Long before Shakespeare made the “mind’s eye” famous in Hamlet, writers spoke of the “eye of the mind,” an inward kind of sight that allowed someone to see what wasn’t physically in front of them. We still use the expression today. Close your eyes and picture your childhood home, your mother’s face, or the road you drove to work this morning. Your eyes aren’t seeing it, but your mind is.
Paul probably didn’t intend an extended “eye” metaphor in Galatians 3:1, but the movement is hard to miss. First, the Galatians shut off the mind’s eye, “O foolish Galatians!” They stopped thinking carefully with the truth they knew. Second, they were captured by the evil eye, “Who has bewitched you?” Something else had seized their attention. Now, Paul turns their gaze back to where it belongs:
“O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.”
Galatians 3:1
There is no evidence that might suggest that the Galatian believers were present to see Christ crucified. Paul was using figurative language. The phrase “publicly portrayed” carries the idea of something being placarded or posted openly for everyone to see. In contemporary language, we might say that Christ crucified had been put on a billboard in front of them.
This kind of imagery would have made sense in the Roman world. Public notices were displayed where people could see them. Even at the crucifixion of Jesus, the Romans placed a written placard above Him announcing, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” Paul reaches for that kind of public language and says that when he preached the gospel in Galatia, Christ crucified had been placarded before them.
Paul had made the gospel plain. He preached Jesus Christ crucified. He made the meaning of the cross clear enough that it was as though the Galatians could see it for themselves in their mind’s eye. During Paul’s first missionary journey, somewhere around AD 47 to 49, these churches had heard the message of Christ with clarity. Only a few years later, false teachers had managed to blur what had once been obvious.
So Paul tells them to look again. Go back to what you saw. Turn your minds back on. Remember the gospel that was placed in front of you. Jesus Christ was crucified for sinners. Your standing with God rests in Him.
That is Paul’s answer to the attraction of legalism. He doesn’t hand them a better checklist. He points them back to Christ. Legalism shifts our eyes away from the gospel. It causes us to look inward at our performance. How well am I doing? How much have I improved? How disciplined have I been? How does my righteousness compare with somebody else’s? Once those questions become the foundation of our confidence before God, we have already started looking in the wrong direction. This is what the Galatians were doing.
So Paul says, “Look at Christ.”
We need that reminder again and again. We need to keep looking at the gospel until Christ becomes the first place our minds go when questions about our standing with God begin to rise.
When you begin measuring your standing with God by your performance, look at Christ. When you start thinking God loves you more because you had a good week, look at Christ. When you think God must love you less because you stumbled again, look at Christ. When you begin comparing your righteousness with somebody else’s righteousness, look at Christ. When you feel the temptation to build your confidence on your discipline, your service, your knowledge, your giving, your church attendance, your ministry, or anything else you can accomplish, look at Christ.
Mind you, this doesn’t make obedience unimportant. Paul will have plenty to say in Galatians about walking by the Spirit, bearing fruit, serving one another, and doing good. The issue here is the foundation of our confidence before God. Obedience grows from the gospel. It cannot replace the gospel as the reason God receives us.
Christ crucified remains the placard. His cross tells us what our sin deserved. It tells us what Christ willingly bore. It tells us where righteousness comes from. It tells us that our acceptance before God rests on the work of Another. The more clearly we see Christ, the less impressive our spiritual scorecards become.
This is why we have to keep the gospel in front of us. We are prone to forget what we already know. We can affirm justification by faith and still slip into living as though our daily performance determines whether God is pleased to call us His own. We can preach grace to other people and quietly live by merit ourselves.
So look again. Look again at Christ when you have succeeded and are tempted to become proud. Look again at Christ when you have failed and are tempted to despair. Look again at Christ when somebody else seems more spiritual than you. Look again at Christ when your own spiritual progress feels painfully slow. Look again at Christ when religious achievement starts to feel like security. The cross has a way of putting all of those things back into place.
Paul’s point is simple. The Galatians had already been shown what mattered most. Jesus Christ had been publicly portrayed before them as crucified. They didn’t need a higher level of Christianity. They didn’t need a more impressive religious system. They needed to remember what they had seen. So do we. Remember what was placed before your eyes. Christ crucified. Your confidence begins there.
And then Paul says, in effect, “If you need more evidence, look at what happened to you.” Beginning in Galatians 3:2, Paul turns from what had been placed before their eyes to what God had done in their lives. His first proof of freedom by faith is the gift of the Holy Spirit. That is where we will go next.