My Dear Children

FROM: MAY 15 @ 21, 2018

TOPIC: "My Dear Children" Galatians 4:12–20 We should notice the deep affection that these last words contain: "My dear children..." It is said that the diminutives, whether in Greek or Latin, or as in Spanish, always express tenderness. Paul's heart was coming out of his chest! It is said that the accent of love will penetrate to where the tones of rage could never arrive.

I. "I plead with you, brothers, become like me, for I became like you" (Vs. 12)

A. Despite their failures and the fears that harbors about them:

1. Paul wanted them to be like him ("...to become like me..."), what Christ is in his life!

2. Paul passed as a Gentile, the goal was to win over the Galatians, who were Gentiles.

3. The result of that surrender of the apostle was for the Galatians to respond as he acted; that being a Jew, he was no longer under the slavery of the Law.

4. He had no complaints about how they had treated him ("You have done me no wrong.").

5. My dear Paul was ill and yet he had been able to preach to them (Vs. 13).

6. They could have looked at him with contempt and turn their back on him with disgust, but they didn’t; but rather they received him as if he were an angel of God, just as you would have received Jesus Christ Himself (Vs. 14).

7. Paul lets them know on that occasion that he had great motives to congratulate them.

8. The illness that the apostle talks about is not known, but, whatever it was, even great headaches, the matter was that in those past days the Galatians would have given him their own eyes if they could (Vs. 15).

9. They did not despise him, they did not turn their backs on him.

10. But, what has happened now, if even their eyes they would have given him? Why did they change?

11. Who arrived to indispose and upset the good love and dedication they felt towards Paul?

12. Someone was carrying among them a certain structured activity with very specific and formal rules.

13. Someone was teaching the Galatians in a different way, they even made them change their faith in Christ leading them to follow very specific and formal rules; they led them to follow the Law!

14. The Galatians had undertaken the observance of the Jewish calendar on Saturdays, the feasts and seasons. (Vs. 10 "You are observing special days and months and seasons and years.")

15. People seek to have an intense satisfaction thinking that they can do something with their own strength and thus earn God's approving smile.

16. This implies that man has some strength, and for that and up to this point, it seemed to the Galatians that they did not need the Savior.

17. It was Paul's same struggle with Peter, and with the others: that after being taught to believe and live on the path of salvation by grace, they now turned, as enemies, to follow the specific and formal rules of the Law. It was to return again to slavery.

18. For such reason there was so much tension between them.

19. There was no longer any freedom, no love, it was a war of laws and doctrines that had never done them any good.

20. Those teachers were fighting for the Galatians, who were Gentiles, to adopt the Jewish religion.

21. What had happened to the joy they had before with Paul? "If they wanted to give me their eyes." (Vs. 15)

22. Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth? (Vs. 16)

23. For the Galatians, Paul had become a harmful person for telling them the truth.

24. What a pain! "How uncertain are the compliments of the people and how quick are men to change their minds, to the point of wanting to take out the eyes of those for whom they previously would have taken their own." (Quote from M. H.)

25. The truth is that the spirits of people, even believers, are always in danger (unless they have reached maturity) to change direction like the sails of a ship before the blowing of the different "winds of doctrines, "especially when there are preachers who are charmed with curiosity.

26. "The truth produces discomfort in the brothers when their hearts are determined to follow their own and carnal ways, but Paul never admitted the possibility of softening the truth in order to keep the brothers happy." (Quote from Trenchard)

27. "It is not something out of the ordinary that men have as enemies those who, in reality, are their "best friends", for such are undoubtedly those who tell them the truth" (quote from M. H.)

28. Those who were false wanted the Galatians to pay homage to them so that they could be circumcised and brought into the Jewish nation (Vs. 17).

29. These false teachers seemed very complacent, but the only thing they wanted was to exercise control over the Galatians to reduce them to a condition of slavery and dependence on them and the Law.

30. Those enemies of the truth used seductive words, (Galatians 3:1 "Oh foolish Galatians, who fascinated you to not obey the truth...") flattering to attract the faithful of Galatia.

31. Finally, they sought to separate them from Paul, they wanted to expose him as a preacher of an incomplete Gospel in order to separate them from the true Gospel, therefore, from Jesus Christ Himself.

32. Flattery makes people lean in favor of false preachers.

33. For Paul to be able to take the Galatians to Christ, it had cost him true "birth pains" and now he had to "continue to have them" (Vs. 19).

34. This the Jews would never feel, for they crucified the Master, then they persecuted the believers and now they wanted Paul dead. Let us be faithful to the truth that we have learned without listening to the destructive voices of the false teachers. Amen.