Why Go Back To Slavery?
WHY GO BACK TO SLAVERY?
GALATIANS 4:8-10
Paul describes what the Galatians were formerly enslaved to.
The Galatians are now forcefully reminded of their natural state (4:8). It was a religious plight characterized partly by fear and partly by ignorance. And the two traits go together. Ignorance of the true God, who is self-revealed in nature and supremely in Christ (Acts 17:22-31; John 17:3), hands people over to all kinds of superstitious dread and uncertainty.
The Graeco-Roman world in which the Galatians lived was filled with forebodings and fears, chiefly on the ground that the stars were believed to be hostile powers and to hold human life in the clutches of determinism and fate—a belief that is still with us.
But Paul roundly condemns all such vain illusions: the elementary spirits which they tried to appease by various religious ceremonies (4:10, a reference to astronomical calculations which decided which “days” were “good” days for business or travel or marriage, and which “seasons” were favored by the gods as likely to produce fertile ground and bountiful harvest—are trounced as “weak and beggarly.” They are as senseless and ineffective as modern-day predictions of the horoscope, palmistry, occultism and similar mumbo-jumbo.
The decisive break with the old life came at the point of coming to know God (4:9), or rather (as Paul qualifies) becoming recognized by God, which in turn leads us to know him personally as Father (4:6) and to receive the seal of the Spirit as his inner witness (Romans 8:14-16). No longer is there cause for fear; ignorance is dispelled and Christians enter on their inheritance as those whose life in this world enjoyed the blessing of 2 Corinthians 13:14. Notice the trinitarian reference in 4:4-7 and see also Hebrews 10:29; 1 Peter 1:2.
Paul can again only stand back in amazement that these Galatian believers should ever want to return to a form of slavery from which they have been so graciously set free!
Thought “If I’m not what I ought to be, thank God, I’m not what I used to be.” Consider the plight of those outside of Christ: 1 Corinthians 12:2; Colossians 1:21; Ephesians 2:1ff.; 4:22; 5:8; Titus 3:3; “Such were some of you” (1 Corinthians 6:11).