You Begin With The Spirit And End Up With The Flesh

"How foolish you are, Galatians!  How could they bewitch you after JESUS CHRIST has been presented to you as crucified?  I shall ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by the practice of the law, or by believing the message?  How can you be such fools: you begin with the Spirit and end up with the flesh!

So, you have experienced all this in vain!  Would that, it were not so!  Did GOD give you the Spirit, and work miracles among you because of your observance of the law, or because you believed in HIS message?" - Galatians 3:1-5 

(A good number of these Galatians are of Jewish origin, the others already have some notion of the Old Testament given that it is read in Church meetings [the New Testament does not yet exist].  Paul then will recall first their own experience in baptism, when they received the Spirit; he will later interpret this experience in reading the Old Testament.

You begin with the Spirit and end up with the flesh.  This phrase has a double meaning.  First the Galatians experienced the working of the Holy Spirit and HIS miracles and now they want to receive circumcision  in the flesh.  In another sense, they started with the truth of GOD that was in JESUS: that is "the Spirit."  Now they go back to Jewish observances which, though they come from GOD, many times remained, as any religious practice, at a human level: the flesh.

Let us not think that such prejudices have disappeared.  There are some who think they are Catholics because they have been baptized at birth: they forget that without faith, Baptism is meaningless.)

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