Galatians 4:8-20 Unprofessional Ministry

Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan, where you can grow in faith, community, and service. We're currently studying Galatians in a series called Off the Chain, Finding Freedom in Galatians.

Paul’s Emotional Appeal in Galatians 4

Here's Pastor Don Filsack. We're going to go ahead and continue through our journey through the book of Galatians this morning. And I want everybody to turn over. You can go ahead and turn there now, Galatians 4, 8 through 20, which is found on page 834 in the Bible.

That's the seat back in front of you. I'm going to read that here in a second, but I'm going to give some introductory comments. I want everybody to consider when is the last time that you showed strong emotion?

Like when is the last time you were moved to tears? When is the last time you shouted? Preferably not in the car on the way here, although it probably happened to some of you. But when is the last time you showed some kind of a sense of deep emotion?

Now, I study a lot in order to get down to the understanding of these texts. I read scholars. I read all different kinds of things throughout the week, and I spend quite a bit of time preparing for my messages and honesty.

But most scholars, I think, struggle with the emotion of the text. And so you can read whole commentaries about books of the Bible that are completely emotionless. Do you know what I'm saying? They're scholarly.

They deal with the Greek or the Hebrew text. They deal with grammar and the way that the words fit together. But I think of it this way. Most scholars don't tend to be emotional kind of people. Now, I'm stereotyping to some degree, but if you've basically got your degree in ancient languages, you love to parse Greek verbs, and the primary thing is studying the thing in its particular focus, and you really narrow that down, it's sometimes not necessarily an emotional kind of thing.

Are you getting what I'm saying? Not to stereotype, because there are certainly scholars that are emotional, but I think that they struggle with that to the degree that sometimes it's hard to actually get that from a commentary.

And so, many commentaries on this text would accuse Paul of losing his train of thought. Like, Paul, in the first three chapters of the book of Galatians, has given very logical, rational explanation of the gospel, and a very clear defense of grace, and then here, all of a sudden, he gets kind of sappy.

And when I'm talking about strong emotion, I know I just mentioned anger, yelling, or whatever. I think he's going to show a different kind of emotion. Now, those of you who have been here throughout the study in the book of Galatians, has Paul shown some emotion already?

He's shown some pretty direct emotion, right? He's called them foolish Galatians. Who's bewitched you? He said some pretty strong things to them. But what I'm saying is that there's a turn in a softening of his emotion, where he's still passionate.

He's still emotionally engaged, but he is actually now starting to get almost kind of in anguish over the things that they're struggling with. He's going to talk about feelings and things like that here in the text.

Yeah, he speaks of his own fear in this text for them. He literally says, I'm afraid for you. He talks about his feelings. He talks about their feelings, what it felt like to be together with them. He speaks of the anguish that they are bringing him, and he even admits at the end, kind of an emotional term.

He says, I'm perplexed. I'm confused about you. You're confusing me with the way that you're acting. Now, Paul was a very passionate individual. He didn't minister to people as one who stood aloof and distant.

He wasn't like, okay, I'm the minister and you guys are all the people and I'm just gonna stay up here and not let you into my life and I'm not going to engage in your life, and I'm just going to be distant from you.

He was down with the people, engaged with the people, and he didn't protect his heart in the process. And we're going to talk about what that means for all of us here this morning. If we're honest, think about yourself.

I think if we're honest, we tend to build up walls around our lives, to shelter us and to protect us from harm and hurt and anguish, because how many of you have ever trusted somebody and then that person abused that trust?

Have you been there? I think all of us have. So it's kind of like the once-bitten-twice-shy kind of thing, right? And what do we naturally do? We start to wall people out. We start to hedge ourselves around.

And so we get together on Sunday morning and we talk about the weather. We talk about the Lions. We talk about Michigan football or the Cornhuskers or whatever. We talk about these things. We talk about how the Tigers are doing, right?

Hopefully going to continue this streak. That would be awesome, right? But when somebody asks us a question that goes deeper, okay, enough about the Wolverines, enough about the Tigers, enough about the Lions.

How are you really doing? I think a lot of us, the next thing that comes out of our mouth is a cop-out. And it's just one simple word, fine. Right? We throw the word fine at it and then dismiss it or go back to a different conversation or try to deflect it.

Is anybody relating to that? Anybody see that in your own tendency, the way that we put these walls up? So let's jump in to this text here and see how Paul is opening his hearts to his friends and the family of God.

So again, Galatians 4, 8 through 20, page 834 in that Bible. And if you don't own a Bible or you don't own an English Standard Version of the Bible, you can take that one with you. It's our desire to have everybody have a copy of the Word of God.

Follow along as I read the words of the Apostle Paul, but equally the words of God himself to us here at Recast this morning. Formerly when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods, but now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more?

You observe days and months and seasons and years. I'm afraid I may have labored over you in vain. Brothers, I entreat you, become as I am, for I also have become as you are. You did me no wrong. You know it was because of a bodily ailment that I preached the gospel to you at first, and though my condition was a trial to you, you did not scorn or despise me, but received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus.

What then has become of the blessing you felt? For I testify to you that if possible you would have gouged out your eyes and given them to me. Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth? They make much of you, but for no good reason.

They want to shut you out, that you may make much of them. It is always good to be made much of for a good purpose, and not only when I am present with you, my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.

I wish I could be present with you now and change my tone, for I am perplexed about you. Let's pray. Father, as we come to this text, we get an emotional appeal from your apostle, from Paul, and we get to see how he engaged people in real life, and how his emotions were engaged with his people.

Father, we get to hear him talk about themes of idolatry in this, of worshipping that which is not God, and Father, that is so pertinent to this issue of what we are about to undertake, and that is your worship, that we worship you, not other things, not material stuff, not other gods, but we worship you.

And Father, I ask that our hearts would flow out of the knowledge of both knowing you and being known by you, and that, Father, you would inhabit our worship, that it would flow out of hearts, free in your spirit, and Father, that we would rejoice in these awesome truths that we are going to dive into in this text.

I ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Last week, we talked, we are going just chapter by chapter through the book of Galatians, and last week, we talked about the first part of Galatians chapter 4, where Paul was explaining a significant transition that has happened both on the global scale of history, but then equally, that same transition applied to individuals' lives, and that is the transition from a place of slaves to God, to a place, a position of sons or heirs to God through Jesus Christ.

So, slaves under the law, under rules, under regulations, and that shifted with the coming of Jesus Christ, so that now we can be made heirs of the promise given to Abraham through Jesus Christ to us by faith in his son.

So, that is what we talked about last week, that transition, that change that has happened through the promise that was given through Abraham to Jesus, who is now the Messiah, is the Chosen One. And what he spoke about more generally there, he starts out by applying specifically to the people of Galatia, the people that he is writing this letter to.

And Paul says, formerly when you did not know God, he says, there was a time in your history, Galatians, there was a time in your history when you did not know and did not understand God, and I would say the same is true for all of us here in this room.

There was a time when we did not know God, and that was specifically true of the Galatians in this, that the majority of the people in that Roman province, now we are talking about an ancient Roman province, south-central Turkey, the country of Turkey today, and it was like a district of Rome, if you will, a province, and the majority of the people in Galatia were from a Greek-speaking background.

Before Paul came into town, they had little understanding, probably no understanding of who Jesus Christ was, little understanding of Moses or the God of the Bible, or anything to do with the Old Testament.

They were pagan idol worshippers who followed the pantheon of the Greek and Roman gods and goddesses. And so, I mean, when you think in your mind, what was Galatia like before Paul showed up, think literal statues all throughout the town that people would literally bring offerings to, offerings of food, offerings of sacrifices, literally sacrificing goats and sheep and all different kinds of things to these gods and goddesses.

Think like, you know, how many of you, like when you were in elementary school or when you were in school, you learned about the Greek and Roman gods to some degree, Mercury, Mars, you know, Zeus, all of those, okay?

Jupiter, a lot of the planets are named after them. So we learned about that. That's what it was like in Galatia before Paul showed up. So Paul words it this way, he says, before you came to know God, you were enslaved to those that were not gods, little g.

You were enslaved to something that was not really God. You see, Paul spoke last week about humanity being enslaved to law. This week, he's going to speak about humanity enslaved to idolatry. He's basically going to say, in essence, the human problem is the same whichever side of the spectrum you fall on.

The human problem is that you are enslaved to something that is not God. That is the human predicament. Would all of you agree with that to some degree or other, that you've experienced that and come to the place in your life where you've recognized slavery to something that is not God?

And often for most of us, if we were to really boil it down to its core, there is one thing that seems to grab my attention the most, that seems to enslave me the most often. Does anybody want to guess what that is?

TV. Myself. Me. What's that? The tigers. Not the tigers. But are you getting what I'm saying? I am my own worst enemy. I am my addiction. I am my hang-up. Does anybody agree with that? When it really comes down to it, it's about serving me, and it's about putting me on the pedestal, about worshiping me, whether that's through pleasure, or through stuff, or through whatever.

There is an enslavement to self that is the common problem of humanity. Well, in essence, Paul in verses 8 and 9 is equating that problem. He's saying that there's this human problem, and it's enslavement to that which is not God.

And it's either in our lives. He's talked about enslavement to the law last week. Do you remember that? He said it's possible for a human to be enslaved to the law, and it's equally possible here, he says, to be enslaved to idols.

He's contrasting two types and forms of slavery. Is one better than the other? Is one of those better than the other? I mean, enslavement to self-righteousness, enslavement to law on one side, or enslavement to sin and self-service on the other.

One of those better than the other? It's kind of like, it would be kind of like a cocaine addict looking at a heroin addict and saying, at least I'm not addicted to heroin, right? It's like pick your poison, right?

It's like both are an addiction. Both are problems. Both are hurting you in their essence. So really the solution is simply this, coming to God on his terms through the promised Messiah. That is the solution to the problem of human enslavement.

That is the solution to the problem of each of our hearts. Anything other than that solution leads to some form of enslavement. Trying to live by laws ends in enslavement. Like I mentioned, I've mentioned a couple of times in the series about the hamster wheel, right?

When have you done enough law to please God? How do you know you have enough laws? How many of you, have you lived that way? That constant like churning the wheel but going nowhere and it's constantly, there's always another rung to grab onto.

There's always more laws, always more rules, always more regulations. It's a never-ending cycle. Is that enslavement? But what about worshiping things that are not God? How does that lead to enslavement?

I actually, I send out my sermon every week to a couple of people. They give me some feedback and let me know how it hits them. And one person said, can you tease that out a little bit? Can you illustrate for me?

Like what is, how does worshiping something else lead to enslavement? How does that enslave us? So I thought I'd just use an illustration, one simple one that I think all of us can relate to. Like how many of you know there's like this new iPhone 5 coming out?

Okay, any of you hear about that? I'm pretty excited, all right? Sweet, I actually blogged about that this past week and if you want to take advantage of that, some of what I'm talking about here, I mine a little bit deeper in my blog.

But it's primarily about materialism. Can anybody relate to materialism? Like the worship of stuff, the worship of things, upgrades, updates, faster, brighter, more awesome, more prestige, right? Like you get more prestige for carrying the right phone or whatever and it's like all of that tied up in, rolled up into the stuff that we own.

Better cars, faster cars, nicer cars, better looking, newer. How many adjectives can you throw at this, right? And that's enslavement. Because how many of you know that your iPhone 4S is now out of date and you need an iPhone 5, right?

Because there's constantly something more. There's, is this sounding familiar? Is there another rung on the, is there another rung to climb? Is there one more, is there always gonna be another rung out there when materialism is your God when you are serving stuff?

There's always something more to get, right? When do I know I've got enough? When do I know that I've kept the law enough, enslavement? When do I know that I've got enough stuff? Oh, it's always just one more, right?

Some famous wealthy person said, I'll know that I have enough when I just have one more million dollars. Just one more million, just another million, okay? And then it's another million once he gets that other million.

You see, I'm convinced that worship in the human heart is about landing in a place of restoration, landing in a place of contentment and peace. And our hearts are searching. Every heart in this room is on a quest.

Every heart in this room is on a journey looking for satisfaction, looking for fulfillment, looking for correction and a place of wholeness and completeness. Would you agree with that? Every one of our hearts, at least at some point, has been there.

Now, some of you have found it, right? Glory to God, you found it. You found that place. But we're gonna talk here in just a moment about how we can find that place and still go back to enslavement. That's Paul's concern for the Galatians.

You found that place, you found that wholeness, you found that completeness, and now you're going back to slavery. But ultimately, here he says, idolatry is an attempt to find a remedy to our problem of enslavement that will never really satisfy us.

That's what idolatry looks like. It's putting something else in the place that only God can fulfill in our hearts. How many of you have heard the illustration, there's a God-shaped hole inside your heart, only God can fill it?

We try to plug other things into it to fulfill us, and they will never satisfy. All they do is they enslave us. So I'd encourage you all to know yourself this morning. Which way do you lean in these enslavements?

Everyone in this room has an inherent bent, possibly by the way that you were raised or just by the experiences that you've had in life. Do you lean towards idolatry or do you lean towards self-righteousness?

Do you lean towards the law or do you lean towards living it up? Everyone here has that. And we just got done saying, both are enslavement, right? Both are equally an issue that need a remedy. And the remedy for both is the same medicine.

The remedy for both problems is the cross of Jesus Christ. That is the place of solution. That is the place of healing. That is the place where idolaters, think about that side of the equation for a minute.

The person who is worshiping idols and worshiping self, that is the place where an idolater can bow their knee and acknowledge that God is the only one who truly loves them and can set them free. The only one who can truly free them from that enslavement to self, enslavement to pleasure, enslavement to whatever it might be.

And for the legalist, the cross is the place where we kneel and we give up our striving, where we acknowledge our need for someone other than ourselves to fix the problem, right? That enslavement to laws and rules and regulations and it's a bowing the knee at the cross and saying, I can't do this.

I can't do this on my own. I need Jesus Christ. In essence, for the legalist, the cross slaps us across the face and says, wake up fool. Do you think Jesus would have hung here if you could do it on your own?

Do you think He would have suffered like that? Do you think He would have taken the lashes? Do you think He would have taken the nails and hung there with the crown of thorns and the pain and the agony that He went through?

Would He have done that if you could save yourself? He went through that because He is the way, the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father except through Him. He is the avenue. The cross is the place where we come for healing, for wholeness, for completeness.

Knowing God and Being Known by God

Verse nine points out that Paul is confident that this change has actually happened for the Corinthians. They have, he says, come to know God and then he corrects himself in the text. Look at this. He says in verse nine, he says, but now that you have come to know God or rather to be known by God.

Paul didn't make a mistake. Correct himself and then forget to erase the first part. Okay. He is intentionally leaving both sides of that equation. You have come to know God. I mean, actually what I meant to say is come to be known by God.

He's making a point. He wants to point out two sides of a coin that I think are going to remain a mystery for all of us, for our entire lives. I want you to know that if you're studying God, you better not understand it all.

Like if you get it all, then you're God, right? If you can understand him, if you can wrap your mind around this thing called God, then you must be God. So there are some mysteries and I leave some room for that.

I'm not trying to cop out. I've studied this and I'm going to continue studying it my whole life. I encourage you to continue studying it. I'm not convinced that on this side of eternity, we're going to get the answer.

But the text highlights this issue that we have to keep intention in our lives very clearly. He says, salvation is both us finding God or coming to know God, but more accurately, he corrects himself. He says, it's better to state it this way.

It is a becoming known by God that God comes to know us. So think of it this way. This is what Paul's, I think, getting at. Who was lost in the equation of your salvation? Was God lost and you found him?

Was he playing some big game of cosmic hide and seek and you had to go out on a quest to go find God? Or were you lost, wandering outside of the flock, wandering where the wolves and the bears and all of the lions and everything lives that likes to eat sheep?

Were you lost out there in the wilds and God as the good shepherd came to find you? Which way did that equation work? Did you just, because of your prowess and your ability as a sheep, did you just kind of fight off all the wolves, destroy all of the bears, destroy all the lions, and then come into the flock and kind of like find your way back through all the craggy mountainous regions and all of a sudden you're like, hey, I'm back in the flock because I got here.

Is that how that worked for you? Or did God in his great and awesome mercy come and leave the 99 as Jesus talks about in the parable? Did he leave the 99 and come and find you because he loves you and he cares for you?

He said, I'm gonna go find them and bring them back in. He is the good shepherd and he came for you and me. Paul believed that God was the primary one responsible for salvation. It is his initiative to come to know you that has saved you.

He's the primary one responsible for it and I believe it. My salvation, that Don Felsick's name is written in the book of life, that I will one day stand with him on the new earth and live for eternity is not because of my goodness or righteousness.

It is strictly all about the goodness and mercy and grace of our great God and that's the only reason, that's it. It's the only reason any of us are going to stand with him on that day is because of his mercy towards us, him coming to know us.

So Paul asked a rhetorical question and even this question is gonna drip with the emotion that I was talking about earlier in my introduction. Paul is emotional as he walks through this. He says, how can you have come to be known by God?

How can you get to that place and then return back to the basic principles, the elementary things that enslaved you? How can you go back there to laws and rules and regulations or to all of those things that enslaved you?

He calls them weak and worthless things. The things that enslave us in life, the materialism, all of those different concepts are like worthless, weak things. And the word picture that he uses here in the text, look at it, how can you turn back to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world whose slaves you want to be once more?

The word picture is like this, can you picture in your mind a dungeon? I'm not talking about a jail cell, I'm talking about a dungeon. Okay, like rough stone walls, dank, dark, bugs, wetness, crud, filth, stink, chains like up on the wall to shackle you in an uncomfortable position, guards who don't bring any food hardly at all, maybe once in a couple of days there's a tray slung at you.

Can you picture that in your mind? Now imagine that there's a place like that and you were chained there and your shackles have been released and the doors have been thrown open and you're free to go.

That's what Christ has done for us, he set us free. And now imagine that by some chance as kind of like a little prison dungeon reunion, you decide what I want to do is I guess I'm just gonna go back there for a time, walk into your cell, lock the door behind you and reshackle yourself to the wall just for old time's sake.

How can you do that? You've been set free. Do you see the word picture that he's giving here? How can you go and reshackle yourself to those weak and worthless things that held you captive, that enslaved you?

How can we do that? He gets emotional. I picture that he's like just in a frenzy. He's like, I'm perplexed, I'm confused. How can you do this with the freedom that you received in Jesus Christ? How is it that you're going back to those things that enslaved you?

Reshackling yourself to the wall is kind of not smart and Paul is reasonably perplexed, confused. So in what way are they, what are they doing that's doing this? So wouldn't that be a logical question?

In what way were the Galatians shackling themselves to the wall again? What were they doing? And it's kind of silly. It's kind of funny. It's kind of weird. Look at verse 10. You observe days and months and seasons and years exclamation point.

Ooh, how wicked of them to keep a calendar. Look at this. It kind of sounds like Paul's gone a fry short of a happy meal here. Okay, why freak out? Because someone's keeping a calendar. Like their day timer is up to date or something.

It's like, oh, you know, you guys are reshackling yourselves to the walls of a calendar. Well, what is this about? Apparently Paul has caught word that these new Christians in Galatia have adopted the Jewish calendar, which I'm not convinced is the problem.

It's not that they are not free to keep the Sabbath. Are you free to keep the Sabbath? Yeah, should you keep the Sabbath? Yeah, you should have a day set aside that you don't work to recharge your batteries.

That's the way that God made us. He designed us that way from the beginning. And so that carries forward. We're still there. It's not a law to you, but it's a good thing for you. And so are we free to keep the Jewish calendar?

Well, yeah, yeah, we're free. As a matter of fact, Paul himself even felt the freedom to follow some of the Jewish traditions himself. At one point in the book of Acts, he actually takes a Nazarite vow and doesn't cut his hair until a certain point and then cuts it all off and takes it into the temple as a sacrifice, like a Jewish custom.

So is he free to keep the law? So is anybody confused now? Why is it okay for him to keep a Jewish tradition, but now he's telling the Galatians don't? Well, I think that by context, it becomes pretty clear in this book that those in Galatia were beginning to do so out of a desire to get on God's good side.

It's as if they're saying, because we keep a Sabbath, God likes us more. And they're beginning to compare and they're beginning to contrast their lives with others. So it's like, I get up and have a prayer time at 4 .30 in the morning, so God really likes me more.

And the only reason that God likes you and loves you is because of the blood of Jesus Christ that covers you. That's it. It's all been purchased. It's all been done. You are free. It is about grace. It is about his love for you.

So they adopted the Jewish calendar for the purpose of getting on God's good side. Thinking that God would like them more. I challenge you to think about what is in your life that makes you think that God likes you more than others.

I think it's a human predicament, a human problem that for those who are enslaved by law, and in reality, we have a tendency to go back to this time and time again, right? It's like we go back and we shackle ourselves to these things.

And we enter into a great and horrible game called the comparison game, right? Where as long as I'm doing better than you, I'm happy. But you start getting up at four o 'clock to have your quiet time, and then I need to get up at four o 'clock and have my quiet time for an hour or two, you know, and pray through the church directory.

And then, you know, and then once I get through the church directory, I pray through the phone book or whatever. And it's like, what do you, what do you, are you getting what I'm saying? Is there always more you could be doing?

And so we get in this comparison game with others. And the only thing. The only thing that counts in our lives is our relationship to Jesus Christ. To get how backwards this would have been to Paul's mind, like how confusing, why he's perplexed.

Think about it from his perspective. Who's Paul? How do we know Paul? What do we know about him in scripture? He had come out of a very Jewish, a very strict Jewish upbringing. He was being trained by the Pharisees, the people who added rules on top of rules about how to keep the rules.

And so that was his history. And he's come out of that Jewish lifestyle to the place where he's even comfortable like eating some bacon from time to time, okay? He was realizing his freedom in Christ.

And here these Gentiles are surrendering their bacon and becoming like Jewish, becoming like Jews, thinking that that was the pathway to a good relationship with God. Do you see how they're missing each other?

Like the two ships crossing in the night. Him coming from a Jewish background into freedom in Christ. Them coming from freedom in Christ into a Jewish perspective. Do you see why that would be a burr under Paul's saddle?

Do you see why that would get him riled up? Christ has made me free and here you guys are adopting my old lifestyle, acting like Jews and thinking that that's the way that you're acceptable to God because of that.

And at this point, Paul is afraid for them. He admits it in verse 11, that he's afraid that his hard work has not resulted in their genuine understanding of the gospel. He's saying, if you're adding, you're going back and enslaving yourself to these laws again, and you're thinking that you're in God's favor.

Did you even understand the gospel in the first place? Did you understand that the only thing that's acceptable to God is the blood of Jesus Christ? Didn't you get that? He's afraid for them. And he says in verse 12, he says, I entreat you.

I urge you. I plead with you. I'm begging with you. Notice he's not commanding. As an apostle, does he have the authority to command? He could. Or if he's just a jerk, he could command them. But instead he says, I urge you.

I entreat you. I'm begging with you to become as I am. How was Paul? What's he getting at? He was free in Christ. I encourage you. I'm entreating you. I'm begging with you. Please come and be like me.

Not that I'm awesome or super sweet. It's just that, come and be like me in my freedom in Christ. Because I have become like you are. How are they? I've become like a Gentile. I became like one of you when I was among you.

That's freedom. At this point, I said already, Paul was afraid for them. And he's afraid that the emotional, look at the word, it's toil in verse 11. This emotional toil that it took to bring the gospel to them.

And he says, I'm afraid that's been worthless in your life. How many of you know that it was hard work for Paul to bring the gospel to the people in Galatia? Even just the transit there. Have any of you ever been on a ship out at sea?

Or out on the Great Lakes when there's a storm swelling? Anybody get seasick? Like even just the trip to Galatia would have been hard on most of us in that context and in that culture. Let alone just all of the hardships and difficulties.

One part in the book of Acts in Galatia, people didn't like what they were hearing. They picked up stones and they threw so many stones at him so hard that they thought he was dead. Okay, that's toil.

That's labor to bring the gospel to people. I mean, what does it take? What does it cost you to bring the gospel to your workplace? What does it take to bring the gospel to your neighborhood, to your friends?

I doubt that anybody's gonna be left for dead in that process. You're like, Donna, you don't know my friends. I don't wanna know your friends if that's the way that goes. That's scary, that's creepy. Yeah, no leaving for dead here, okay?

So that makes sense. Why he wants to clarify that ultimately a strong emotion here is not because they are wronging him. He doesn't want them to think, I want you to change because you've done something wrong to me.

So you see that in verse 12. Brothers, I entreat you, become as I am, for I have also become as you are. You did me no wrong. He doesn't want them to change because they're getting some sense that now he's emotional and he's all hurt and he's been out of shape so they're just gonna change their behavior because they think that he's feeling emotionally hurt.

He doesn't want them to change out of fear that they've offended him but there is someone that he wants them to be concerned about offending and that's why he brings it up. You didn't do me wrong but are they doing wrong to someone?

Yeah, by implication. But he says, it's not that you treated me wrong. As a matter of fact, you treated me great. Let me explain. So for the next few verses, he's gonna explain what it was like to come in among them and to minister with them.

These are the believers again. Remember, some people who weren't believers were the ones who picked up stones to kill him but what was it like for him to be among the people who actually believed and listened to his message?

Now apparently Paul had originally visited them with the gospel because of some illness or infirmity. Look at verse 13. You know it was because of a bodily ailment that I preached the gospel to you at first.