being brought to the full end in any other sphere or by any other agency. To allow

"works of the law and the flesh" to intrude at the goal, when they were repudiated as

valueless at the commencement was neither of faith or reason. To bring the Galatians to

a fuller sense of their irrational behaviour, the apostle appeals to their past experiences,

even as he appeals later in the epistle to his own.

At the time of the conversion of the Galatians, suffering normally followed the

reception of the gospel, and so the apostle turned aside for a moment to ask, "was all that

endured in vain?" Yet it was hard for him to think so "if it be really in vain", for ei ge

leaves a loophole for doubt, and kai widens this, implying an unwillingness to believe

this on the part of the speaker. Reverting to the Galatian defection when writing

chapter four, the apostle speaks, not of their suffering "in vain", but of his labours on

their behalf.

These persecutions had been endured mainly at the hand of Jews or Judaizers. What

an extraordinary thing, said the apostle in effect, you suffered at the hands of the legalists

when you were first saved by grace, and now you contemplate attaining the goal of faith

by reverting to their questionable and obsolete practices!

In order that the force of his opening question should not be dulled by the subsequent

development of his argument, the apostle reverts to it with the phrase ho oun "well then,

as I said, etc."

The apostle had before him seven different words that are translated "to minister" in

the N.T.; the one he chose here is epichoregeo. Choregeo meant originally "to lead a

chorus", in course of time it came to mean, especially in Athens, "the defraying of the

cost of solemn public choruses", and so, ultimately to "furnishing" and "supplying"

generally. This defraying of the expenses of the Greek Chorus was usually undertaken

by a wealthy citizen who found the members, furnished instructions, musicians, and the

dresses. The intensive form used by the apostle, epichoregeo, adds the thought of

completeness to the provision, and so of itself emphasized the folly of the Galatians in

their attempt to mingle their own puny works of law with the grace that supplied so

liberally and so completely.

The Galatians would discover that Peter himself rebukes their folly for, concerning the

conversion of Cornelius, he said: