Galatians was written to a group of recently-converted pagans in Asia Minor under pressure to keep the Jewish law. They weren’t just being urged to show up at the synagogue on Saturdays or to revere Moses like the ‘Godfearers’ we read about in Acts. They were being urged to get circumcised – to express exclusive allegiance to the God of Israel. And yet Paul describes all this as going back to something with which they were already familiar.

All of us love appropriate humility but nobody wants to see the person who is truly worthy of admiration shamed. Nobody wants to see the professor sweeping the classroom floor, nobody wants to see the mother of the house carrying out the trash.