Real Trouble

St. Paul wishes, in a moment of ferocity, that the false teachers at Galatia, who were so zealous for circumcision, would stop messing around with half-measures and cut the whole thing off (Gal. 5:12). The reason he had for desiring this is that they were troubling (anastatoo) the church there. Judging from the two other uses of this word in the New Testament, the turmoil these false brothers created at Galatia was considerable. The same word is used to accuse the Christians of “turning the world upside down” (Acts 17:6) and by the Roman officer when he was speaking about the Egyptian who led four thousand men in a revolutionary uprising (Acts 21:38). The tumult at Galatia was the work of professional trouble-makers.