Galatians 4 (Wednesday Evening Bible Study)

Galatians 4

• Galatians 4:1-7
• Now I say that as long as the heir is a child, he differs in no way from a slave, though he is the owner of everything. 2 Instead, he is under guardians and trustees until the time set by his father. 3 In the same way we also, when we were children, were in slavery under the elements of the world. 4 When the time came to completion, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. 6 And because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba, Father!”7 So you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then God has made you an heir.
  • In the ancient world, the process of growing up was much more clearly defined than it is today
    • In the Jewish world, on the first Sabbath after a boy had passed his 12th birthday, his father took him to the synagogue, where he became a son of the law.
      • At that point, the father said a blessing: “Blessed are you, O God, who has taken from me the responsibility for this boy.” The boy prayed a prayer in which he said: “O my God and God of my fathers! On this solemn and sacred day, which marks my passage from boyhood to manhood, I humbly raise my eyes to you, and declare, with sincerity and truth, that henceforth I will keep your commandments, and undertake and bear responsibility of my actions towards you.” There was a clear dividing line in the boy’s life; almost overnight he became a man
    • In Greece, a boy was under his father’s care form the age of 7 until he was 18. He then became what was called a cadet, and for two years he was under the direction of the state
      • The Athenians were divided in to 10 clans. Before a boy became a cade, at a festival called the Apatouria he was received into the clan; and in a ceremonial act his long hair was cut off and offered to the gods. Once again, growing up was quite a distinct process
    • Under Roman law, the year at which a boy grew up was not definitely fixed, but it was always between the ages of 14 and 17
      • At a sacred festival in the family called the Liberalia, he took of the toga praetexta, which was a toga with a narrow purple band at the foot of it, and put on the toga virilis, which was a plain toga worn by adults. He was then escorted by his friends and relatives down to the forum and formally introduced to public life. It was essentially a day on which the boy attained manhood. There was a Roman custom that, on the day a boy or girl grew up, they offered their toys to Apollo to show that they had put away childish things
    • When a boy was an infant in the eyes of the law, he might be the owner of a vast property, but he could take no legal decision; he was not in control of his own life; everything was done and directed for him; and, therefore, for all practical purposes he had no more freedom than if he were a slave; but, when he became a man, he entered into his full inheritance
    • So—Paul argues—in the childhood of the world, the law was in control
      • But the law was only elementary knowledge. To describe it, Paul uses the the word originally for a line of things; for instance, it can mean a line of soldiers. But it came to mean any elementary knowledge, like the teaching of the alphabet to children
      • Paul says that when the Galatians—and indeed all men and women—were mere children, they were under the tyranny of the law; then, when everything was ready, Christ came and released them from that tyranny. So, now they are no longer slaves to the laws; they have become heirs and have entered into their inheritance. The childhood which belonged to the law should be past; the freedom of adulthood has come
      • The proof that we are God’s children comes from the instinctive cry of the heart
        • In our deepest need, we cry: “Father!” to God. Paul uses the double phrase, “Abba! Father!”
        • Abba is that Aramaic word for father. It must have often been on Jesus’ lips, and its sound was so sacred that the original language was retained. This instinctive cry of the heart Paul believes to be the work of the Holy Spirit. If our hearts cry out in this way, we know that we are God’s children, and all the inheritance of grace is ours
        • For Paul, those who governed the lives by slavery to the law were still children; those who had learned the way of grace had become mature in the Christian faith
• Galatians 4:8-11
• 8 But in the past, since you didn’t know God, you were enslaved to things that by nature are not gods. 9 But now, since you know God, or rather have become known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elements? Do you want to be enslaved to them all over again? 10 You are observing special days, months, seasons, and years. 11 I am fearful for you, that perhaps my labor for you has been wasted.
  • Paul is still basing his thinking on the conception that the law is an elementary stage in religion, and that the matter adult is the person who takes a stand on grace
    • The law was all right in the old days when people did not know any better. But now they have come to know God and His grace. Then Paul corrects himself: we cannot by our own efforts know God; God reveals himself to us through His grace. We can never seek God unless He has already found us
      • So, Paul demands; “Are you now going back to a stage that you should have left behind long ago?”
      • He calls the elementary things, the religion based on law, weak and poverty-stricken
        • It is weak because it is helpless, It can define sin; it can convict a person of sin; but it can find neither forgiveness for past sin nor strength to conquer future sin
        • It is poverty-stricken in comparison with the splendor of grace. By its very nature, the law can deal with only one situation. For every fresh situation, a fresh law is needed; but the wonder of grace is that there is no possible situation in life which grace cannot match; it is sufficient for all things
      • One of the features of the Jewish law was its observance of special times. In this passage, the days are the Sabbaths of each week; the months are the new moons; the seasons are the great annual festas like the Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles; the years are the Sabbatic years, that is, every seventh year, which was a special year
      • The failure of a religion which is dependent on special occasions is that almost inevitably it divides days into sacred and secular; and the further almost inevitable step is that, when people have meticulously observed the sacred days, they are liable to think that they have discharged their duty to God
      • Although that was the religion of legalism, it was very far from being the prophetic religion It has been said that the ancient Hebrew people had no word in their language to correspond to the word religion as it is commonly used today. The whole of life as they saw it came from God, and was subject to His law and governance. There could be no separate part of it in their thought labelled religion. Jesus did not say, “ I have come that they may have religion,” but: “I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” To make religion a thing of special times is to treat it as something that is external to life. For real Christians, every day is God’s day
      • It was Paul’s fear that those who had once known the spender of grace would slip back to legalism, and that men and women who had once lived in the presence of God would only think of God on special days
• Galatians 4:12-20
• 12 I beg you, brothers and sisters: Become as I am, for I also have become as you are. You have not wronged me; 13 you know that previously I preached the gospel to you because of a weakness of the flesh. 14 You did not despise or reject me though my physical condition was a trial for you. On the contrary, you received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus himself. 15 Where, then, is your blessing? For I testify to you that, if possible, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me. 16 So then, have I become your enemy because I told you the truth? 17 They court you eagerly, but not for good. They want to exclude you from me, so that you would pursue them. 18 But it is always good to be pursued in a good manner—and not just when I am with you. 19 My children, I am again suffering labor pains for you until Christ is formed in you. 20 I would like to be with you right now and change my tone of voice, because I don’t know what to do about you.
  • Paul makes not a theological but a personal appeal
    • He reminds them that for their sake he had become a Gentile; he had cut himself off from the traditions in which he had been brought up and become what they are; and his appeal is that they should not seek to become Jews but might become like himself
  • Here we have a reference to Paul’s thorn in the flesh. It was through illness that he came to them the first time. There are many different theories of what Paul’s thorn in the flesh was. Persecution, or the temptations of the flesh, etc. The oldest tradition is that it was violent headaches. From this passage itself, there emerge two indications
    • The Galatians would have given him their eyes if they could have done so. It has been suggested that Paul’s eyes always troubled him because he had bee so dazed on the road to Damascus, that afterward he could only see dimly and painfully
    • You did not despise me literally means you did not spit at me. In the ancient world, it was the custom to spit when encountering an epileptic in order to avert the influence of the evil spirit which was believed to be resident in the sufferer; so, it has been suggest that Paul was an epileptic
  • If we can figure out just when Paul came to Galatia, it may be possible to deduce why he came. We might find that in Acts 13:13-14; 13 Paul and his companions set sail from Paphos and came to Perga in Pamphylia, but John left them and went back to Jerusalem. 14 They continued their journey from Perga and reached Pisidian Antioch. On the Sabbath day they went into the synagogue and sat down.
  • Paul, Barnabas, and Mark (John) had come from Cyprus to the mainland. They came to Perga in Pamphylia; there Mark left them; and then they proceeded straight to Antioch in Pisidia, which is in the province of Galatia. Why did Paul not preach in Pamphylia? It was a heavily populated district. Why did he choose to go to Antioch in Pisidia? The road that led there, up into the central plateau, was one of the most difficult and dangerous in the world. That is perhaps why Mark went home
  • Why, then, this sudden flight from Pamphylia? The reason may well be that, since Pamphyla and the coastal plain were districts where malarial fever raged, Paul contracted this sickness and his only remedy would be to seek the highlands of Galatia, so that he arrived among the Galatians a sick man. Not, this malaria recurs and is accompanied by severe headache which has been likened to a red-hot bar thrust through the forehead. It may well have been that it was this acute pain which was Paul’s thorn in the flesh and which was torturing him when he first came to Galatia
  • He talks about those who were deliberately being attentive to and making much of the Galatians; he means those wo were seeking to persuade them to adopt Jewish ways. If they were successful, the Galatians would in turn have to seek approval from them in order to be allowed to be circumcised and enter the Jewish nation. The sold purpose behind this flattery was to get control of the Galatians and reduce them to subjection to themselves and to the law
  • In the end, Paul uses a vivid metaphor. Bringing the Galatians to Christ cost him pain like the pain of childbirth; and now he has to go through it all again. Christ is in them, as it were in embryo; he has to bring them to birth
  • No one can fail to see the deep affection of the last words. My children—diminutives in Latin and Greek always express deep affection. John often uses this expression, but Paul uses it nowhere else; his heart is running over with emotion. We do well to note that Paul did not scold with bitter words; he had nothing but affectionate concern for his straying children. The accent of love will penetrate where the tones of anger will never find a way
• Galatians 4:21-5:1
• 21 Tell me, you who want to be under the law, don’t you hear the law? 22 For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave and the other by a free woman. 23 But the one by the slave was born as a result of the flesh, while the one by the free woman was born through promise. 24 These things are being taken figuratively, for the women represent two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai and bears children into slavery—this is Hagar. 25 Now Hagar represents Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. 26 But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. 27 For it is written, Rejoice, childless woman, unable to give birth. Burst into song and shout, you who are not in labor, for the children of the desolate woman will be many, more numerous than those of the woman who has a husband. 28 Now you too, brothers and sisters, like Isaac, are children of promise. 29 But just as then the child born as a result of the flesh persecuted the one born as a result of the Spirit, so also now. 30 But what does the Scripture say? “Drive out the slave and her son, for the son of the slave will never be a coheir with the son of the free woman.” 31 Therefore, brothers and sisters, we are not children of a slave but of the free woman. For freedom, Christ set us free. Stand firm, then, and don’t submit again to a yoke of slavery.
  • When we attempt to interpret a passage like this, we must remember that, for devout and scholarly Jews, and especially for the Rabbis, Scripture had more than one meaning; and the literal meaning was often regarded as the the least important
    • For the Jewish Rabbis, a passage had four meanings
      • Peshat, its simple or literal meaning
      • Remaz, its suggested meaning
      • Derush, the meaning deduced by investigation
      • Sod, the allegorical meaning
      • The first letters of these four words—prds—are the consonants of the word paradise; and when a Rabbi had succeeded in penetrating into this four different meanings, he reached the joy of paradise
    • It is to be noted that the summit of all meanings was the allegorical meaning. It therefore often happened that the Rabbis would take a simple bit of historical narrative from the OT and read into it inner meanings which often appear to us fantastic but which were very convincing to the people of their day
    • Paul was a trained Rabbi; and that is what he is doing here. He takes the story of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael, and Isaac, which in the OT is a straightforward narrative, and he turns it into an allegory to illustrate his point
      • The outline of story is as follows; Abraham and Sarah had both reached an advanced age, and Sarah had no child. She did what any wife would have done in the one patriarchal times and sent Abraham in to her slave girl, Hagar, to see if she could bear a child on her behalf. Hagar had a son called Ishmael
      • In the meantime, God had come and promised that Sarah would have a child, which was so difficult to believe that it appeared impossible to Abraham and Sarah; but in due time Isaac was born 
      • That is to say, Ishmael was born as a result of the ordinary human intones and urges; Isaac was born because of God’s promise; and Sarah was a free woman, while Hagar was a slave girl. From the beginning, Hagar had been inclined to gloat over Sarah, because barrenness was a matter of great shame to a woman; there was an atmosphere charged with trouble
      • Later, Sarah found Ishmael mocking Isaac—this Paul equates with persecution—and insisted that Hagar should be cast out, so that the child of the slave girl should not share the inheritance with here freeborn son. Further, Arabia was regarded as the last of the slaves where the descendants of Hagar lived
      • Paul takes that old story and allegorizes it. Hagar stands for the old covenant of the law, made on Mount Sinai, which is in fact in Arabia, the land of Hagar’s descendants. Hagar herself was a slave, and all her children were born into slavery; and that covenant whose basis is the law turns men and women into slaves of the law. Hagar’s child was born from merely human instincts; and legalism is the best that human beings can do
      • On the other hand, Sarah stands fro the new covenant in Jesus Christ, God’s new way of dealing with us no try law but by grace. Her child was born free, and all his descendants must be free; he was the child not simply of human desire but of the promise of God 
      • As the child of the slave girl persecuted the child of the free woman, the children of law now persecute the children of grace and promise. But, as in the end the child of the slave girl was cast out and had no share in the inheritance, so in the end those who are legalists will be cast out from God and have no share in the inheritance of grace
      • Strange as all this may seem to us, it contains one great truth. Those who make law the principle of their lives are in the position of slaves; whereas those who make grace the principle of their lives are free. It is the power of that love, and not the constraint of law, that will keep us right; for  love is always more powerful than law