Ye observe days and months and times and years.
Paul points to one thing the Galatians were doing: they were keeping a religious calendar. Why should that alarm an apostle, when God Himself once commanded those days?
The list is not vague. Each term points to a fixed part of Israel's calendar. One writer names them one by one, then says what going back to them meant:
For example, the days would be keeping the Sabbath. The months would be the new moon. The seasons would be the different festivals we find in Leviticus 23. The years would be the sabbatical year every seven years, or the year of jubilee. They wanted to put themselves under all these regulations... The shadows given in the Old Testament pointed to Christ. But here the Galatians were going back to shadows Christ had already fulfilled. They were turning their backs on the sun and looking at the moon instead.
These were not invented customs. God Himself commanded them once, which is why the danger here is easy to miss:
Who would have suspected that keeping the sabbath day was so evil a thing? It was the seventh day of the week, the day God commanded in the law. Yet it was just this that frightened the apostle Paul about the Galatians. It meant slavery under the law; that is what made it so evil.
The Galatians were taking up a system God Himself once set up. One writer still gives that move a hard name:
Judaism was a system set up and once owned by God, being an expression of Christ in all its parts... But now Christ has come, and the substance of it all is here. Heavenly realities have come in. So a Judaism kept going by self-willed, blinded men is now idolatry. It is a religion of the senses, one the flesh can join in and enjoy. Things that once spoke of Christ are now weak and worthless elements, and the whole atmosphere is one of bondage.
Treating some days as holier carries a hidden assumption. It also changes how a person treats every other day:
This is formalism, designed to draw attention to themselves. It assumes that God required more righteousness of them at some times than at others. Such actions quietly excuse unrighteousness on "ordinary" days. How much of this we see in Christendom today! There are holy days and holy seasons, kept with great claims of spirituality — a spirituality thrown to the winds in ordinary life, and even in wild parties just before the holy days.
The same practice did not carry the same weight for every believer:
A Jewish believer might be excused for holding on to the customs of his forefathers, though the Spirit of grace still warns him (Rom. 14:3 and following). But for a converted Gentile to take them up was to show a basic ignorance of the grace in which he stood... Christ, the body and fullness of everything those shadows pictured, is the one continual festival of the saints. Days, months, seasons and years have dropped away, with all other legal burdens, from the cleansed conscience of the true worshipper of the Father.
Outward religion proves nothing about the heart. Anyone at all can keep a ritual:
If the Apostle looked at these Galatians only by what they were doing, he might well doubt whether they were true Christians. You do not have to be converted to observe days and seasons. This is a solemn thing for Christendom. Much of it has fallen into the same Galatian error, turning back again to outward ceremonies and to man-made holy days.
The verse frees the Christian from a sacred calendar. But one writer marks off the first day of the week as standing on different ground:
The believer is completely free from keeping "days and months and seasons and years." Being joined to a risen Christ has taken him right out of all such superstitious observances. Yet while this is wonderfully true, we see that "the first day of the week" has a place in the New Testament that no other day has. Let the Christian give it that place. It is a sweet and happy privilege, not a grievous yoke.
- Shadow — days, months, seasons and years meant sabbath, new moon, the feasts of Leviticus 23, and the sabbatical year. They were shadows pointing to Christ before He came.
- Substance — Christ has come, so going back to the shadow means turning your back on the sun to stare at the moon. He is now the one continual festival of His people.
- Slavery — even a day God Himself once commanded turns into bondage once you keep it as law.
- Idolatry — a system God once owned, kept up after Christ has come, is now idolatry — a religion of the senses that the flesh can enjoy.
- Liberty — anyone can keep a calendar without being converted, so the outward act proves nothing. The first day of the week remains, not as a yoke, but as a privilege.
I am afraid of you, lest indeed I have laboured in vain as to you.
Paul has just reminded the Galatians that they are sons of God, not slaves. Now he watches them count days, months, and seasons, as if God's favour ran on a calendar. His reaction is not mild disappointment. It is fear that his whole work among them may have come to nothing.
The fear is not about some future collapse. It is about work already done, and whether that work ever had any real substance. One writer draws this out from the grammar of the sentence itself:
Galatians 4:11 means: as a present fact, the labour may be in vain. There is no future purpose in view. He fears about the character of the labour he has already spent on them.
A close rendering of the Greek keeps the same edge, and shows how deliberate the Galatians' calendar-keeping was:
Days you are scrupulously observing, and months, and seasons, and years. I am frightened about you, lest perhaps I have toiled without reason for you.
Keeping special days looks harmless. One writer names what lies underneath it, and where it leads:
They were keeping days and months, seasons and years, as if an outward ritual could secure blessing. Anyone in his natural state, Jew or pagan, could carry out such a ritual. True, in his letter to the Romans the Apostle tells Gentile believers to bear with a Jewish believer. That believer might still cling to special days and refuse certain foods. But here he shows what happens if a Gentile goes back to a system of set days and ceremonies. He returns not only to Judaism, but to the idolatry of paganism.
Paul also wrote to a church at Corinth that was full of open moral failure. He never spoke to them like this. One writer draws out the comparison, quoting an older translation that reads "I am afraid of you":
"I am afraid of you, in case I have spent my labour on you in vain." Whatever the evil among the Corinthians was, he never says of them, "I am afraid of you." Is that not very solemn? Suppose we had known a church with so much open moral evil in it, and some of them even trying to overthrow the resurrection. Would we not have said that nothing was more pitiable than their state? Yet the apostle writes to them in confidence that they would come out of their evil.
A person can keep the whole calendar without any change of heart. That is why their new habit raised a hard question:
If the Apostle looked at these Galatians only by what they were doing, he might well doubt whether they were true Christians. You do not have to be converted to keep days and seasons.
Setting some times apart as holy says something about all the other times:
"You observe days and months and seasons and years" (v.10). This was formalism, designed to draw attention to themselves. It assumed they owed God more righteousness at some times than at others. Such actions quietly approve unrighteousness on "ordinary" days.
Legalism looks good, and that is why it deceives. One writer sets out what actually produces holiness:
Legalism is a deceptive thing, because it looks good. Where it takes hold, people imagine they are becoming more holy. The opposite is true. Real holiness does not come from the name of a day, or an hour, or a season, or a place. It comes from God working in the soul, both to will and to work for His good pleasure. This is so because the believer is "sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ." God brings the believer into His own presence, and puts him there as a child.
Paul's alarm did not make him give them up. He held two views of the Galatians at once. It depended on whether he looked at their behaviour or at their place in Christ. The words quoted here come from later in the same letter:
When Paul looked at them in their confusion, away from Christ, he could only say, "I stand in doubt of you." But when he looked at them as in Christ, he could say, "I have confidence in you through the Lord."
His remedy is not stricter rules. It is a fresh start in grace, right back at the first lessons:
Legalism had so twisted the truth in their souls that they needed to be rooted and grounded in the first lessons of grace all over again. They had lost their hold of the cross, and the apostle stood in doubt of them. They might look very zealous. But as for any witness to Christ, or any enjoyment of Him in their souls, all was gone.
- Labour. Paul fears for work already done, not work still ahead. Did his toil among them have any real substance?
- Alarm. Open sin at Corinth never drew this word from him. A religious calendar in Galatia did. That shows where the deeper danger lay.
- Cause. Keeping days treats ritual as the way to win blessing, and makes ordinary days count for less.
- Test. Anyone can keep a season without new life, so the practice left Paul unsure whether they were converted.
- Hope. Their behaviour made him doubt; their place in Christ gave him confidence. He set out to ground them in grace again, since real holiness comes from God working in the soul, not from marked days.