When this controlling spirit comes, it causes people to fragment and separate. We become caught up in what's right and wrong, judgemental, accusing and divisive - that's what that spirit does. He came under its influence. Even Barnabas came under its influence - and there's this whole turmoil going on.
The one thing that broke it was when an apostolic voice rose up and said: “stop, that's wrong!” Peter was confronted before everyone.
A spiritual influence was about to create division, and separation - and he couldn't even see it. He was asleep to what was going on.
Imagine if had continued in that course of action, and separated from the Gentiles. Legalism would have come around the Gentiles. They would‘ve had to submit to the Old Testament laws. Instead of the liberty that Christ had brought them into, they'd have come under religious legalism. They'd come under the shadow of something God was trying to remove, to bring people into freedom.
That's what a spiritual influence can do to people. It causes you to separate from the people God wants you to connect to, to divide from the very people that you should love and be united with. Where God has brought people together in the spirit - that spirit pressure, when it comes, causes you to be unaware. You start to separate and divide, and haven't got a clue why you're dividing. When you sense division taking place, when you sense that separating is taking place - there's no real reason for it, it’s just some spiritual influence at work, but you just can't see it.
God calls us to walk in that unity; so Paul confronted him, to stop that spiritual influence working through his fear, to divide the church.
It was a spiritual influence, but it found root in a man's fear. Fear is a gateway for control in our lives. What you fear, you will surrender to - and it will control you, stealing the liberty that God has.
So he changed. It doesn't say it here, but he must have repented. He must have come to the acknowledgement of the truth; repented - and that whole thing broke when he repented.
Now look at Galatians 3:1 - Paul is writing to the Galatians Church. The whole book is a book of Paul, an apostle - “not of men, nor through men, but through Jesus Christ and God our Father - to the churches in Galatia’.
So he's writing, not just to one church, he's writing to a whole lot of churches. They had become ‘shut down’ in the spirit. The New Testament church was birthed in the spirit. It was birthed with a move of God. It was birthed with the Holy Ghost moving; and now he's writing to these Galatians Churches, which once were birthed in the spirit - now something's happened to them. Lovely apostolic writing - it's not at all pastoral, you notice. “Let us come alongside you, and comfort you, with all your hurts” - he didn't say that!
He said: “You foolish Galatians! (means: lacking understanding, being ignorant of what's going on, or virtually spiritually asleep). “Wake up! Wake up!” He said: “Something has bewitched you!”
That word ‘bewitched’ means to ‘cast a spell’ over, to ‘bring sorcery’ over, to bring a ‘spiritual influence’ over. He says: something has come over you, and brought a spiritual influence over you.
He said: Tell me now - how did you get saved? Did you get saved by trying hard to be a good person? Did you get saved by working hard to keep this rule - don't do that; do this? Is that how you got saved? Is that how you get to heaven? Clearly not!