"You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, (that you disobey the truth), before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?" Paul

This sharp rebuke to the believers in Galatia by the Apostle Paul was God's inspired Word for not only the Church in his day, but this same rebuke is for us as well.


Martin Luther says: "Chidings and bitter words are as necessary in every kind of life, as any other virtue. Yet must this anger be so tempered, that it proceed not of any malice, but only of fatherly concern and affection. These kinds of anger are good, and are called in the Scripture zeals or jealousies. In chastising my child, my scholar, or subject in this manner, I seek not his hurt, but his profit and welfare. It may be then that Paul here rebukes the Galatians out of zeal (not to destroy but to amend them), or else out of pity and compassion, by way of complaint, for it grieves him that they should be so miserably reduced, as if he would say, I am sorry and ashamed to hear this of you. Even so, we reprehend the miserable; not that we tread them down, but as having compassion on them and seeking their amendment. This I say, lest any man should cavil and say that Paul railed upon the churches, contrary to the rule of the gospel. In like manner Christ rebukes the Pharisees, calling them serpents, the generation of vipers, the children of the devil. But these are the rebukings of the Holy Ghost. They are fatherly and motherly, and as the chidings of a faithful friend; as it is said in the Book of Proverbs: "Better are the wounds of a friend than kisses of an enemy" (Proverbs 27:6)."

Thank You Lord for Your rebukes. For they are evidence of Your love that hates sin, and desires that we learn to walk in love and truth. Amen.