Now I say, As long as the heir is a child, he differs nothing from a bondman, though he be lord of all;
Paul has just told the Galatians that faith, not law, makes a person Abraham's heir. Now he pictures a boy who owns a whole estate yet lives like a slave in the house — the position of God's people before Christ came.
The illustration turns on the boy's age. He is not just young. He is below the age at which the law lets a person act.
"I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything." This principle is true of believers under what we may call the old covenant. They were heirs, no doubt, and blessing is to be their portion. But the heir is no more than the bondman or slave as long as he is an "infant." That is the force of the word "child." The ancients used the word, as our legal term still does, for a person under legal age, who cannot make contracts and agreements or act for himself. He really is to have a part in the kingdom of Christ, to reign with Christ. But if we ask what his condition is while he is in this world, we find it described here as the place of a servant.
The comparison is not about worth. It is about daily life. The boy takes orders, and the freedom of the house is not yet his.
A child may be the heir, yet he is still kept in a place of subjection, under rules and regulations. In that respect he differs nothing from a servant. His father cannot yet trust him with the freedom of the house. When he comes of age, however, everything changes. He leaves the nursery routine behind, and his time under guardians is over. He takes his place as a son, in the liberty and nearness that fits that intimate relationship.
Many stumble here. If believers of every age are saved the same way, must their experience be the same too?
I dwell on this, because many find it very hard to understand how this can be. The way of being saved is the same, and yet the state of those who are saved can be different. The heir, while he is a child, is under guardians and managers. He has no free and direct communication with the father's mind, and no understanding of the father's interests.
Law gives orders but no power to obey them. That leaves the son far from the father whose estate he will inherit.
Anyone can understand a law that tells us what to do and what not to do. Anyone can understand that our blessing depends on obeying that law. It is a principle on which the world seeks to regulate all its affairs. To the believer, however, it is bondage. It ties us down to obey so that we may get blessing, but it gives us no strength to carry out the demands of law. Moreover it gives no knowledge of the heart of the Father, nor access to the Father — the source of all blessing.
No one should read this as a comment on how godly the Old Testament believers were. It describes the arrangement they lived under, not their personal standing.
It was not a question of how outstanding they were as saints of God. It was a question of the age they lived in. No greater man than John the Baptist was ever born, yet as the Lord has told us, "he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he" (Matt. 11:11). In their days God had not yet made Himself fully known. Redemption was not yet accomplished. God had not yet given the Spirit. Until these three great things happened, the people of God could not "come of age."
Teachers were pulling the Galatians back under religious rules. Paul asks them what that move really costs.
This was their place. Accomplished redemption had changed their position: they were now in communication and close dealings with God, as children with a father. And so he asks, "Now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more?" To take up again the place of distance that belonged to those under the law would sweep the whole thing away. The redemption of the Son of God had brought them into that position.
- Heir — the boy owns the whole estate already; his title is never in question, only his access to it.
- Infant — the word means a legal minor. He cannot act for himself, so the estate is his in name while others direct his day.
- Servant — law treated believers like servants. It gave orders, no strength to keep them, and no nearness to the Father's mind.
- Fulness — childhood ended when God made Himself fully known, accomplished redemption, and gave the Spirit.
- Backwards — to go back under rules after that is to trade a son's nearness for a minor's distance.
but he is under guardians and stewards until the period fixed by the father.
Paul is still running the picture he began in the previous chapter: an heir who owns his father's whole estate but cannot touch it while he is a child. So who are these guardians and managers, and who fixes the date when the waiting ends?
The verse names two kinds of oversight, not one. Roman custom also kept an heir waiting a long time for his freedom.
The heir to the property, while still a child, did not have liberty. He himself was under a guardian, and his possessions were under a steward. When he came of age he would be master of everything. But while he is still a minor, he has no right to the possessions, and no liberty to do what he wishes. As far as the law is concerned, it places him in the same position as a slave. A slave had no legal right to anything, and his master had full authority over him. It is said that the Roman child ended his "babyhood" at seven years old. But he was not counted a full-grown man until he was 25.
The word behind "managers" names a household job: the manager of a house, a steward. It is the same word translated "steward" elsewhere in the New Testament (The Christian's Friend).
The restraint fits what the child can bear. His father already knows the day it ends.
While the heir to the estate is still a small child, he lives under restraint, just as the servants do. Tutors and governors hold him in what feels to him like bondage. He simply has to do as he is told, and he does not yet know the reason why. He cannot yet have the full liberty of his father's house and estate, because his character and understanding are not yet formed enough. But his father knows when the time will come, and the day is fixed when he will come of age.
What the minor lacked was not comfort but closeness. Orders came with no explanation.
He compares the believer before the coming of Christ to a child under age. That child has no direct share in his father's thinking. He receives his father's orders the way a servant would, without his father explaining them to him. He is under tutors and governors until the time the father has appointed. So the Jews, although they were heirs of the promises, were not in touch with the Father and His purposes in Jesus. They were held like children under principles that belonged to the system of the present world.
Another writer traces that same lack to what law can and cannot do:
The law, however, is bondage to the believer. It ties us down to obey so that we may gain blessing, yet it gives us no strength to meet its demands. It also gives no knowledge of the Father's heart, and no access to the Father — the source of all blessing.
The "infancy" was not merely for the distant past. One commentator extends it right up to the cross, including the men who walked with Jesus.
The blessing in view is that of the believer in Old Testament times, or of someone who knew Christ during His life on earth. There was no real difference between them: Peter, James, and John were all children then. True, Christ was present in person, and blessing had grown immensely. Their eyes saw and their ears heard what prophets and kings had longed to see. Still, they were children. They were not set free from the law. They were still held down by its commands and rules.
The clock in this verse is not the child's. Paul later names what that appointed date turned out to be.
This lasted "until the date set by his father" (v.2). Then comes, so to speak, graduation from the child's place to the place of a son, from bondage to liberty, from mere submission to understanding, approving and enjoying that will. This is proper maturity… "The fullness of time" (v.4) is the date the Father set, when "God sent forth His Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons."
The date has passed, yet the old habits linger. One writer sees believers still living under tutors and schoolmasters.
Tutors and governors still exist. People still turn to the schoolmaster too, though his special office ended when Christ brought His people out from under the law, and out of the school of doing and of death. In far too many cases God's own blood-bought people — His children by birth, His sons by adoption — are not in spirit what they really are in fact.
- The picture. A minor heir has a guardian over his person and a steward over his property — he owns everything and controls nothing.
- The purpose. The restraint fits his immaturity, not his standing. He obeys orders without being told why.
- The loss. Law gives no access to the Father's heart and no strength to meet its own demands.
- The date. The child's progress does not end it. The Father's fixed day does — and it came when God sent His Son.
- The claim. That day has passed. Going back to guardians and schoolmasters is living below what you already are.
So we also, when we were children, were held in bondage under the principles of the world;
Paul compares God's people before Christ to an heir who is still a child. He owns everything, yet lives like a slave — and the puzzle here is how a law God Himself gave can count as one of the world's basic principles.
The word "children" here points to age and legal standing.
They were heirs, no doubt, and blessing is to be their portion. But the heir is no more than a slave as long as he is an "infant," which is the force of the word "child." Among the ancients, as in our legal language still, the word meant a person under legal age, unable to make contracts and engagements or to act for himself. That was exactly the position of a believer of old under the law. He had not arrived at full age; he was really an heir, destined to sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
The word behind "elementary principles" means basic principles. The shock is what it describes here: the law God Himself gave.
The word translated "elements" has the force of "principles," and is so translated in Hebrews 5:12. At first we may wonder that such terms — almost contemptuous terms — should be used of the law, which God Himself gave. But the "we" of Galatians 4:3 means Jews, just as the "you" of verse 6 means the Galatian Gentiles. Both were under bondage to the principles of the world, and the law of Moses made no difference. The law brought in the demands of God, but men had to meet them on the world's principles. The root principle of the law was this: the favour men received from God depended entirely on what they rendered to Him in obedience. This is altogether a principle of the world, whereas grace is not. The law brought in no principles that lie outside the world altogether, as Christianity does.
(Older translations read "elements of the world" where the ESV has "elementary principles.")
The old order worked through things a natural man could see, hear and touch. That is what made it worldly.
The institutions of the law were suited to man in the flesh — to men of the world. They were all outward: a magnificent temple, beautiful clothes for the priests, jewels and gold, trumpets, music, sweet incense, altars and sacrifices. Men could see all of it with their natural eyes. All these things formed what the Epistle to the Hebrews calls "a worldly sanctuary" (Hebrews 9:1). God gave all of it so that man in the flesh might be in relationship with God... Christians, on the other hand, are a heavenly people. They do not see the Object whom they adore, except by faith.
The system was not cruel. It could not give what it demanded.
Every natural man can understand a law. It tells us what to do and not to do, and it says our blessing depends on obeying it. It is a principle on which the world seeks to regulate all its affairs. It is, however, bondage to the believer. It binds us down to obey in order to get blessing, but gives us no strength to meet the demands of law. Moreover it gives no knowledge of the heart of the Father, nor access to the Father — the source of all blessing.
This condition lasted right up to the cross, and the closest disciples were not exempt from it.
The blessing of the Old Testament saint is in view, or of one who knew Christ in the days of His flesh, because there was no substantial difference between them: Peter, James and John were all infants then... they were not delivered from the law; they were still kept bound down by its injunctions and ordinances, and the terror arising from it always kept them in a measure of uncertainty and darkness — and it ought to have been so. A man under the law was not entitled to be thoroughly happy.
God appointed this system for Israel. It now goes by the name "elements of the world," and people still reach back for it.
As a nation God put them under law, under the priesthood of Levi, under outward sacrifices, under rules for the body. All this was part of what they had to go through, and great truths lay hidden under these simple pictures. Christendom has taken up the things that were right enough for a Jew, but which are now called "the elements of the world," as in truth they are. Now they are called elements of the world, but they were not so before Christ died.
This childhood came to an end when God acted.
Now God had sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law. So they had received the adoption of sons. And because they were sons, God had sent forth the Spirit of His Son into their hearts, crying, Abba, Father. They were therefore no longer servants, but sons; and if sons, heirs of God through Christ. What folly, then, to give up their sonship, with its liberty, privileges and prospects, and get tangled again in the yoke of bondage!
- Minor — "Children" here means legal minors. The heir owned everything but enjoyed nothing.
- Principles — "Elements" means basic principles. Under law, God's favour depended on what you rendered Him — the world's way of doing business, not grace.
- Outward — Temple, robes, incense, sacrifices: a system built for the eye. Christians now see the One they adore by faith alone.
- Powerless — The bondage was not harshness but inability. Law commands obedience for blessing, gives no strength to obey, and leaves the Father unknown.
- Released — God sent His Son to redeem those under law, and the Spirit makes them sons who cry "Abba, Father." Going back is folly.