Scripture Reference: Galatians 3:25-4:7

Grasping What We Used to Be – Continued

From Last Lesson: Paul wants his readers to realize that we can only fully appreciate what we now are in Christ against the backdrop of remembering what we once were without Him. “Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world” (Galatians 4:3).

This too is a fascinating choice of words on the apostle’s part because he speaks about the “elements of the world” (“elementary principles” as the ESV translates it) as opposed to “the law” as we might have expected him to say. But the reason for this is that he explicitly wants to include Gentiles in his purview. Even though they belonged to a different religio-cultural ethnic grouping, nevertheless they too were “in bondage”, although in a different manner. Effectively Paul was making the point that Judaism-gone-wrong was no different from paganism, any more than Christianity-gone-wrong is different from false religion in our day and age.

He uses similar language elsewhere in his letters in a way that suggests that the “elements” of this world and universe he’s speaking of, were attached to the gods of those civilizations and so from a Christian perspective were the instruments of the devil as false gods to whom their devotees were enslaved. This would certainly tie in with what Jesus said to the Pharisees about the way the devil had distorted the Jewish faith of their day (John 8:44).

The big point Paul is making in these verses is that, regardless of whether his hearers had been well-meaning Jews or outright pagans in their former life, they had been “in bondage” or enslaved. So, the irony in this was that, as with the Jews of Jesus’ day, although they thought they were “free” in reality they were not (John 8:33). This is one of the most sobering realities of our own age when the dream of “freedom” is seen as the hallmark of humanity come of age, but in which even the most “liberated” of people are not truly free at all. We may think we are our own masters, but we are caught in the vice-like grip of the sins that control us. It is only when we recognize how true this is that we will realize what we really need is to be rescued.

The Galatians had forgotten that it was out of a deep sense of their own helplessness that they first cried out to God for salvation when they heard the good news through Paul. They were now being misled into thinking that the very law that had been powerless to set them free back then could somehow release them now. It was only as Paul took them back to their enslaved past could he impress on them afresh just how free they had been made in Christ.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
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