But then indeed, not knowing God, ye were in bondage to those who by nature are not gods;
Paul has just shown the Galatians how high the grace of God has lifted them. Now he turns their eyes back to what they were before the good news reached them, and the look back carries a warning.
The pronoun is deliberate. Paul writes "you" here, not "we," and the two groups had different pasts.
It is plain he means the Gentiles. He does not say, when we did not know God — because the Jews did have a certain knowledge of God under the law. But "when you did not know God" points plainly to the pagan nations.
This was not a failure of intelligence. Some of them knew the finest thinking of their world.
See the scorn the apostle pours on their old pagan gods! And see how strongly he speaks of the people who worshipped them! Though many of them were philosophers, they did not know God. They might be full of the wisdom of this world, and able to talk about right and wrong. But towards God their hearts were hardened and their understanding darkened. They were totally ignorant of Him.
Paul's phrase "by nature are not gods" says the objects were nothing. But he does not say the religion cost them nothing.
They now stand at a new and unmatched height as believers in the grace of God. From there he turns their thoughts back to their natural condition as Gentiles in the flesh. That was a state of darkness, ignorance and spiritual death. In it they had once served a hard service of emptiness and shame. The objects of their worship were imaginary. Their gods were no gods. But the service they gave to these lying shadows was both real and costly… They were governed, but not blessed. They had lords many and gods many, but not one single gleam of truth, or light, or love. The gods they had were at best only projections of themselves. Far more often they were just idealised pictures of their strongest and most evil desires.
"Governed, but not blessed" catches the whole verse: the idols gave nothing back, yet demanded everything.
Their ignorance had a history behind it, and it still describes people today.
The Gentiles, we are told, once knew God, but they willingly ignored Him. This came from the instinctive dislike that sin must have for holiness… And this, let us remember, is essentially the state of every unconverted person. If he does not have the true God and eternal life in Christ the Son of the Father, he does not have God at all. His days may be spent in sincere and hard religious exercises, but they are empty and completely false.
Slavery to nothing is still slavery. Only one thing ends it.
In those former days they did not know God. They only served their dumb idols, and knew nothing better. Those idols were not gods, and yet they were slaves to them. But now they have learned to know the true and living God — or rather, the true and living God knows them. Now they have tasted the liberty of His service.
Paul does not raise their past for its own sake. The shock lands in one short phrase.
Notice these words: "turning back again." They had left their idols, and now they are turning to the law. No man would have written these words, "turning back again." But the Holy Spirit did. In God's sight, for the Galatians to turn from the good news they had received to the law is just the same as turning back again to those weak and poverty-stricken principles they once served. They are wishing to be enslaved by them all over again.
A change of religion does not always change the motive underneath it.
Their motives in paganism had been selfish, and they had tried to cover this by worshipping false gods… After the true God has been revealed, after receiving infinite blessing from Him, these Galatians dared to return to their motives of selfishness. They thought that adding the law gave Christianity a more brilliant light. Instead it fed the same principles of self-pleasing and self-exaltation as the paganism they had given up. In practice the only difference was that the outward worship of the true God now covered these motives.
after
The danger did not stop with Galatia.
You do not have to be a converted person to observe days and seasons. This is a solemn thing for the Christian world to weigh. It has largely fallen into the same error as the Galatians, turning back once again to outward ceremonies and man-made holy days.
- Ignorance. Their old religion began where all idolatry begins: they did not know God. Learning and philosophy never closed that gap.
- Emptiness. The gods were imaginary, often just their own worst desires made large. Such gods governed them, but never blessed them.
- Bondage. Unreal gods still held real slaves. The service cost them everything and gave back nothing.
- Liberty. Knowing God — and being known by God — is what broke the chain, not a better set of observances.
- Relapse. Going back to days and ceremonies is not a step forward but a step back. The old self-serving motive just takes on the true God's name.
but now, knowing God, but rather being known by God, how do ye turn again to the weak and beggarly principles to which ye desire to be again anew in bondage?
God had brought the Galatians out of idol worship into the knowledge of Himself. Now they were drifting into Jewish law-keeping, and Paul treats that as a return to the slavery they had left.
Paul starts to say they know God, then corrects himself and points to God's knowledge of them.
With loving appeal he writes to them, "But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God." What an appeal, to turn from their knowledge of God to His knowledge of them! At best our knowledge of God is very imperfect. But He has taken us up in the perfect knowledge of all that we were and all that we would be. He has justified us by His grace as a free gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
Their conduct gave him little to rest on. So he turned from what he saw in them to the God who had called them.
When people fall away, he does what David did and finds his strength in God (1 Samuel 30:6). He turns for comfort from the work to the Workman: from sheep who were called but are changeable and careless, to the One who called them and never takes back His call. That they were "known by God" assured his own spirit more than anything he ever saw in them.
The ESV calls them "elementary principles" and "weak and worthless"; older translations say "elements" and "beggarly." The word is not an insult in itself — it points to first lessons.
The word applies to children at the start of their training. It applies also to the law, the early way God dealt with Israel. But now the law is called "beggarly": it has lost its glory through the failure of man and the coming of Christ Himself.
Calling the law weak and beggarly sounds harsh until you ask what it is being measured against.
The law was holy, just and good. Yet the moon is a weak and beggarly thing next to the sun, and so is the law next to the grace and power of the gospel. Think of the great story in Luke 15. The Father had welcomed the Galatians into His house and given them the place of a son, not the place of a hired servant. Yet here they were, going back with false humility — not quite to the care of the pigs in the far country, but to the drudgery of kitchen servants. They acted as if that were the way to keep the love the Father had showered on them.
These readers were Gentiles. They had never kept the law of Moses, so the word "again" is startling.
This must have shocked the Galatian saints. Turning again to idolatry! How could this be? They might say, We are only taking up the principle of the law: do you call this the weak and beggarly elements? The apostle answers: before your conversion you worshipped false gods — idols. But if you, as Christians, take up Jewish principles, even these feast days or other principles of the law, then in principle you are idolaters. You are turning back to the very idolatry God rescued you from. It is not that the law in itself could be idolatrous. But these things had lost all their meaning, and a Gentile had nothing to do with them. They had their value as a shadow of Christ, before Christ came. To turn back from Christ risen from the dead to these mere shadows was, in God's sight, going back to idolatry.
The next verse names what Paul had noticed. Each item traces back to something God Himself had once commanded Israel.
The sabbath day is the seventh day of the week, the day God commanded in the law. Who would have suspected that keeping it was so evil a thing? 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.
Religion of that kind misses something about God's own character.
People still think that God must be served by human hands, as though He needed something. They do not know Him in His character as Giver, and so they do not come to Him to receive.
- Known. Your standing rests on God's grasp of you, not your grasp of Him. He took you up knowing all you were and all you would ever be.
- Freed. God brought them out of the service of false gods and set them in the place of sons in the Father's house.
- Weak. The law was holy. But beside the gospel it is moonlight beside the sun, and its glory is gone now that Christ has come.
- Backwards. Taking up law-keeping after Christ is not progress. Paul calls it going back, in principle, to the idolatry they had left.
- Bondage. Even the sabbath, a day God once commanded, becomes slavery when you keep it to secure His love.
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.