretensions to wisdom, or righteousness, or strength; and it is this which makes that doctrine still offensive. But at the same time, the doctrine is full of comfort to those who know it; for it is the "making an end of sin, and bringing in everlasting righteousness."

Verse 1. "O foolish Galatians, who did bewitch you," etc. His speech is rough and unceremonious, such as charity is wont to use when seeking to pull out of the fire those who are unconscious of their danger. These much-loved children, whom in Christ Jesus he had begotten through the gospel, and nourished for a while on the sincere milk of the word, had been living latterly upon the flatteries of Satan, and under their influence were fast sinking into what must prove, if they remained in it a fatal sleep. He hastens, therefore, to shake them rudely from their slumbers, and to shame their delusions by the searching words of light and truth. And it cannot be denied that they had doubly earned the opprobrious title which he here confers upon them. They were senseless, in allowing themselves to be imposed on by a class of pretenders, whose call for their subjection to the law of Moses should have been its own immediate refutation in the eyes of those who were already under Christ. They were foolish, also, in that they did not become instinctively aware of their descent from heaven to earth under the false leading of these treacherous guides, who were drawing them, they should have felt, from the green pastures of Immanuel's land to wander in the wastes of Sinai. Who then did bewitch them that the Scriptures, which could make them wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus, should now, by their perversion and false application, be made to defraud them of their proper hope by turning them from grace to works? One answer only can be rightly given to this question. The wizard who then prevailed with his enchantments, is the same father of lies who practises not less successfully in our days.

He calls them "foolish," and tells them they had been "bewitched." For how could he do less than detect the working of Satan in the fact, that they had been withdrawn from the place where the Spirit and the truth, the cross of Christ and faith, had once put them. But then he reasons with them, argues the matter, and calls forth his witnesses. He makes themselves their judges, appealing to their first estate. "Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?" He cites Abraham in proof that a sinner had immediate personal business with Christ, and through faith found justification. And he rehearses the character of the gospel which had been preached to Abraham, how it told of Christ and of the sinner and blessing being put together and alone. "In thee (Abraham's seed, which is Christ) shall all nations be blessed." Precious gospel! Christ and the sinner and blessing bound up together in one bundle. And he goes on to confirm and establish this, by teaching them how Christ bore the curse, and, therefore, surely was entitled to dispense the blessing.

Having touched upon this great truth, he cannot refrain from an abrupt and startling rebuke, as he feels, by the contrast, how grievous the loss was. "O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you [that ye should not obey the truth]?" The expression, "that ye should not obey the truth," is one brought in from Galatians 5:7. "Ye did run well; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth?" There it is most undeniably and properly inserted, but here it is left out in the best copies of the epistle. I am not founding anything upon it, but merely state the fact by the way, because it is right to do so on fitting occasions. One main form of this meddling with Scripture consisted in transplanting a text, or phrase, that is perfectly true in its right place, from some other part of Scripture. "O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you? "It is plain that he draws particular attention to the cross of Christ — not merely to His blood, or His death, but to His cross. And you will observe, if you examine the word of God, that the particular form in which Christ's death — is set forth by the Holy Ghost, is invariably in connection with the use which has to be made of it practically. Throughout the Hebrews the point, with a little but weighty exception, is not the cross, but the blood of Christ; while in the Romans it is mainly His death, the blood often, but death the grand staple of the argument. Why does the Holy Ghost here say, not merely that He shed His blood, (which is the thing that a Christian, happy in the knowledge of forgiveness, would dwell upon,) but "crucified among you?" There is nothing in vain in Scripture: there is no bringing anything into prominence without a divine reason for it. The crucifixion puts shame upon man, and upon the flesh more than any other thing. The effect of Christ's death, simply, does not give me man made nothing of, end the utter worthlessness of human nature as before God. When the apostle wants to show the absolute separation of the Christian from the world, he says, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world." Now it is plain that this is a much graver and more forcible way of putting the case. There is nothing the world counted so foolish as the cross. Philosophers scorned the notion that a divine person should thus die: it was something that seemed so weak and objectless. They had no just sense of the horribleness of sin, of man's positive enmity to God, and of His solemn, eternal judgment. The cross is the means of bringing all out. But more than that; the cross not merely shows what the flesh is, and the world, but it also proves the hopelessness of looking to the law to bring in blessing, save in a negative way. There is such a thing as the power of the law to kill, but not to quicken; Christ alone does this.

(V. 1.) The Apostle has shown that, in turning back to the law, the Galatians were setting aside the work of Christ and belittling the glory of His Person as the Son of God. To act thus was so unnatural that it would seem as if they were bewitched, for they were practically denying the truth of the cross, the great central fact of the gospel that had been proclaimed to them, for the Apostle had set before them Christ crucified.

The man who puts himself under the law of Moses and hopes by his endeavours to keep it, and so perfect his Christianity and assist the Holy Spirit that dwells in him to produce more fruit in his life, is being diverted from Christ. This was the Galatian error, and to them the apostle wrote, “O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth? . . . Having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect in the flesh? . . . As many as are under the law are under the curse.” And thorns and briers are connected with the curse, and not fruit.