Charles Ellicott Commentary Galatians 4:17

"They zealously seek you in no good way; nay, they desire to shut you out, that ye may seek them." — Galatians 4:17 (ASV)

They zealously affect you.—“Zealously affect” is a single word in the Greek, and means “to show zeal towards,” “to court,” “to curry favour with,” “to canvass eagerly, so as to win over to their side.” The subject of this verse is the Judaizing teachers.

They would exclude you.—They desire to separate you from the rest of the Gentile churches, and to make a sect by itself, in which they themselves may bear rule. All the other Gentile churches had accepted the freer teaching of St. Paul; the Judaizing party wished to make of Galatia an isolated centre of Judaism. They did this with personal motives, not well—that is, from honest and honourable motives—but with a view to secure their own ascendancy.

That you might affect them.—This is the same word as “zealously affect” above and in the next verse. They expect to have all this zeal on their part returned to them in kind. With them it is the proselytizing zeal of the faction leader; from you they expect the deferential zeal of devoted followers.

On verses 17-20:

All this eagerness to court your favour springs from an interested motive: they wish to make a sect of you, in which they will be masters and courted in their turn. Certainly, it is a good thing for teachers and taught—you and I—to seek favour with each other, so long as it is done disinterestedly, and that too, when I am absent as well as when I am present. My heart yearns towards you. I cannot forget that you owe your life, as Christians, to me.

Now, once more, it seems as if all that long travail has to be undergone again. You must be re-fashioned in the likeness of Christ, as the infant is fashioned in the form of man. I wish I could be with you and speak in a different tone, for I do not know how to deal with you.