Galatians 4.8-11
“Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. But 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? You observe days and months and seasons and years! I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain.”
At first the Galatians were non-believers who did not know God. As a result, they were enslaved to false gods. Then they came to faith in Christ and discovered the truth about God. As a result, they were liberated and set free. But now they are rejecting the truth and freedom of Jesus and turning back to the legalism of the Law (that is what he means by “observing days and months and seasons and years”). As a result, they are going back into spiritual slavery.
Many of the Galatians had been worshipers at the idol-worshiping temples, and had lived the immoral lifestyle associated with those religions. And now, Paul says: “you are turning back … Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again?”
It is important to keep in mind that the central message of Galatians is a warning against legalism. The false teachers (the Judaizers) were not encouraging the Galatians to ignore God’s law as they had in their pagan days. Rather, they were urging the Galatians to adopt the Old Testament law in order to be justified. What Paul is saying here is that trying to earn salvation through meticulous biblical morality and religion is just as much a bondage to idols as outright paganism and its immoral practices. In the end, the religious person is as lost and enslaved as the irreligious person.
Paul’s question is emotional: Why would you do this? His concern is even more emotional: “I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain.” It was painful for Paul to learn that the Galatians were turning back to the old bondage from which Christ had redeemed them.
Every parent, teacher, coach, and youth leader has felt this pain. Sometimes we pour ourselves into a young person and provide them with the tools, resources, training, and love necessary for a successful life, but despite our efforts the young person turns away and follows the wrong path. When that happens it hurts deeply. Our pain is not for ourself, but for the young person and the negative consequences we know they will suffer as a result of the path they have chosen. This was how Paul was feeling when he wrote to the Galatians.
Christianity is not a religion; it is a relationship. Christianity is not based on rituals and ceremony and liturgy. Liturgy has a place, but we must never lose sight of the reality that God calls us into relationship with him through the redemptive, substitutionary death of his Son.
Return the Cross to Golgotha
I simply argue that the cross be raised again
at the center of the marketplace
as well as on the steeple of the church,
I am recovering the claim that
Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral
between two candles:
But on a cross between two thieves;
on a town garbage heap;
at a crossroad of politics so cosmopolitan
that they had to write His title
in Hebrew and in Latin and in Greek . . .
And at the kind of place where cynics talk smut,
and thieves curse and soldiers gamble.
Because that is where He died,
and that is what He died about.
And that is where Christ’s men ought to be,
and what Church people ought to be about.
