“So have I become your enemy by telling you the truth? They eagerly seek you, not commendably, but they wish to shut you out so that you will seek them.”
(Galatians 4:16–17, NASB95)
In life we do things for a reason. Behind the reason is a motive. Motives are very important. However, there are good motives and poor motives. So, we must ask the question, “Why? Why do people do the things they do?”
When I was a manufacturing manager, I saw the problem of improper motives first hand. I had a shift supervisor that worked in my plant that had only one motive. It was to make himself look good so that he would get ahead. He had no regard for the overall performance of the plant, only that his shift would look better than the others. I heard from a few employees that he had made the statement, “My shift is going to look good even if we have to make the others look bad.”
His attitude or motive had an overall negative influence on the entire operation. For instance, if he wrapped up a production run in the middle of his shift, he would often do very little if anything to set up the next production order. This left a mess for the next shift that mean they would struggle to get the machinery cleaned up, job changed over, and the next run started. The result was production delays and overall low morale in the plant.
James wrote about the problem of motives like this.
“For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice.” (James 3:16, ESV)
In the letter to the Galatians, Paul has been contending with the Galatians departure to a false teaching. The false teachers were persuading believers to follow a false gospel by trusting in works of the law for justification. Here Paul dealt with the issue of the false teacher’s motives. Regarding them, he wrote,
“They eagerly seek you, not commendably, but they wish to shut you out so that you will seek them.”
The verb translated, “eagerly seek,” zeloo, refers to being zealous. Paul used this verb twice stating that the Judaizers were zealous to win over the Galatians so that the Galatians would be zealous for them.
While they may have believed in their misguided understanding of the gospel, Paul indicated that their motive was to gain a following. They did this by shutting out Paul and his teaching and preaching their heresy. Their motives were selfish.
On the other hand, Paul’s motives were not to gain a following, but to have people follow the truth of the gospel. His ultimate purpose was to bring glory to God. His motive was to see people experience the joy of salvation that only comes by faith in Jesus Christ alone. He desired greatly that people would come to true faith and bring glory to God.
The problem of false teachers has persisted throughout history. It is not something new. It exists today. We see them often with a massive following, huge mansions, great wealth, etc. It is not that having abundance is wrong, but it is one of motives. The sad part of this is that when one of these with false motives falls, those who follow them leave disillusioned with the church, never to have engaged with any church affiliation again. the problem is that they have followed a person and not Jesus Christ. Paul alluded to this particular problem later in this paragraph when he wrote, “I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you!” (v19). I’ll cover more on this later.
Let us not be swayed by the flashy, flattering teachers. Let us examine their teaching to ensure it is aligned with the full teachings of the word of God. Let us use discernment in the area of motives.
Renewing the Heart 