#162-G108 ~ Galatians 4:19
I begin the whole first section with a lot of important principles and then a short review of our Galatians 4 passage.
16 Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?
The Galatians apparently got into name-calling as people do today. Today we have formal terms such as Hyper-dispensationalist and Ultra-dispensationalist. If you want to get ostracized, just start communicating spiritual truth. It will bring on criticism and name-calling nearly every time. I here make some important comments about various translations of the Bible. What a tremendous amount of confusion there is about this.
17 They zealously affect [court or seek] you, but not well [commendably]; yea, they would exclude you, that ye might affect [court or seek] them.
A better translation would be…
17 They eagerly seek you, not in a commendable way, but they want to shut you out so that you will seek them.
This plays on the idea that people often want what they can’t have.
18 But it is good to be zealously affected always in a good thing, and not only when I am present with you.
A better translation would be…
18 But it is good always to be eagerly sought in a commendable manner, and not only when I am present with you.
The KJV continues…
19 My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you,
He calls them little children because he led them to the Lord and because he feels like he’s having to begin all over with them in his teaching. Here he’s dealing with immature believers. Again, he’s experiencing “travail” because of having to almost start over with them in his teaching. It is quite easy to see why Paul was so frustrated with them. If you ever try to teach people God’s Word, you’ll experience some of this same frustration.
I close this out with some comments about the simplicity of the gospel and salvation. It was God through Christ who did the work. All we do is the believing. We all need to make sure we make a habit of that as we learn more and more of God’s Word.
