Galatians 4

The time of our adolescence had to come to an end. The elect of God, His worshipping people who call upon His Name, were once a church under age. They were under the guardianship of the Old Testament Law. They were sons of God, but they had not reached the point of their maturity. This was all according to the eternal plan of God. The date of maturity had been set by the Father. When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son. The life of Jesus of Nazareth on this earth was the turning point in this great coming of age.

God’s Son was born of a woman, and He was born during the era of the Law. He was circumcised as a Jew according to the Law of Moses. He came to that low condition to free those who were under the bondage of the Law because of sin. He came as the eternal Son of God and the expected Son of Man in order that we might receive the adoption as sons redeemed by His blood.

Now this same Jesus has ascended into heaven, and from that exalted place at the right hand of the Father, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts. We have Christ in us by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, and great things are happening in our lives. The time of preparation is over. We are tasting the day of liberty now by the Holy Spirit, that we might be joyfully conformed to the character of the One who gave Himself for us. Because of Jesus, we are able to call God our Father with the intimacy of those who are actually counted as the children of God. It is the Spirit of His Son within us that is crying out to the Father, so that God looks at us as His own, and not merely as those who are acquaintances, neighbors, or good workers. We are now really sons of God. We know that because we are in His will. We are heirs of God, through God the Son.

This was not always our condition, or the condition of even the Jewish believers or Gentile God-fearers in Galatia. We were once in the spiritual bondage of idolatry, enslaved to things that are not gods. Only the true God could rescue us from that condition. But even now, if we add ceremonial laws to our faith, whether old or new, we sign up for the old bondage again. Paul uses the example of the Old Testament sacred calendar, and says that it is a very serious error to bind oneself to the observance of those kinds of rituals that are no more. He says, “You observe days and months and seasons and years! I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain.”

Paul appeals to the Galatians at this point to remember the love and care that they displayed for him in the past. Their willingness to give themselves to Him was wonderful. He apparently had some serious trouble with His eyes, and in some ways he was a burden to them. Yet they received Him as a messenger of God. Why did they show such affection for this man? Were the Galatians just very nice people in their treatment of a stranger? Something else was going on through the message of Christ and the cross. New relationships of love were being forged because of the reality of our common adoption into the same family of God.

Yet what had happened since these new meddlers came from Jerusalem? Had the Galatians forgotten the message that they loved? Paul reminds the Galatians of their sacrificial care for him as the messenger of Christ so that they might recall again the message that made his ailing body seem beautiful to them. Could it be that they would make themselves his enemies now by becoming enemies of the simple message of Christ?

What of these others who come with a new message? What are they really after? Are they concerned with Christ and the cross, or are they trying to impress people? Paul says that they just want the Galatians to “make much of them.” What we want is for people everywhere to make much of Christ.

People who have found the love of Christ should know the difference between spiritual slavery and the true freedom that the Lord has purchased for us. To return to the covenantal arrangement of the Law of Moses is to return to something less than God’s best for us. Do you want to be the free child of the promise, Isaac, who was born to Abraham’s wife Sarah (allegorically speaking, the New Covenant life), or do you want to be a child of a slave woman, Hagar (meaning a return to old ceremonies)? When Christ died for us, we were freed from our obligation to the Law. To insist on obedience to the laws of circumcision and other rituals is wrong on so many levels. Here we need to especially see that such a move back to the old ways of the time of preparation is to walk back into bondage after we have been granted the liberty of the sons of God in Christ.

Paul, as a nursing father to this church, longs to see Christ formed in them. This is the direction that our desire for obedience should take, and not some return to the old ceremonies of Israel. Those who stay with the old Jerusalem of the Old Covenant days continue in old ways that cannot save anyone. But those who abide in Christ choose the Jerusalem that is above, in heaven. This is the real land of the free, and it is our home country in Jesus.