Paul's Pangs of Childbirth

Paul concludes the most personal portion of his appeal to the Galatians in defense of the Gospel, when he invokes the metaphor of a mother in the pangs of childbirth to describe the anguish he feels on account of their falling away to a false gospel of works righteousness.

In other places, Paul compares himself to a father in relation to those believers that he first led to the Savior. He was in a unique relationship with the Corinthians and the Galatians, in that he first preached the Gospel to them and they first believed on Christ under his ministry. Thus, in a sense, they were begotten of Paul unto Christ.

As in the case of the Corinthians, Paul expresses distress that his own children in the faith should run after false teachers and discard the true Gospel in favor of a legalist, works religion.

Paul invokes the image of a mother in the pain of childbirth - and having to do it all over again as he earnestly strives to see Christ formed in them.

God's purpose is that all His sons be conformed to Christ's image by the work of the Holy Ghost in them. But Paul fears that his children in the faith might be stillborn, so great is his pain of labor to bring them to the Savior.

It is a hard person who can reject or sneer at a mother in distress and pain and worry for her unborn child! That is the deeply personal appeal that Paul now uses to express the deadly serious nature of his concerns for the Galatian believers. He fears that they might, metaphorically, mis-carry and fall away from true Gospel faith.

Who can forget Christ's invoking the same image: a hen who desires to gather her chicks under her wings for protection! His care for us is indescribable!