How stupid can you be?

O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified? This only I want to learn from you:Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh? - Galatians 3.1-3

Can anything be more foolish than to find liberty, and then be drawn back into captivity? That's just crazy, you might say. And if you say that you would be right. 

The Galatians knew they were saved by grace. They knew they could to nothing to save themselves. They knew if they could do that Christ would have died in vain. They knew they had begun in the spirit. And yet now they had been beguiled into thinking that they could continue in the faith in the power of their flesh. 

What a mixup! No wonder Paul said ‘O foolish Galatians.’ I think today we might say something like 'how could you be so stupid?'

When we trust our salvation in what we do we belittle the work of Jesus on the cross. We demean His great work. We make it about us, not Him. 

How stupid indeed are we when we make our lives about trying to keep a whole list of man-made dos and don'ts. True faith produces good works. Work do not produce faith.