Axiomatic is the idea that people who attempt to gain righteousness by keeping the Law, also feel urged to compel others to do likewise. The competitive spirit, or rather, the root issue of pride over others, drives this. If I can coerce someone to live as I live, then I will always be one-up, because I was there first and I got them to follow me. Once they follow me, I am in a more powerful position to continue in that superior role, dictating, as it were, my whims and wishes—of course, all disguised as laws required by God.

The reality, though, is that when a person behaves like that, it is all for show, not for substance. In the case of the false teachers among the Galatians, the motivation was to avoid persecution that comes with espousing the outrageously counter-cultural, counter-religional idea that God became man, and died for our sins. The cross of Christ speaks of the helplessness and vanity of humans trying to do the good for which we were created. Those who refuse to believe this are left with trying to “make a good showing in the flesh.” They have no other recourse.

The grand irony is that the way of the Law brings failure, because those who try to keep it cannot keep it fully. Being circumcised is not enough for justification. Yet circumcision is enough for prideful boasting. The tragedy is that those who live by the Law, set their boast on something that ultimately will be their undoing.

Why would someone not jump at the opportunity presented in the good news of the gospel? The answer: it is the darkened heart that Jeremiah spoke of, “The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?” (Jer 17:9). Jesus called it this way in addressing the Pharisees and scribes, “So you, too, outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness” (Matt 23:28) and “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel around on sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves” (Matt 23:15). So, Paul saw the error of pharisaical legalism arising again, which it has continued to do throughout church history. That’s why this letter to the Galatians remains relevant even today.