If you have been journeying with me through these last few chapters then you will know that Paul has been labouring extensively to prevent the false teachers from deceiving the Galatian gentiles that they need to be Jewish in order to be truly saved.
He has used strong words at times but he will reveal in this next verse that this was not because they had hurt him in some way and so he was paying them back. Far from it. This has to be the most beautiful part of the letter as we see the love of this Pastor for these people.
“I plead with you, brothers and sisters, become like me, for I became like you. You did me no wrong.” (Galatians 4 v 12)
Paul’s testimony is that he was like them. Or shall I say he had been like them. He was now completely free from the man he used to be from the person they are behaving like or at least threatening to become. But he used to be a legalist. He had spent his whole life trying to please God. He was a rule-keeper, a joyless one. “I know what I’m talking about, I was like you.”
But he is now pleading with them. He urges them to change their way of life. Isn’t that what our own desire is also? We want our non-Christian friends to know the freedom of Christ that we have experienced. We don’t want the followers of Jesus to be burdened by rules that have been imposed by man.
This is not arrogance. This is an urging, a longing for the people to have what Paul has.
Who do you know that with all of your heart you long for them to know, to have, to experience what you have?
Will you tell them?
Missions Paul 