Doubts About the Galatians

Speaking like a mother, Paul now addressed the Galatian believers as my children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you. He was not arguing like a lawyer before a skeptical jury but pleading like a parent to a wayward child.Children is from teknion, a diminutive that was used figuratively as a term of special affection. Literally, it referred to a small child, and therefore can be translated here as “little children,” as in the King James Version. In light of Paul’s figure of childbirth, both ideas are appropriate. The Galatian believers were extremely dear to Paul but were acting like infants who refused to be born. . . .