Galatians 3:4,5 - Did you suffer so many things

3:4

It wasn’t only that the “method” would not work, they had started out by faith and suffered “so many things” for doing so. We do not know in detail what these were, but we know from Acts that Christians regularly experienced opposition, sometimes violent, from Gentiles, from Jews, from the rulers. The word “suffer” can also be translated “experience”. Paul wants to know if this was all for nothing.

3:5

The focus is now put on God. Again note that there were very real and tangible experiences of the Holy Spirit, including miracles. In John’s gospel we are told explicitly that he recorded only a few of the miracles that Jesus did. In Acts we have records of several miracles, but verses like this remind us that again only a selection of miracles are recorded in Acts. So they knew that God had done these things among them, now Paul asks why do they think God did them, why did He give them the Holy Spirit? Was it because of their doing works of the Law, or because of their faith in the word of the gospel? It was clearly the latter, not the former. So why would God have changed His way of working now? It is faith that gains us “approval” from God.