Galatians 1:6

Galatians 1:6. I marvel. A sharp rebuke in a mild word, which challenges explanation, and intimates that better things were expected from the Galatians.

So quickly, namely, either after your conversion, which is alluded to in ‘who called you,' or after my second and last visit to you, or after the arrival of the false teachers. The first is the most probable. In any case the word points to an early date of the Epistle. (See Introd., § 5.) Even the best preaching cannot prevent apostasy. Grotius cites in illustration of the Galatian character what Cæsar says of the Gauls (the ancestors of the French): ‘They are quick and resolute, and fond of change and novelties.'

Turning away; changing over; here and often in a bad sense, turning renegades, deserters. The Greek (middle voice) implies first that the apostasy was voluntary on their part, and hence their own guilt; secondly, that it was not yet completed, but still in progress, and hence might be arrested. (The passive rendering of the Latin Vulgate and English Version would transfer the guilt to the false teachers, and soften the censure of the Galatians.)

From him, not Paul, but God the Father, from whom the gospel call always proceeds (comp. Galatians 1:15; 1Co 1:9; 1 Corinthians 7:15; 1 Corinthians 7:17; Romans 8:30; Romans 9:11; Romans 9:24; 1Th 2:12; 2 Thessalonians 2:14; 2Ti 1:9; 1 Peter 1:15; 1 Peter 2:9; 1 Peter 5:10).

In (not into, as the English Version has it, following the Vulgate) the grace of Christ. The grace, i.e., the whole work, of Christ as a manifestation of His redeeming love is both the element in which and the medium by or through which the Father draws to the Son (John 6:44) and effects the call (comp. Acts 15:11 ; Romans 5:15).

Unto a different gospel, different in kind, another sort of gospel, which is undeserving of the name, since there is but one gospel, namely, that to which you were called by God. Hence Paul immediately adds a correction of this paradoxical expression, which he uses simply in accommodation to the language of the Judaizing pseudo-evangelists (comp. 2 Corinthians 11:4).