Thoughts on Galatians 4:8-11

Before the Galatians knew God, they worshiped other false gods of other religions and were slaves to the systems and sacrifices required by those religions. Man-made religions require our sacrifice in an effort to reach God and know Him. We become slaves to legalism in trying to always do one more thing so that we can be holy enough for God to notice us. What kinds of false god’s enslave us today? Is it the muscle car in the garage that we worship with our thoughts, time, and money? Is it our beloved sports teams whom we want to identify with by wearing the jersey or even dressing up as our favorite team’s mascot (Rom 1:21-23)? Is it our children, our spouse, our family, our friends? This is an important question.

Jesus, who by nature is God, frees us from slavery (Heb 2:14-15). Christianity is not about what we can do to reach God. It is about what God did to reach us. That is the fundamental difference between Christianity and all other religions.

Paul makes it clear that initially, we are known by God and not the other way around. There is nothing we can do on our own to know God. By His grace He chooses to reveal Himself to us and allow us to know Him. Hebrew 1:1-2 talks about God revealing Himself to us. Apart from that revelation we would know nothing about the true God.

Paul then questions them as to how they could possibly, after having known about the freedom that Christ offers, desire to go back again to being enslaved by man’s legalism. He tells them that is exactly what they are doing if they give in to the Judaizers insistence that they be circumcised. He says they will end up enslaved again, this time by the Mosaic law, specifically the cermonial laws of the Mosaic covenant. “To require Christians to follow such OT laws is to forfeit the gospel of justification by faith alone, in Christ alone.” (Gathercole)