Because I Care

Paul refers to special days and seasons (10). It seems that Galatian Christians were following the calendar of the Jewish Law and Paul wished they would not. It was like throwing a car into reverse gear, he felt, when it should be moving forward. The Law had led forward, across the years, to the Messiah, Jesus—and now the Galatians, who started with Jesus, think they must turn back to the Law. Paul fears they have lost the plot and forgotten all that Jesus means. He wants them to think again, so, as motivation and leverage, he recalls his own first contact with them.

He speaks of illness (13). What sort of illness was he referring to? Was it a sight problem? Is that why he says that they would have given him their eyes (15)? Or was this Galatian illness the trouble that he refers to as “a thorn in my flesh” (2 Cor. 12:7)? We don’t know, yet the Galatians knew one thing very well. They recognized that their frail and sick visitor brought a message of strength and living power. They welcomed Paul as “an angel” (14)—a messenger of God.

In verse 19 we meet another medical image, perhaps an unexpected one. We sometimes think of Paul as tough and contentious, but he could be tender and emotional too. Here he talks of “childbirth.” He thought of himself as a mother to his converts. For him, the intense effort of his ministry was like a mother’s birthing pains. I am laboring, says Paul, to bring new spiritual life to the people I love. The emotional commitment, the suffering he had undergone and the promise of new creation—all these spoke to him of a mother’s gift of life to her infant child.

How do you feel about comparing the nurture of a new Christian with a mother’s role? Have you ever felt like a spiritual mother to anyone?