John Calvin Commentary Galatians 3:2

"This only would I learn from you. Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?" — Galatians 3:2 (ASV)

This one I wish to learn from you. He now proceeds to support his cause by additional arguments. The first is drawn from their experience, for he reminds them how the gospel was introduced among them. When they heard the gospel, they received the Spirit. It was not to the law, therefore, but to faith, that they owed the reception of this benefit.

This same argument is employed by Peter in the defense which he makes to his brothers for having baptized uncircumcised persons (Acts 10:47). Paul and Barnabas followed the same course in the debate which they maintained at Jerusalem on this subject (Acts 15:2, 12). There was therefore manifest ingratitude in not submitting to the doctrine, through which they had received the Holy Spirit.

The opportunity which he gives them to reply is expressive not of doubt, but of greater confidence, for their convictions, founded on their own experience, forced them to acknowledge that it was true.

Faith is here used, by a figure of speech, for the gospel, which is elsewhere called the law of faith (Romans 3:27), because it reveals to us the free grace of God in Christ, without any merit of works. The Spirit means here, I think, the grace of regeneration, which is common to all believers, though I have no objection to understand it as referring to the special gifts by which the Lord, at that time, honored the preaching of the gospel.

It may be objected that the Spirit was not, in this respect, given to all. But it was enough for Paul’s purpose that the Galatians knew that the power of the Holy Spirit in his Church had accompanied Paul’s doctrine, and that believers were endowed in various ways with the gifts of the Spirit for general edification.

It may also be objected that those gifts were not infallible signs of adoption, and so do not apply to the present question. I reply that it was enough that the Lord had confirmed the doctrine of Paul by the visible gifts of his Spirit. A still simpler view of the case is that they had been distinguished by the ordinary privilege of adoption before those impostors had brought forward their additions. In whom, he says to the Ephesians,

you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, after you believed, you were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise (Ephesians 1:13).