11. Once slaves, but now children
We have seen how in Galatians 3 the apostle Paul surveyed two thousand years of Old Testament history. In particular, he showed the relation between three of the great figures of biblical history – Abraham, Moses and Jesus Christ. He explained how God gave Abraham a promise to bless all the families of the earth through his descendants; how he then gave Moses a law which, far from cancelling out the promise, actually made it more necessary and urgent; and how the promise was fulfilled in Christ, so that everyone whom the law drives to Christ inherits the promise which God made to Abraham.
Now in Galatians 4:1–11 Paul rehearses the same history again, contrasting the human condition under the law (1–3) with our condition when we are in Christ (4–7), and basing on this contrast an impassioned appeal about the Christian life (8–11). His sequence of thought might be summarized like this: ‘Once we were slaves. Now we are children. How, then, can we turn back to the old slavery?’
1. The human condition under the law (4:1–3)
Under the law, Paul says, people were like heirs during their childhood or minority. Let us picture a boy who is the heir to a great estate. One day it will all be his. Indeed, it is already his by promise, but not yet in experience because he is still a child. During his minority, although he is lord of all the estate by title, yet he is no different from a slave (1). He is subject to guardians and trustees, who act as the ‘controllers of his person and property’. They order him about, direct and discipline him. He is under restraint. He has no liberty. Because he is the heir he is, in fact, the lord; but while he is a child, he is no better than a slave. Moreover, he will remain in this bondage until the time set by his father (2).
‘It is the same with us,’ Paul continues. Even in Old Testament days, before Christ came and when we were under the law, we were heirs – heirs of the promise which God made to Abraham. But we had not yet inherited the promise. We were like children during the years of their minority; our childhood was a form of bondage.
What was this bondage? We know, of course, that it was a bondage to the law, for the law was ‘our guardian’ (3:24) and from it we needed to be ‘redeemed’ (4:5). But here the law appears to be equated with elemental spiritual forces of the world (3). And in verse 9 these are called ‘weak and miserable’ – ‘weak’ because the law has no strength to redeem us, and ‘miserable’ because it has nothing with which to bless us.
What are these elemental spiritual forces? The Greek word is stoicheia, ‘elements’. Broadly speaking, in Greek as in English, the word ‘elements’ has two meanings. First, it can be used in the sense of ‘elementary’ things, the letters of the alphabet, the ABC which we learn at school. It occurs in this sense in Hebrews 5:12. If this is Paul’s meaning here, then he is likening the Old Testament period to the basic education of the people of God, which was completed by further education when Christ came. The margin of the New English Bible takes it thus as ‘elementary ideas belonging to this world’, and J. B. Phillips as ‘basic moral principles’. Such a translation is certainly appropriate to the childhood metaphor which Paul is developing, but, on the other hand, an elementary stage of education is not exactly a ‘bondage’.
The second way in which the word ‘elements’ can be interpreted is ‘the elemental spirits of the world’. These were often associated in the ancient world with either the physical elements (earth, fire, air and water) or the heavenly bodies (the sun, the moon and the stars) which control the seasonal festivals observed on earth. This fits in with verse 8, where we are said to have been ‘slaves to those who by nature are not gods’, namely demons or evil spirits.
But how can a bondage to the law be called a bondage to evil spirits? Is Paul suggesting that the law was an evil design of Satan? Of course not. He has told us that the law was given to Moses by God, not Satan, and given to us through angels (3:19), good spirits, not bad. What Paul means is that the devil took this good thing (the law) and twisted it to his own evil purpose, in order to enslave men and women. Just as during a child’s minority a guardian may ill-treat and even tyrannize the child in ways the child’s father never intended, so the devil has exploited God’s good law, in order to tyrannize people in ways God never intended. God intended the law to reveal sin and to drive men and women to Christ; Satan uses it to reveal sin and to drive people to despair. God meant the law as an interim step to our justification; Satan uses it as the final step to our condemnation. God meant the law to be a stepping stone to liberty; Satan uses it as a cul-de-sac, deceiving his victims into supposing that there is no escape from its dreadful bondage.
2. God’s action through Christ (4:4–7)
But when the set time had fully come . . . (4). Human bondage under the law continued for about 1,300 years. It was a long and arduous minority. But at last the fullness of time arrived (see Mark 1:15) – the date set by the Father when the children should attain their majority, be freed from their guardians and inherit the promise.
Why is the period of Christ’s coming described as the set time? Various factors combined to make it so. For instance, it was the time when Rome had conquered and subdued the known inhabited earth, when Roman roads had been built to facilitate travel and Roman legions had been stationed to guard them. It was also the time when the Greek language and culture had given a certain cohesion to society. At the same time, the old mythological gods of Greece and Rome were losing their hold on the common people, so that the hearts and minds of men and women everywhere were hungry for a religion that was real and satisfying. It was also the time when the law of Moses had done its work of preparing men and women for Christ, holding them under its tutelage and in its prison, so that they longed ardently for the freedom with which Christ could make them free.
When this fullness of time had come, God did two things.
First, God sent his Son: But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship (4–5). Notice that God’s purpose was both to ‘redeem’ and to ‘adopt’; not just to rescue from slavery, but to make slaves into sons. We are not told here how the redemption was achieved, but we know from Galatians 1:4 that it was by the death of Christ and from 3:13 that this death was a ‘curse-bearing’ death. What is emphasized in these verses is that the one whom God sent to accomplish our redemption was perfectly qualified to do so. He was God’s Son. He was also born of a human mother, so that he was human as well as divine, the one and only God-man. And he was born under the law, that is, of a Jewish mother, into the Jewish nation, subject to the Jewish law. Throughout his life he submitted to all the requirements of the law. He succeeded where all others before and since have failed: he fulfilled the righteousness of the law perfectly. So the divinity of Christ, the humanity of Christ and the righteousness of Christ uniquely qualified him to be our redeemer. If he had not been human, he could not have redeemed humanity. If he had not been a righteous man, he could not have redeemed unrighteous men and women. And if he had not been God’s Son, he could not have redeemed human beings for God or made them the children of God.
Second, God sent his Spirit: Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba, Father’ (6). The Greek verbs translated sent (4 and 6) are the same word and in the same tense (exapesteilen). There was, therefore, a double sending from God the Father. Observe the trinitarian reference. First, God sent his Son into the world; second, he sent his Spirit into our hearts. And, entering our hearts, the Spirit immediately began to call out ‘Abba! Father!’, or, as the parallel passage in Romans 8:15–16 puts it: ‘And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.’ Abba is an Aramaic way of saying ‘Father’. It is the word that Jesus himself used in intimate prayer to God. God’s purpose was not only to secure our sonship by his Son, but to assure us of it by his Spirit. He sent his Son that we might have the status of sonship, and he sent his Spirit that we might have an experience of it. This comes through the affectionate, confidential intimacy of our access to God in prayer, in which we find ourselves assuming the attitude and using the language not of slaves, but of children.
So the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, witnessing to our sonship and prompting our prayers, is the precious privilege of all God’s children. It is because you are his sons (6) that God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts. No other qualification is needed. There is no need to recite some formula, or strive after some experience, or fulfil some extra condition. Paul says to us clearly that if we are God’s children, and because we are God’s children, God has sent his Spirit into our hearts. And the way he assures us of our sonship is not by some spectacular gift or sign, but by the quiet inward witness of the Spirit as we pray.
So, Paul concludes this stage of his argument, you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir (7). And this changed status is through God. What we are as Christians, as children and heirs of God, is not through our own merit, nor through our own effort, but through God’s initiative of grace, who first sent his Son to die for us and then sent his Spirit to live in us.
3. The appeal of the apostle (4:8–11)
Again Paul contrasts what once we were with what we have become. But this time the contrast is painted in fresh colours, in terms of our knowledge of God. Formerly . . . you did not know God . . . But now . . . you know God – or rather [since the initiative was God’s] are known by God (8–9). Our bondage was to evil spirits, owing to our ignorance of God; our sonship consists in the knowledge of God, knowing him and being known by him, in the intimacy of a personal communion with God which Jesus called ‘eternal life’ (John 17:3).
Now comes the apostle’s appeal. His argument is this: ‘If you were a slave and are now a child, if you did not know God but have now come to know him and to be known by him, how can you turn back again to the old slavery? How can you allow yourself to be enslaved by the very elemental spirits from whom Jesus Christ has rescued you?’ You are observing special days and months and seasons and years! (10). In other words, your religion has degenerated into an external formalism. It is no longer the free and joyful communion of children with their Father; it has become a dreary routine of rules and regulations. And Paul adds sorrowfully: I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you (11). Instead of growing in the liberty with which Christ had set them free, they have slipped back into the old bondage.
Oh, the stupidity of these Galatians! We can certainly understand the language of the Prodigal Son, who came to his father and said, ‘I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants’ or ‘slaves’ (Luke 15:19). But how can anyone be so foolish as to say: ‘You have made me your child; but I would rather be a slave’? It is one thing to say ‘I do not deserve it’; it is quite another to say ‘I do not desire it; I prefer slavery to sonship.’ Yet that was the foolishness of the Galatians, under the influence of their false teachers.
4. Conclusion
We may learn from this passage both what the Christian life is and how to live it.
a. What the Christian life is
The Christian life is the life of sons and daughters; it is not the life of slaves. It is freedom, not bondage. Of course, we are slaves of God, of Christ and of one another. We belong to God, to Christ, to one another, and we love to serve those to whom we belong. But this kind of service is freedom. What the Christian life is not is a bondage to the law, as if our salvation hung in the balance and depended on our meticulous and slavish obedience to the letter of the law. As it is, our salvation rests upon the finished work of Christ, on his sin-bearing, curse-bearing death, embraced by faith.
Yet so many religious people are in bondage to their religion! They are like John Wesley in his post-graduate Oxford days in the Holy Club. He was the son of a clergyman and already a clergyman himself. He was orthodox in belief, religious in practice, upright in conduct and full of good works. He and his friends visited the inmates of the prisons and workhouses of Oxford. They took pity on the slum children of the city, providing them with food, clothing and education. They observed Saturday as the Sabbath as well as Sunday. They went to church and to Holy Communion. They gave money, searched the Scriptures, fasted and prayed. But they were bound in the fetters of their own religion, for they were trusting in themselves that they were righteous, instead of putting their trust in Jesus Christ and him crucified. A few years later, John Wesley (in his own words) came to ‘trust in Christ, in Christ only for salvation’ and was given an inward assurance that his sins had been taken away. After this, looking back to his pre-conversion experience, he wrote: ‘I had even then the faith of a servant, though not that of a son.’ Christianity is a religion of children, not slaves.
b. How to live the Christian life
The way to live the Christian life is to remember who and what we are. The essence of Paul’s message here is: ‘Once you were slaves. Now you are children. So how can you go back to the old slavery?’ His question is an astonished, indignant outburst. It is not impossible to turn back to the old life; the Galatians had in fact done it. But it is absurd to do so. It is a fundamental denial of what we have become, of what God has made us if we are in Christ.
The way for us to avoid the Galatians’ foolishness is to pay attention to what Paul says. Let God’s Word keep telling us who and what we are if we are Christians. We must keep reminding ourselves what we have and are in Christ. One of the great purposes of daily Bible reading, meditation and prayer is just this, to get ourselves orientated correctly, to remember who and what we are. We need to say to ourselves: ‘Once I was a slave, but God has made me his child and put the Spirit of his Son into my heart. How can I turn back to the old slavery?’ Again: ‘Once I did not know God, but now I know him and have come to be known by him. How can I turn back to the old ignorance?’
By the grace of God we must determine to remember what once we were and never to return to it; to remember what God has made us and to conform our lives to it.
A good example of this is John Newton. He was an only child and lost his mother when he was seven years old. He went to sea at the tender age of eleven and later became involved, in the words of one of his biographers, ‘in the unspeakable atrocities of the African slave trade’. He plumbed the depths of human sin and degradation. When he was twenty-three, on 10 March 1748, when his ship was in imminent danger of sinking in a terrific storm, he cried to God for mercy, and he found it. He was truly converted, and he never forgot how God had had mercy upon him, a former blasphemer. He sought conscientiously to remember what he had previously been, and what God had done for him. In order to imprint it on his memory, he had written in bold letters and fixed across the wall over the mantelpiece of his study the words of Deuteronomy 15:15: ‘Thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman [a slave] in the land of Egypt, and the Lord thy God redeemed thee.’
If only we remembered these things, what we once were and what we now are, we would have an increasing desire within us to live accordingly, to be what we are, namely children of God set free by Christ.