Galatians: A Study of Christian Freedom
Lesson 10: Oh, Grow Up! Galatians 4:1-7
Growing up has never been easy. It means taking on new responsibilities and new duties. It can be a fearsome thing. But it also means new opportunities and new privileges.
Once in a while, due to illness or accident, something will happen to a person’s mind. An adult becomes a child; physically they may be grown while mentally they may be four or five years old. It is a tragedy.
It would be the same in the spiritual life; Paul saw this happening to the Galatians. They were moving toward maturity but had begun to regress to move toward immaturity.
They were adults rushing toward childhood.
4 My point is this: heirs, as long as they are minors, are no better than slaves, though they are the owners of all the property; 2 but they remain under guardians and trustees until the date set by the father.
Once again Paul draws on the Greek and Roman culture to make his point about what has happened in the lives of the Christians.
Under Roman law, sons were the heirs of the wealth and property of their fathers, but until they reached their majority, they were under the control of a guardian or trustee. This individual, often a slave chosen for the task by the father, had considerable control over the life of the child. This control was exercised for the ultimate good of the child; still, he was not as free as he would be when he became an adult in the eyes of his father. There was no specific age when a boy was considered an adult but most commonly it was between twelve and fifteen. At that time, he was given a new degree of freedom he had never known before.
3 So with us; while we were minors, we were enslaved to the elemental spirits of the world.
Under Roman law the child’s manager had considerable power over the child but he was not to be abusive; still, it happened. God’s gift of the Law was intended to be beneficial to the Jewish people but that intention did not materialize. Instead, the people were “enslaved to the elemental spirits of the world.” What does that mean?
The term “elemental” had a couple meanings: It could mean the basics of any field of knowledge, even the A-B-Cs; or it could refer to natural components of the world such as earth, wind, fire or the heavenly bodies, sun, moon, planets. The Greco-Roman world believed there were spirits or gods behind those natural components. Which view is the best? Translations vary in how they attempt to present Paul’s meaning.
Phillips takes the first view: “while we were “children” we lived under the authority of basic moral principles.” Some attempt to translate the words without personifying the forces; the New Living Bible does this in these words, “we were slaves to the basic spiritual principles of this world.” The Holman Christian Standard Bible takes a middle view when it says they “were in slavery under the elemental forces of the world.” The Good News Bible seems to take the second view without reserve: “we too were slaves of the ruling spirits of the universe before we reached spiritual maturity.”
Although most translations avoid making a commitment, the context (especially verse 8) suggests the second meaning. While this concept seem foreign to us, we have to recall that the pursuit of salvation for the earliest Christians involved spiritual conflict.
Paul, the Jew, would not have believed such “gods” to be real but would have seen a demonic dimension to their activity. For this reason he will speak of the Galatians being “enslaved to beings that by nature are not gods.”
The Law was never intended to be easy. It was intended to show us that we are sinners, thus driving us to Christ. But the destructive, negative impact of the Law was the product of malevolent, corrupting spiritual forces at work.
Stott describes this corruption:
Just as during a child’s minority his guardian may ill-treat and even tyrannize him in ways which his father never intended, so the devil has exploited God’s good law, in order to tyrannize men in ways God never intended. God intended the law to reveal sin and drive men to Christ; Satan used it to reveal sin and drive men to despair. God meant the law as an interim step to man’s justification; Satan uses it as the final step to his condemnation. God meant the law to be a stepping-stone to liberty; Satan uses it as a cul-de-sac, deceiving his dupes into supposing that from its fearful bondage there is no escape.
In the minds of the Judaizers the possession of the law, instead of reminding them of God’s gracious blessing, became a symbol of their superiority, granting them the right to view others with disdain and contempt.
But this was not going to last forever.
4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law,
This verse celebrates how God acted to change things for both Jews and Gentiles.
God’s actions took place “when the fullness of time had come.” The words may simply mean that God acted “at the right time” or they may mean God acted at “the appointed time.” That ties into the fact that the Roman father chose the time for his son to be emancipated from guardianship and be considered a free adult.
Certainly, the words imply that God’s sovereignty was at work. Church historians have often pointed out how the time of Christ’s birth coincided with circumstances in the Roman world that would favor the spread of the gospel. These circumstances would have included the Roman road system, the almost universal use of Greek, the Roman laws, and the general peace that marked the empire.
Whatever we might say about the historical circumstances, we can appreciate the how the law’s domain came to an end with the coming of the gospel.
It was the moment when “God sent his son.” God had sent the Law, now he sent his Son to crown the work the Law initiated. The law was leading toward Christ, now he had come.
God’s Son was “born of a woman.” In one sense, this is a strange comment. After all, each of us was “born of a woman.” Some have felt this might be a reference to the Virgin Birth but that isn’t necessarily the point. More likely, Paul is using the phrase to parallel the reference to God sending his Son. So, Jesus is both God’s Son and the son of a human mother. He is divine and human. It’s an important point made early in the development of Christian thought. The notion that Jesus wasn’t considered the God-Man until almost the fourth century just doesn’t fit the facts. Back to Paul.
God’s Son was “born subject to [the regulations of] the Law.” Although, Paul doesn’t provide much biographical information about Jesus, he understood that Jesus did not live as if he had no responsibility toward the law. Like other Jews, Jesus ordered his life according to the demands of the law; unlike every other Jew, Jesus succeeded. He faithfully kept the demands of the law. This enabled him to carry out the reason for which God had sent him. The Son had been sent…
5 in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.
The Son came “in order to redeem those who were under the law.” Paul doesn’t mention the cross here but he referred to Christ’s death earlier when he described Jesus as the one “who gave himself for our sins” (1:4) and when he showed how Christ became a curse for us when he was hanged on a tree (3:13).
Christ’s death was liberating. Through his death, God bought “freedom for those who were under the law.” Christ came on a mission to set people free; any scheme that resulted in people being enslaved ran contrary to his mission.
His redemptive work made it possible for us “to receive adoption as children.” While Paul has already mentioned how all believers are now children of God, he is now referring to another practice that sometimes took place in the Roman world. A rich person, with no natural heir, could adopt someone, even a slave, to become his heir. At the appropriate time, this slave-son would receive all the benefits that would have gone to a natural son. Paul seems to be saying that we who had no natural claim to any benevolence from God, have received the highest.
6 And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”
The token of our adoption is the gift of the Spirit. We will talk more about the Spirit in a later chapter but for now let me say that I believe the Spirit is active in the life of every believer even before that person becomes a believer. At the same time, I’m not sure we honor the Christ by fighting about the Spirit. I recently read a column by a man who repudiated all the writings of a well-known Christian because he discovered this man held a “second blessing” view of the Spirit. I may not accept the notion of the coming of the Spirit as a second-blessing but I do think those who see the Spirit in this way recognize something we who believe the Spirit is part of a “package deal” when we become Christians forget: Christians often live as if the Spirit is not a part of their experience. But that debate belongs elsewhere.
Paul refers to the Spirit as “the Spirit of his Son.” This designation of the Holy Spirit reflects both that the Spirit is the Christ’s Gift to his people and the reality that the Spirit works so intimately with Christ that He may be called the Spirit of Christ. The Spirit may be said to bring the work of Christ into our lives.
Specifically, Paul speaks of how the Spirit allow us to approach God calling out, “Abba!” Of course, most of us know that “Abba” is the Aramaic term for “Papa.” It implies a degree of intimacy that was largely unknown in both the Jewish and non-Jewish world. So those who were estranged are now close.
7 So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.
This is a summary statement on what God had done through Christ. The Christian was once a slave (whether Jew or Gentile) but is now a child. And this child is an heir. This transformation was “through God,” not through any human effort to attain salvation or right-standing with God.
This allows Paul an opportunity to return to a question he’s already asked: Why would you want to go back?
We can ask the same question. Grace can be frightening But we look at our failures in trying to keep the law, why would we go back?
