Why Go Back Into Slavery?
July 29, 2024
Commentary
The way of the Galatian Christians was not much different than many Christians today who get involved in various legalistic movements hoping to achieve certain goals. Children who are under age are no better off than slaves, even though everything their parents own will someday be theirs (v. 1). This is because children are placed in the care of guardians and teachers until the time their parents have set (v. 2). The motives may be right but the methods are wrong. The old nature has an attraction to the law because it makes provision for us to do things. This in turn allows us to measure external results which we like to do.
In this portion of scripture Paul is making a contrast between servants and sons. He says that you were once slaves but now you are sons (vv. 3-7). Historians tell us that in the Roman world a boy did not become a man until he reached a certain date set by his father which was sometime between his fourteenth and seventeenth birthdays. Until this time he lived under guardians and managers. At a special family ceremony he was introduced formally to public life as a man and entered into his full inheritance of manhood. Before this time he was viewed the same as a slave would be.
Paul could not understand why they would want to go back into the old slavery (vv. 8-11). When the Judaizers led the Galatians back into legalism, they were leading them not only into religious bondage but back into spiritual infancy. Legalism then is not a step toward maturity but a step back into childhood. Warren Wiersbe put it well when he said “They were dropping out of the school of grace and enrolling in the kindergarten of law!”
Application
I need to be more concerned about who I am than in what I do or do not do.
Galatians 4:1– 11 (NET)
1 Now I mean that the heir, as long as he is a minor, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything. 2 But he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father. 3 So also we, when we were minors, were enslaved under the basic forces of the world. 4 But when the appropriate time had come, God sent out his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those who were under the law, so that we may be adopted as sons with full rights. 6 And because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, who calls “Abba! Father!” 7 So you are no longer a slave but a son, and if you are a son, then you are also an heir through God.
8 Formerly when you did not know God, you were enslaved to beings that by nature are not gods at all. 9 But now that you have come to know God (or rather to be known by God), how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless basic forces? Do you want to be enslaved to them all over again? 10 You are observing religious days and months and seasons and years. 11 I fear for you that my work for you may have been in vain.
Illustration: Hans The Taylor Makes a Suit Out of Proportion
Consider the story of Hans the tailor. Because of his reputation, an influential entrepreneur visiting the city ordered a tailor-made suit. But when he came to pick up his suit, the customer found that one sleeve twisted that way and the other this way; one shoulder bulged out and the other caved in. He pulled and managed to make his body fit. As he returned home on the bus, another passenger noticed his odd appearance and asked if Hans the tailor had made the suit. Receiving an affirmative reply, the man remarked, “Amazing! I knew that Hans was a good tailor, but I had no idea he could make a suit fit so perfectly someone as deformed as you.” Often that is just what we do in the church. We get some idea of what the Christian faith should look like: then we push and shove people in to the most grotesque configurations until they fit our ideas! That is death. It is a wooden legalism which destroys the soul. (Richard J. Foster, Source unknown).