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Paul reminds his readers of their spiritual experience as he preached the Gospel to them. He opens with a vocative, “You foolish Galatians,” translated by Phillips as “You dear little idiots.” Arichea and Nida translate it: “You Galatians are not thinking right” (p. 53). “Who has bewitched you?” Paul asks. The use of the rhetorical question here means that the evidence is incontrovertible, that Paul believes the false teachers have brainwashed them. “Who knows better,” Dayton asks, “than a backslider what he has fallen from. . .? In moments of honesty he knows how wretched he is” (WBC, 5:345).
Implied in this question (v.3) is that it is an expected part of Christian experience for believers to receive the Holy Spirit. He asks them to reflect on their experience: Had the Spirit come upon them as the result of their faith in Christ or as the result of following the law? If it was by faith in Christ, then why would they even consider returning to legalism?
How can that which was begun by the Spirit be nurtured by the flesh? (Burton, 486). Paul, once and for all, rejects the notion that the law and efforts under the law can release God’s power or Spirit. Nor can they promote God’s gracious dealing with humankind, as the “false teachers” had been suggesting. To be captivated by the Jewish ritual of circumcision was to reject the legitimacy of a spiritual experience by faith.