Dr. Rodney Plunket

Galatians 4:8-20

This morning we come to the fourth lesson in our series on Paul’s letter to the churches of Galatia.  And I want to begin by noting that the apostle Paul believes that everyone lives under some sort of spiritual power.  That belief is expressed strongly in Galatians, but it is also expressed in other of Paul’s let­ters.  In Romans (Rm) 3:9, for example, he says, “that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin.”  And Bruce Longenecker is surely correct when he says that what Paul means by the power of sin is “the cosmic power of Sin that is in competition with God” (The Triumph of Abraham’s God:  The Transformation of Identity in Galatians [Nashville: Abingdon, 1998], 38).  In Rm 7 Paul refers to sin as that power that can even take a good thing like the Law and bring about our spiritual deaths.  And in v 19 he makes clear that sin dwells within those who are dominated by its power.  But in Rm 8, Paul declares with equal strength that God has “condemned sin in the flesh” and that “those who are in Christ Jesus” are no longer indwelt by sin but by “the Spirit of God.”  And, before we leave the Book of Romans, notice that in Rm 6:20-23 Paul says,

When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteous­ness.  So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed?  The end of those things is death.  But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification.  The end is eternal life.  For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Notice that Paul refers to being “freed from sin.”  Notice also that a person is either a slave of sin or a slave of God, and Paul makes it clear that being a slave of God is where all the rewards are.  So a person is under one spiritual force or another.  Outside of Christ a person is dominated by sin.  In Christ a person is a slave to God; and the person who is in Christ receives “the free gift of God,” the free gift of “eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Now let’s turn to the Book of Galatians to see that Paul builds upon this same concept there.  Let’s go first to Galatians (Gal) 1:3 & 4 and be reminded of a statement found in Paul’s opening greeting to the Galatian churches.  Please follow along as I read these two verses:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to set us free from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father.

Notice Paul’s statement that Jesus Christ “set us free from the present evil age.”  Here Paul refers to the once dominating power from which Jesus Christ has delivered us.  In using the phrase, “set free,” Paul makes very clear that we were once under a malevolent power which he refers to as “the present evil age.”  Notice the similarities between the deliverance expressed here and the deliverance referred to in Romans.

Now let’s look briefly at a phrase we also looked at last week.  Look at Gal 3:1.  There Paul asks, “Who has bewitched you?”  As we notice last week, the Greek word translated as “bewitched” was used in the Paul’s day to refer to the evil eye, and the evil eye had the power to bring about harm and misfor­tune.  Again Paul is referring to a malevolent power; this time it is a malevo­lent power that is bringing spiritual harm to the Christians in Galatia.

Now turn to Gal 4:3.  As we noted last week, in this section of Galatians Paul tells his readers that the Law was like a human overseer who supervised a person during childhood.  But when the child matured, that supervisor’s role was ended.  Paul argues that Christ’s coming introduced believers into a new age of maturity in which Law-keeping was no longer our supervisor.  With that in mind, notice what Paul says in Gal 4:3:  “So with us; while we were minors, we were enslaved to the elemental spirits of the world.”  To be “enslaved to the elemental spirits of the world” is to be under the power of sinister forces that dominate and oppress.

Now look with me at Gal 4:8-11:

Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to beings that by nature are not gods.  Now, however, that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental spirits?  How can you want to be enslaved to them again?  You are observing special days, and months, and seasons, and years.  I am afraid that my work for you may have been wasted.

Here Paul refers to the past of his readers.  It is fairly obvious that his readers are non-Jews who worshipped pagan deities before their conversion.  Paul calls those pagan deities “beings that by nature are not gods.”

But Paul does more than refer to his readers’ past.  It is clear from the whole of the message of Galatians that Paul’s readers are turning to a life of Law-keeping.  They are turning to Jewish rituals like circumcision.  They may be adopting Jewish food laws.  Right here in v 10 Paul indicates that they are also turning to the honoring of special Jewish holy day and seasons.  And Paul in these verses makes clear that to turn to a religion of Law-keeping is to turn back to being dominated and oppressed by the same kind of sinister powers that they left behind when they came to Christ.  They are turning “again to the weak and beggarly elemental spirits.”  They are being “enslaved to them again.”

What we need to see is that for Paul, since Christ has come and “set us free from the present evil age,” to turn to anything other than the internal transformation produced by the Christ within/to turn to anything other than the internal transformation produced by the Spirit of God is to turn to the sinister and malevolent powers that enslave and oppress.  Even keeping the external rules and principles of the Law of Moses is a turning back to those kinds of forces that are a part of “the present evil age” from which Jesus Christ delivers.  Paul’s extreme disappointment at such a turning back is clear.

So the first point that I want to make this morning is that Paul believes that the issue with his readers is a matter of spiritual forces.  They once left the spiritual forces of “the present evil age.”  Now, by turning to a life of Law-keep­ing, they are turning back to those same sinister forces.  They are once again being enslaved by “the weak and beggarly elemental spirits” of their past.

I want us to look in just a moment at Gal 4:12-16. But first I want to notice an insight gained from the Book of Romans.  We know from Romans that Paul is accused of preaching a message that provides a license for sin.  We know from Rm 3:8 that Paul was accused of teaching, “Let us do evil so that good may come,” and from Rm 6:1 it appears that some interpreted Paul’s message to mean people should “continue in sin in order that grace may abound.”

I think Paul is responding to a similar issue in Galatians.  So in Gal 2:20 he pictures the believer’s new life as one in which Christ dwells within the believer and shapes the believer according to Christ’s own faithfulness.  The new ethic/the new mode of conduct, in other words, is the result of the living Christ transforming us from the inside out according to Christ’s faithful life of obedience to God.

And Paul makes clear in Galatians that one of the main evidences of that remaking by the indwelling Christ, is love.  Let’s look ahead for just a minute.  Look first at Gal 5:6.  There Paul says, “For in Christ Jesus neither circumci­sion nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working through love.”  Now please look with me at Gal 5:13-14.  There Paul says,

For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another.  For the whole law is summed up in a sin­gle commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Now look at Gal 5:22 and notice that the first element of the fruit of the Spirit is “love.”  Finally look with me at Gal 6:2.  Paul says, “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”  To bear another’s burden is to love, and Paul says that when a person does that he or she is ful­filling “the law of Christ.”

Now let’s go back to Gal 4 and read vv 12-17.  Please notice the evi­dences of love that Paul experienced when he first went to Galatia.

Friends, I beg you, become as I am, for I also have become as you are.  You have done me no wrong.  You know that it was because of a physical infirmity that I first announced the gospel to you; though my condition put you to the test, you did not scorn or despise me, but wel­comed me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus.  What has become of the good will you felt?  For I testify that, had it been possible, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me.  Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth?

It appears that Paul came to Galatia suffering from some physical infirmity that profoundly affected his eyes.  The Galatians could have viewed his physical malady as a sign that he was divinely cursed.  But Paul indicates here that the Galatians treated Paul with more love and showed that the work of the Spirit of love was already working within them when Paul first came to Galatia.  In other words, they had more evidences of the indwelling Christ then than they do now.  Their external observance type of Christian faith has pulled them away from the transforming power of Christ and has caused them to be domi­nated by sinister forces that are not going to produce love; but, as Paul indi­cates in Gal 5, those forces are going to produce the works of the flesh.  Listen to Paul’s description of the works of the flesh and hear how starkly they con­trast with love.  In Gal 5:19-20 Paul describes the works of the flesh as “forni­cation, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these.”  No love in that list.  And that is the list of what the sinister forces that Paul is opposing introduce into people’s lives.  Paul wants to see within his readers the kind of love they displayed when Paul first met them.

Memory is such a powerful force.  I did something yesterday that I have never done in my life.  I cooked dove.  I went dove hunting on Thursday with Vic, Stuart, and Derek Bozeman and had a great time and a very good hunt.  They generously allowed me to take all of the dove we killed.  I cooked them yesterday the way I remembered my mother cooking them.  After a while the house was filled with smells that caused me to remember my mother.  It was as if my house was filled with my mother’s aroma.  It was such a special smell.  It took me back home.

I believe that Paul, in Gal 4:8-11, is trying to take his readers back to a special time by way of memory.  He is trying to take them back to that special time when they received him with so much love, a love so real that they would have given him their eyes in response to his physical infirmity.  Paul wants them to have that kind of love again.

How will that happen?  What will give them that kind of Christian life/
that kind of Christian love again?  Listen to Gal 4:19, a verse we noted in the very first lesson of this series.  Paul says, “My little children, for whom I am again in the pain of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.”  That is what will create powerful love within Paul’s listeners again.  It is the indwelling Christ.  They must turn away from those sinister forces that drag them further and fur­ther into the works of the flesh.  They must turn away from those powers and turn back to the Christ who “set[s] us free from the present evil age.”

The power to love, that is the power of the indwelling Christ.  The power to love, that is the power that should shine within us.  But it shines not because we learn to paste on the externals of love.  It shines not because we focus on the external manifestations of love.  It shines because Christ rules within us.  It is His power.  We can take no credit.  We receive no glory.  It is all the work of Christ.  That is why Paul is so passionate in this letter.  He is in a battle over the very essence of Christian faith.  This battle is concerned with what spiritual force will shape and mold us.

Sisters and brothers, we must focus on the Christ.  We must put all of our faith/all of our trust in Him.  And, to use again the words of Paul in Gal 2:19-20, we must be “crucified with Christ” so that “it is no longer [we] who live, but it is Christ who lives in [us].”

Too many church-going people live the whole of their lives focused on getting all of the externals right.  They piece all of the passages together on the Lord’s Supper, prayer, the organization of the church, baptism, worship, etc.  And they do what they believe their newly created puzzle reveals.

I think Paul would turn up his nose at such an exercise.  I think Paul would be as angry about such an approach to the Christian walk as he is with the Galatian churches and those who are distorting the gospel there.

I remember as a teenager my dad telling me of a man who had his list of the five acts of worship.  He was so wedded to that list that he would not attend any service that did not include all five acts on his list.  I know that is an extreme case, but it illustrates the direction of list making and external obser­vance religion.  That kind of religion leads away from Christ.  It leads away from an inside out faith that relies on the indwelling power of Jesus.  It leads to a religious perspective that relies on the powers present in this evil age rather than on the powers that will be fully present in the age to come.

Christ did not come to give us a new list of laws to keep.  Christ came to inaugurate a whole new way of following God.  That new way is powered by the Spirit of God within us.  That new way is powered by the risen Lord Jesus Christ living within and remaking us from the inside out.

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