As usual, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:
1But I am saying the heir differs nothing from a slave, as
long as he is a child [though] being lord of all, 2but he is under
guardians and managers until the time appointed by the father. 3Thus
also we, when we were children, were being enslaved ones under the basic
principles of the world. 4But when the fullness of time came, God
sent His Son, made out of a woman, made under law, 5that He might
redeem those under law, that we might receive the adoption [of sons]. 6And
because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying,
“Abba, Father.” 7Thus you are no longer a slave but a son and if a
son [you are] also an heir of God through Christ.
Well, I’ve been hiding for several months in the Psalms. But
alas, it’s time to leave my glorious refuge and face the storms again. Back to
Galatians and the battle of legalism. I must say, these first seven verses of
chapter 4 have been an explosion of truth for me. To anyone who stumbles across
this post, I will apologize ahead of time because it’s going to be a long one.
I am sincerely sorry I can’t seem to be brief. However, for me, the issues are
enormous, and I want to try to record my thoughts in some kind of orderly
fashion. So here we go:
The Galatian Issue
In this passage Paul is basically addressing the purpose of
the law and the OT. The Galatians are being persuaded that they should continue
to practice OT Judaism and obviously they have found the proposition alluring.
Why wouldn’t they? Our hearts are naturally and incorrigibly legalistic. “Give
me the rules and I’ll follow them.” Then make those rules the OT itself , with
the very endorsement of God, and it becomes irresistible. How utterly
compelling to have a religion of rules ordained by God Himself! I just follow
the rules and I’m good!
It would be a very weak and fruitless argument for Paul to
simply say, “You don’t need that. You don’t need OT law anymore.” “But,” they
would object, “These are God’s rules! How can you dismiss them??”
Knowing such an approach would be fruitless, Paul instead
tries to help them understand the purpose of law, hoping they will see it was
only a means to an end; and now that the “end” has come (Christ), they need to
move on. As he told the Colossians, “[The OT rules were] a shadow of things to
come; the reality however is Christ” (2:17).
How It Affects Us Today
May I inject at this point that this very discussion is no
small matter for us today? We may not be enamored with OT law, but I would
suggest we are still naturally and incorrigibly legalistic. We still love a
religion of rules and if we can convince ourselves they’re God’s rules, then we
think we’re in religious hog heaven. And this problem, I would observe, is
pervasive across the human race. People love a religion of rules, whether they
are Islamists, Hindus, Mormons, Amish, Roman Catholics, or run-of-the-mill American
church-goers. Of course it is easy to see the error in the sad, cruel bondage
of the Islamists and the Amish. But it is no less sad and cruel when this
fetish for legalism is the modus operandi of the modern evangelical church.
American churches are typically built around their own unique combination of
positions, traditions, and rules. “Come to our church and do it our way – God
will be pleased with you!” “Principles” and “applications” are taught from the
pulpit as if they are God’s rules, when in fact there’s not a shred of
Scripture to support them. It is an enormous grief in my own heart that I have
too many times committed this very sin when given the opportunity to supposedly
speak on God’s behalf. But, knowing my own heart, I am all too aware how
pervasive is this sad but utterly toxic misunderstanding of God, His Word, and
His will.
As with Paul and the Galatians, the problem for us, I think,
is that you cannot simply say, “The rules we’ve made were not good. We need to
dismiss them and follow these.” That is exactly what’s been going on in
American churches for the last 30 years. We realize some old “rules” are not
valid and dismiss them, then congratulate ourselves we are not legalists like
“those people” who still cling to those things. But have we addressed this
fundamental problem of legalism itself? Have we truly realized and confronted
the awful error of thinking true religion is fundamentally about “rules” at
all?
In fact, I would suggest, this is the entire issue Paul is
confronting here in Galatians 4:1-7. Go back and read it. What the Galatians
are missing is the whole point of it all. They are failing to see the whole
point of “religion,” the whole point of life!
Understanding Life Without the Holy Spirit
Here is what I’m understanding from this text: First of all,
our biggest problem (and it’s true of the entire human race) is that we are
born of Adam, born sinners, born without a heart that understands God’s. The
basic result is that we don’t “get it.” We don’t at all understand how it all
fits together. We don’t at all understand the big picture. And so what did God
do? He basically allowed our world to be ruled by law. “Here are the rules.
Keep them. Or else!” It is the only language our fallen hearts understand.
This is true whether Gentile or Jew. In Romans, Paul says
even the Gentiles “show the work of the law written on their hearts, their
conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or
excusing one another” (2:15). The Gentiles naturally live under the rule of
law. They have to. Their fallen, unregenerate hearts are capable of
inexpressible cruelty and self-destruction. And they have no heart to really
see it or change. So God gives them a sense of law. “Do this. Don’t do that. Or
else!” It is the only restraint available.
The Jews, though perhaps born-again people, still had the
same rotten hearts as their Gentile compatriots. Though they might come to
genuine faith, as many obviously did, yet they were not indwelt by the Holy
Spirit. The Spirit obviously moved on them, taught them, helped them, and changed
them in many ways, yet they still had the fundamental problem of their darkened
hearts without the indwelling Holy Spirit. So, like the Gentiles, God placed
them under law.
This is where our text vv. 1-3 enters. Paul compares the
time under law to a child. The child is in fact the heir, the “lord of all,”
but he is not ready to handle the
responsibilities or the freedoms of actually possessing that estate. Thus he is
kept under tutors and guardians to protect him from his own childish inadequacy
and to train him to be becoming a young man who will be “ready” when the father’s
appointed time comes. Thus Paul describes this time under law as being “in
bondage under the basic principles of the world.”
Now why does Paul call OT law the “basic principles of the
world?” I think he does this here because whether it was the Jews under the Law
itself or these Galatian gentiles under the more general rule of law – either way
this is the basic system of moral restraint in a fallen, Adamic world. As Paul
describes in Colossians 2, the “basic principles of the world” are “touch not,
taste not, handle not; (2:21) – rules to follow. “Do this. Do that. Or else!”
When the Galatians wish to place themselves under OT law, they are simply
exchanging their general rule of law and replacing it with the Jews’ more
specific rule of law. As impressive as OT law may be, it is still just law. It
is still just the basic principles of this world. And it is still the tutelage
intended to bring people to Christ.
It is still life without (yet) the Holy Spirit.
Understanding Life With
the Holy Spirit
And so verses 1-3 presents us all “enslaved” under law. And what
did God do? “… when the fullness of time
came, God sent His Son, made out of a woman, made under law, 5that
He might redeem those under law, that we might receive the adoption [of sons]”.
The time of the tutelage ended. The time appointed by the Father finally
arrived. Jesus came. Jesus was born like us. He was one of us. He lived life
under the rule of law like us. Only He didn’t fail. And in bearing our sins He
redeemed us and freed us from that tutelage.
But in order for us to in fact be free from the tutelage of
the law, something very important happened. Jesus didn’t just give us better
rules or somehow make us better rule-keepers. He “sent His Spirit into our
hearts, crying Abba! Father!” One of the prerogatives of the Messiah was the
outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The victorious Messiah Jesus returned to Heaven
and on that first day of Pentecost, He did just that. He poured out His Spirit.
A new day dawned. The tutelage ended. The “child,” people
with only darkened Adamic hearts suddenly came of age. Suddenly they now had
the very Holy Spirit of God living inside those hearts. Now they can understand. Now they can see the big
picture. Now they can understand God’s heart. Now they can understand how the entire
law can be summed in two commands, “Love God, Love others.”
As Paul goes on to say later in the book, “But the fruit of the
Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
gentleness and self-control. Against
such things there is no law” (5:22,23). “Against
such things there is no law.” New Testament believers are not supposed to be “rule-keepers.”
They have the indwelling Spirit to help them see God’s goals, to know His
heart, and to understand what truly is important and what is not. Like the
full-grown heir they are able to handle the responsibilities and freedoms of
spiritual adulthood.
This is the people God wants us to be; not
ignorant, immature people who can only be given rules, but rather people who
see His goals, embrace them, and thus need very little “rule” to guide their
lives.
Slaves or Heirs?
Thus understanding all of this, it is foolish, unnecessary
and even spiritually counter-productive for the Galatians to cast aside this
Spirit-given freedom in Christ only to return to a demeaning system of childish
rule-keeping. Paul hoped they would understand that. I hope I understand it!
I would suggest we do err greatly when we see life as a lot
of rules. Rules are for children. Rules are all a dark Adamic heart can
understand. “Rules are for rule-breakers,” says Paul in I Tim 1:9. Part of the
reason why we’re given the indwelling Spirit is to raise us up so we understand
“The goal of the commandment is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good
conscience and a sincere faith” (I Tim 1:5). Mature people see goals, not
rules. And where there are rules to “keep,” still the mature person sees the
goal behind them. Thus Jesus could say all the Law and the Prophets hang on
just two commandments. As Paul says, “Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore
love is the fulfillment of the law,” (Rom 13:10). Jesus’ desire is for His
people to embrace first of all the goals behind His laws, shall I even say the heart behind the laws. And He wants us
to share His goals, His heart. Such is His intended dignity for a people made
in the image of God, to rise above mere rule-keeping and rather be enamored
with Him. The victorious Messiah sent
His Spirit into our hearts crying, “Abba! Father!”
“So you are no longer
a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.”
Understanding the Choice
The Galatians needed not only to let go of their pauperly OT
rule-keeping, they needed to see that in Christ they’ve been raised to
something far greater. They have been raised to the dignity of heirs, the
dignity of mature people equipped to live out the image of God. This is the age
of the Spirit, the indwelling, enlightening, empowering Holy Spirit, and so,
like them, we need to utterly reject legalism in all its debasing manifestations
and lay hold of a life driven by faith, hope, and sincere love.
Such a life will still care very much about God’s “rules,”
about obeying Him as Lord and Master. How could we be less? We are enamored
with Him! We are as Paul describes
himself if in I Cor 9:21, “ … not being
without the law of God but under the law of Christ” – happily under the law
of the One whom my soul loves! On the other hand, the Law itself will still
always be there as a wall to block our way when we lose our grip and find
ourselves not walking in the Spirit. The “Thou shalt nots!” still meet
us on the way to sin.
But such is not the groveling tutelage of childish rule-keeping.
It is the wide-eyed, deliberate, intelligent life of mature people made in the
image of God. It is a life of dignity and freedom.
But What About …?
In my mind, two matters must be quickly addressed. Number
one: What about David and the other OT believers who rose to impressive levels
of spiritual maturity? How could this happen under the days of “childhood” and
the “tutelage of law” and without the indwelling Spirit? I think the answer is
in understanding tutelage itself. Say a father sets the date of maturity as the
son’s 21st birthday. Under that tutelage, there would be on the one
hand a 3-year old and on the other hand a young man of 20 years and 364 days.
Even under tutelage there should have been growth toward the goal. The older
son should have begun to look and act and think like the heir. And thus we see,
even under OT tutelage there could have been and should have been people like
David, believers of impressive spiritual maturity.
Then the second question begging address: If all of this is
true, why are there so few people today that seem to exhibit any spiritual
maturity at all? If this is the glorious age of the Holy Spirit-infused faith,
why does the church look little different from carping, griping, faithless
Israel in the desert? I would suggest a big part of the problem is this very
legalism itself. Just as the Galatians, though Spirit-indwelt, were “biting and
devouring one another,” a modern legalistic church misses the whole point of it
all, themselves practicing and teaching a system of religion which is, though
appealing, in the end toxic to any real growing relationship with God. It is
cosmically sad that legalism always has and always will eclipse the face of God
in peoples’ hearts.
Pulling It All Together
I think today we should take a passage like this and see its
immediately practical application in our own lives. The Galatians obviously
found legalism alluring. Unfortunately, we’re no different. But Paul’s counsel
is not that they should turn away from the OT legalism and embrace some other system
of law. Christ redeemed them from law! What they need to embrace is the
enormity of this Spirit-driven, heart-changed exaltation from slave-like child
to heir of God’s estate. I don’t know whether they did or not. But let us turn
from our rule-keeping religion and let that indwelling Spirit cry “Abba!
Father!” from our very heart. Let us stop thinking like the child and instead
embrace our divinely endowed role as heir of God’s estate. Let us stop living
by rules and instead lift up our heads to see God’s goals, His heart, His big picture.
May we really, truly love and serve and follow Christ from
our hearts!
He deserves no less.
