The law brings bondage, the gospel brings freedom
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📚Now I am saying that an heir, as long as he is a child, though he owns it all, does not differ at all from a slave, 2 but is under guardians and managers until the time appointed by the father. 3 📚Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the rudimentary things of the world. 4 📚But when the fulness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, 4:4 The “time” was about 2000 years ago; God’s Son was Jesus. He was born “of a woman” (Matt 1:18-21; Luke 1:26-38). He had true human nature (John 1:14; Heb 2:14). And He was born a Jew under the law of Moses (as all Jews were).⚜
5 📚to redeem 📖 those who were under the Law, so that we might be adopted as sons. 6 📚And because you are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, calling out, “Abba, Father”.
7 📚Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.
4:1-7 Paul refers to customs of those days, and uses them as illustrations of spiritual truth. Male children were heirs and would eventually possess all their fathers had. But if they could afford to do so, fathers kept guardians to look after their children until they reached a certain age. When that age was reached the children were regarded as mature “sons” and no longer as children.
Paul is saying that people under the law were in a state similar to childhood, a condition of immaturity, not all that God wanted them to be. But with the coming of Christ, God’s time had come to give to believers the rights of sons. Before Christ came they were under the “rudimentary things of the world” (v 3), or under the law (v 5). Now they are freed from all such “guardians and trustees”. They have full freedom and all the privileges of the sons of God.⚜
4:7 Believers in Christ are not like slaves who have to labour under a whip. They are God’s children who have been freely given everything God has (1 Cor 3:21-23).⚜
Did the Galatian Christians want to be slaves?
8 📚But at the time when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those who by nature are not gods. 9 📚But now after you have known God, or rather are known of God, how is it that you turn again to those weak and beggarly rudimentary things to which you desire again to be in bondage?
4:8-9 These Gentile believers were formerly in bondage to false religion and false gods, but they had gained freedom by a knowledge of the true God. Now they were considering putting themselves under the law of Moses. This was to exchange freedom for a new bondage after escaping from old bondage into freedom.⚜
10 📚 You are observing days, and months, and times, and years.
4:10 Paul is speaking of the law of Moses. By “days” he means Sabbath days; “months” – celebration of the new moon festival; “times” – Jewish feasts; “years” – Sabbath and Jubilee years (Ex 20:8; 23:10-11, 14-17; Lev 23; 25:8-12). To keep these religiously was to turn to what he calls “weak and miserable principles” (v 9). Those days, etc, were only pictures, types, or shadows of spiritual truth, and believers in Christ have no obligation whatever to observe any of them. Compare Heb 8:5; 10:1. Paul well knew (and we should know) that keeping or not keeping certain days can not make us either better or worse. But the teaching that believers must keep them brings them into bondage and injures their spiritual life.⚜
11 📚I am afraid for you 📖, that perhaps I have labored for you in vain.
12 📚Brethren, I appeal to you, become like me 📖, for I became like you 📖. You have not harmed me at all. 13 📚You know that because of bodily infirmity 📖 I preached the gospel to you at first. 14 📚And you did not despise or scorn my trial 📖 which was in my flesh, but received me as if I was an angel of God, even as if I were Christ Jesus. 15 📚Where, then, is that blessedness about which you spoke? For I testify about you that, if it had been possible, you would have plucked out your own eyes and given them to me.
4:15 The teaching of false teachers that was bringing them into bondage to the law of Moses was killing their joy and their love for Paul. The doctrine of self-effort for salvation will always be a joy-killer.⚜
16 📚Have I now become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?
4:16 Telling people God’s truth is the greatest thing we can do for them, but all too often people reject and hate us because we do it.⚜
False teachers, Paul’s desire
17 📚They zealously pursue you, but not for a good purpose. Yes, they 📖 want to separate you from us so that you might zealously go after them. 18 📚But it is good to be zealous in a good thing, always, and not just when I am present with you. 19 📚My little children, for whom I feel again the pains of birth until Christ is formed in you,
4:19 The believers in Galatia were Paul’s spiritual children (compare 1 Cor 4:15). They were born again (John 3:3-8) because of his efforts among them, efforts as painful to him as childbirth to a woman. Now he is in pain for them again. What they needed was not to have another spiritual rebirth (there is nothing in the New Testament that even suggests the possibility of such a thing. Indeed, how could an individual be born by God’s Spirit again and again?).
What they needed was for Christ to be formed in them. That is, for Christ who was already in them (Gal 3:2, 26-29) to live His life in them as He did in Paul (Gal 2:20). They needed to be transformed in their thinking and acting (Rom 12:2; 13:14; 2 Cor 3:18; Eph 4:13-15).⚜
20 📚I desire to be in your presence now, and to change my tone, because I am perplexed 📖 about you.
4:12-20 Paul has been speaking of very important doctrinal matters. Now he speaks of the personal relationship that existed between him and the Galatians. Here his pastor’s heart is revealed. They are his “little children”. He loves them and is deeply concerned about them.⚜
The illustration of Hagar and Sarah
21 📚Tell me, you who desire to be under the Law, do you not understand the Law 📖? 22 📚For it is written that Abraham had two sons, the one by a slave woman, the other by a free woman. 23 📚But the one from the slave woman was born according to the flesh, but the one from the free woman was born as a result of promise.
24 📚These things are symbolic, for these are the two covenants. The one is from mount Sinai, which produces bondage. This is Hagar. 25 📚For this Hagar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to the present Jerusalem that is in bondage with her children.
4:24-25 Hagar represents the old covenant God made through Moses at Mount Sinai (Exodus chapter 19). Sarah represents the new covenant of Christ announced in Matt 26:28. Hagar was a slave girl and her offspring was not to be regarded as the free-born son of Abraham (see Rom 9:7-8). Hagar is a symbol of the law of Moses, of Mount Sinai where that covenant was given, and of the city of Jerusalem which was the center of the practice of the old covenant. And the old covenant, Paul says, means spiritual bondage or slavery (vs 1,9; Gal 3:10, 23).⚜
26 📚But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and is the mother of us all.
4:26 Sarah is a symbol of the new covenant and of the heavenly Jerusalem which is the center of the spiritual realities of the new covenant (Heb 12:22). There is no bondage, no slavery there. And believers now are related to the new Jerusalem, not to the old.⚜
27 📚For it is written,
“Rejoice, barren one,
you who do not bear children.
Break forth and cry out,
you who have no labour pains;
for the desolate one has far
more children than
she who has a husband”.
4:27 See Isa 54:1. Isaiah spoke of the glorious future of Israel when it would come under the blessings of the Messiah and the new age He would establish. Fruitless before, it would become fruitful by God’s grace and power.⚜
28 📚Now we, brethren, like Isaac, are children of promise.
4:28 Abraham believed God’s promise, and God gave him Isaac. Isaac came into existence because of the life-giving, miracle-working Word of God. This is the same way believers now receive new life and become the spiritual descendants of Abraham (Jam 1:18; 1 Pet 1:23). “Promise” here is put in contrast to the law of Moses.⚜
29 📚But then just as he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, just so it is now.
4:29 See Gen 21:8-9. Ishmael was born “according to the flesh”, in the usual way that people are born. There was nothing supernatural about his birth. Isaac was born “according to the Spirit”. That is, God’s Spirit enabled Abraham and Sarah to have him when, humanly speaking, it was impossible (Heb 11:11-12; Rom 4:18-21). As Ishmael persecuted Isaac so did those under the old covenant (Jews) persecute those under the new covenant (followers of Christ). See Acts 5:40; 7:54-58; 13:49-50; 14:19. And so will unspiritual people in every era persecute spiritual people.⚜
30 📚Nevertheless what does the Scripture 📖 say? Send away the slave woman and her son; for the son of the slave woman will not be an heir with the son of the free woman. 31 📚So then, brethren, we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free.
4:24-31 Paul draws spiritual lessons from the Old Testament stories of Abraham, Abraham’s wife Sarah, and the slave girl Hagar. He knew they were real people in history. But he saw them also as types or pictures of spiritual things. Some scholars have objected to his method here, but Paul was inspired by God’s Spirit and was not making a mistake. The tabernacle and the whole law were shadows of spiritual things (Heb 8:5; 10:1).
We may even say the whole Old Testament is a type, figure, picture, or shadow of the spiritual realities of the new covenant established by Christ. Of course, we should be very careful in our interpretations of the events and details of the Old Testament. God gave Paul special inspiration by His Spirit, and made him infallible in his teaching. This is not true of us. And in our days sometimes some very wild interpretations and spiritualizing of literal OT passages are heard in the churches.⚜
4:31 This means that believers in Christ have no connection with the law of Moses, with the old covenant, with Judaism. They are children of the new covenant alone. They are born again by the power of God through the promises of the gospel of Christ. For two other comparisons of the old and new covenants see 2 Cor 3:6-18; Heb 8:6-10; 12:18-24.⚜