The zeal of the apostle: My children, I am suffering birth pains for you again until Christ is formed in you. Galatians 4:19

The Epistle to the Galatians is probably one of the earliest letters written by the apostle Paul, and may have been written at the end of his second missionary journey. This letter is addressed to a number of churches where Paul preached during his first and second missionary journeys, probably the churches of Lystra, Derbe, and Antioch of Pisidia, in the ancient region of Galatia, now Turkey.
This letter describes in a very dramatic way the early days of the early Church, with the problem of the lack of theological unity and authority. In this letter, Paul continued the thought he expressed when the apostle gave a public speech in Pisidian Antioch, his first public speech during his first missionary journey. This is why the main theme of the letter is the doctrine of justification by faith in Jesus Christ. And this doctrine had a logic; according to the Book of Acts, the first believers had received the Holy Spirit through faith and not through compliance with the Law of Moses; this spiritual fact was something that not only Paul witnessed, but also Peter, with the first conversions to the faith. This is why Paul, when addressing them in the letter, asked them the following: "So again I ask, does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard?" Galatians 3:5.
The doctrine of justification was not only expounded by the apostle in the Epistle to the Galatians but also in the Letter to the Romans, because at that time there were also supposed teachers who preached that circumcision should be applied as a rite to the first Christians. And Paul, as a preacher to the Gentiles on this subject, did not agree with this. This is why he emphasized to the Galatians the problems of accepting the entirety of the law of Moses; compliance with the law informed them where sin lay, but it did not free them from life according to the flesh. This is why Paul, in the insistence of his speech, exclaimed with concern and zeal: "My children, I am suffering birth pains for you again until Christ is formed in you" Galatians 4:19. With this, Paul expressed to the Galatians an allegory to convey the need for the new man, the man who had to be born not of the flesh but of the spirit, and Paul with this statement was to help them achieve this.

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