How highly the Galatian believers had esteemed Paul; how heartily they had loved him when he had first come to them proclaiming grace! The Apostle recalls it in Galatians 4:13-15:
βYe know how through infirmity of the flesh I preached the gospel unto you at the first.
βAnd my temptation which was in my flesh ye despised not, nor rejected; but received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus.
βWhere is then the blessedness ye spake of? for I bear you record, that, if it had been possible, ye would have plucked out your own eyes, and have given them to me.β
How happy in grace, how thoroughly blessed, had the Galatian Christians been β when Paul was with them! But let the Apostle turn his back, as it were; let the legalizers come courting on the morrow and suddenly these same believers were ready to go back under the Law. βSo soonβ had they fallen from grace! The Apostle was dumbfounded! βI marvel,β he says, βthat ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospelβ (Gal. 1:6).
How unspeakably sad! And how natural that, hearing the news, the Apostle should sit down immediately to write them this urgent epistle, in large letters.
The temptations to βfall from graceβ are as great today as they ever were. It would be well, therefore, to read this letter to the Galatians often so that we might be among those who βstand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us freeβ (Gal. 5:1). source
