Galatians 4:1

Gal_4:1-2

Now this I say, that the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant.

Reading life

There is nothing final in the character of this world. But all betrays infancy. Everything is in a state of preparation. We move up and down amidst the reflections of the future. Certainly the material world has not reached its destination. The air we breathe--the sky we look on--the soil we tread--are only to go to make a new heaven and a new earth. And the Divine government, which is now, is mainly to illustrate the government which is to come. We have churches now; but they are only to prepare us for a state where there shall be no church--because every spot shall be holy. This world, then, is one large training-school, where we are placed for a little while, to learn to fulfil the duties of that great service for which we were destined and created. Training consists of three things: instruction, which is the imparting knowledge, and giving new ideas; education, which is the drawing out, and directing, the powers of mind and heart; and moral discipline, which is the moulding character, and the formation of good habits. This is just what life is.

I. We are here to get knowledge, and new ideas about the things of God. How shall we enter heaven without some previous knowledge of it: its conditions--its employments? And if there is no greater pleasure on this earth than to get a new idea, what must it be when the new ideas are these: to inform the mind about God; to see every day some new, fresh beauty in Jesus; to impregnate the understanding with the Infinite?

II. But let me speak to you, secondly, of your education for another world--according to the strict meaning of the word education. You are probably aware that the word education means to draw out, to educe. So that when we educate a child, it is, literally and properly, that we draw out what is in the child. The gardener does not make the branches and the tendrils; but he lays them out, he guides them, he gives each its proper place and order. He lops what is redundant; he fastens and makes sure what is good. But, be sure of this, there is that in you which, if you will, and if you will only let it, can expand into all that is happy, and all that is holy, and all that is useful, and all that is Divine, here and for ever.

III. Now, thirdly, the way in which this is to be done, we call discipline, the third part of training. Selfdiscipline, and Gods discipline. And yet they are not two, for Gods discipline is to make and to take effect through self-discipline. Do not count discipline a hard word. In Gods vocabulary, discipline is only another word for love. There cannot be discipline without friction--without struggle. But a victory over self is such a very pleasant thing. And the compensations are so accurate, and so great, that discipline itself soon loses to you its sterner sense, and becomes the element of all happiness. Discipline is to form habits. Do not forget that you are placed here mainly to form habits, to learn to do and be what you are to do and be eternally. To form a good habit must always involve the unforming a bad one. So you begin to hold yourself in hand, to exercise self-control, to cultivate pious thoughts--acts of devotion and religious communion, and a holy walk--which are the things you are to do for ever and ever. Meanwhile, all outward things are working for you, You will find yourselves in strange circumstances. But all to practise and increase some grace--and especially a lacking one. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)

The three estates

I. Socially.

1. The servant.

2. The child under tutors and governors.

3. The man come of age, liberated, and in possession of the inheritance.

II. Ecclesiastically.

1. The condition of servitude was that of the Church under the law, in bondage to beggarly elements.

2. The condition of the child already adopted but waiting for the inheritance is that of the Church under the gospel.

3. The condition of the man, full grown and enjoying his inheritance is that of the Church in glory.

III. Spiritually.

1. The state of servitude is that of the soul unconverted. He that committeth sin is the slave of sin. Sin is bondage of corruption.

2. The state of Sonship and liberty is that of the soul justified and sanctified (Joh_8:35; Joh_15:15).

3. The state of full manhood is where the glorifled saint enters the inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and which fadeth not away. (E. Garbett, M. A.)

The children at school

I. The school.

1. The period covered: from conversion to glorification--the time appointed of the Father.

2. The necessity for the intermediate schooltime arises from the degree and effect of imperfect sanctification.

3. The school sphere, this world, is admirably adapted to the discipline of the soul. For moral lessons to be learned by heart and conscience differ from intellectual. Instruction may convey the latter, only practical experience the former.

(1) Faith can only grow in the absence of perfect sight;

(2) hope amidst disappointment;

(3) love by opposition and sacrifice;

(4) submission amidst contradiction; and

(5) patience amidst prolonged trial.

II. The schooling.

1. The knowledge conveyed: God Himself.

(1) The loftiest.

(2) The most satisfying.

2. The books employed.

(1) Nature.

(2) The human heart.

(3) Providence.

(4) Scripture, which explains others.

3. The teacher.

(1) Divine.

(2) Perfect.

(3) Gentle.

(4) Patient.

III. The discipline.

1. necessity for this arises from our corrupt nature and constant temptations.

2. In the sense of discipline we must interpret the afflictions of this transitory state (Rom_5:3-5).

IV. In view of the advantages of school life and the prospect of home.

1. Be patient.

2. Teachable.

3. Earnest.

4. Obedient, as befits those who are under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the Father. (E. Garbett, M. A.)

Under tutors and governors

This whole world is a training school, and all life is discipline. Understand your position. You are an heir, an heir of an estate whose value no numbers can represent; an heir of a kingdom! But you are a child; whatever age you be, you are in the infancy of your existence. And the great end of your being is preparation for your majority--which lies the other side the grave. And therefore, all is laid out here--by your wise and loving Father--for your education. You are at home in your own household, and all is going on day after day, in the ordinary round. You meet in the morning; you sit together at meals: you join in the evening circle. It all seems very commonplace. But what and if in all this you are placed, by God, to prepare yourself for the family in heaven? Or, you go about in all the activities and businesses of your earthly calling. Have you bethought you that they are all to cultivate the accuracy, and the energy, and the faithfulness which will make you fit for higher trust and heavenly engagements, and more than angelic offices, in another stage of your immortality? Or, you walk among the beauties of Gods creation: or you sit down and you study the pages of Divine lore: and what is the whole universe, what is it but a lesson book in which you are to read, day by day, something of the character, and the wisdom, and the love of God? Yet, all you read now, is only like a little child learning his alphabet. Those pains and troubles, what are they? Correctives. Not very general correctives that will do for every one. That would not be the way of a good tutor, or a wise governor. But the particular grief, the particular happiness, which is exactly suited to your special case, and still more to your destined place and portion which you are to occupy in another world. Are not the poor, and the sorrowful, the tutors who are sent to prepare you for the higher exercises of heaven?--for the missions and the ministrations of the redeemed! (J. Vaughan, M. A.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Gal 4:1-3. The apostle, having established the consolatory doctrine that believers, in every age and country of the world, are heirs of the promises made to Abraham and to his seed, goes on in this chapter to answer an inquiry which he knew would naturally occur to his readers, but which, according to his manner, he does not formally state; namely, Since all believers, from the beginning, were heirs of the promises, as well as of the things promised, why were they not put in possession of the promises from the beginning, by sending Christ into the world, and introducing the gospel dispensation in the first age; that the promises, especially the promise of pardon and eternal life through faith, might have been published universally, and preserved for the benefit of the heirs in every age; and why were mankind left for so many ages to the direction of the laws of nature and of Moses, neither of which gave them any hope of pardon and eternal life? To this inquiry the apostle answers, that in not giving the heirs the knowledge of the promises, by introducing the gospel dispensation immediately after the fall, God treated them as a prudent father treats his son while under age. During his nonage, he does not allow him to possess the estate, of which he is the heir, because he has not discretion to use it aright; but keeps him in the condition of a bond-man. In the same manner, though believers from the beginning were heirs of the promises, God did not, in the early ages, put them in possession of them, by immediately setting up the gospel dispensation; because, in the first ages, the state of the world did not admit of either the universal publication of the gospel, or of its preservation. And that, as the heir of a great estate must be prepared by a proper education for managing and enjoying it, and is therefore in his childhood placed under persons who instruct him, manage his estate, and supply him with necessaries, till the time appointed in his father’s will for taking possession of his inheritance; so, to prepare believers for the actual inheritance of the gospel dispensation, God judged it proper to continue them for a long time under the bondage of the laws of nature, and of the patriarchal and Mosaic dispensations, that by experiencing the hardships of that bondage, they might be the more sensible of the happiness which they were to derive from the liberty of the gospel. This is the sense of the three first verses, as appears by the following short paraphrase.

Now — To illustrate, by a plain similitude, the pre-eminence of the Christian over the legal dispensation; I say that the heir — Of any estate, however large; as long as he is a child — Or is under age; differeth nothing from a servant — With respect to the free use and enjoyment of his estate; though he be lord of all — Proprietor of it all, by right of inheritance; but is placed under tutors — As to his person; and governors — Οικονομους, stewards, as to his substance; until the time appointed of the father — When he shall be deemed of age, and be at liberty to manage his affairs himself. So we — The church of God, heirs of the promises; when we were children — In our minority, were not put in possession of the promises, by the introduction of the gospel dispensation, but, to fit us for it, were placed in bondage — In a kind of servile state; under the elements of the world — Under the typical observances of the patriarchal and Mosaic dispensations, which were like the first elements of grammar, the ABC of children; and were of so gross a nature as hardly to carry men’s thoughts beyond this world. Seeing the apostle, in the close of the preceding chapter, declared that all who have put on Christ, (see on Gal 4:27-29,) whether they be Jews or Gentiles, are Christ’s brethren, and heirs according to God’s promise, “it is evident that in this chapter, when he speaks concerning the heir, and describes the treatment which, by his father’s appointment, he receives during his minority, his discourse cannot be restricted to the Jews, as if they were the only heirs, but must comprehend the Gentiles also, describing their condition under the discipline of the law of nature, Gal 4:8. In like manner the persons in bondage to the elements of the world, (Gal 4:3,) and under the law, (Gal 4:5,) who are said to be bought off by Christ, (Gal 4:5,) must be the Gentiles as well as the Jews; because Jews and Gentiles equally were under the discipline [and curse] of law. And having been bought off by Christ, (Gal 3:13,) they were both of them, after his death, placed under the gospel dispensation, which is the discipline of sons. See Gal 4:5.” — Macknight.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

5. The development from Judaism or Gentilism to Christianity, parallel to the development from childhood into manhood, Gal_4:1-8.

Paul here unfolds, with marked clearness, his “doctrine of development,” and charges therefrom that the Galatians have reversed the law of progress, and “advanced backwards.” He had hinted this view in Gal_3:3; Gal_3:25, and now fully expands the view. In the present chapter, Gal_4:1-2 describe the child in pupilage and advancement; Gal_4:3-7 the parallel pupilage and growth of moral life; Gal_4:8-11 describe and rebuke the Galatian retrograde movement.

1. The heir—Whether the father be living or not, he is heir. The divine Father ever lives.

Child—Literally, an infant; but the word is intended to cover the whole period of minority, which, by Roman law, terminated at twenty-five.

Differeth nothing from a servant—That is, in the respects mentioned in the next verse.

Lord of all—That is, inherently and by law; though externally subjected for his own good to the judgment of others. So the child of God, a servant in exterior, is interior heir of God, and lord of all the blessedness of eternity.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES

Gal_4:1. The heir, as long as he is a child.—An infant, one under age. Differeth nothing from a servant.—A slave. He is not at his own disposal. He could not perform any act but through his legal representative.

Gal_4:2. Under tutors and governors.—Controllers of his person and property.

Gal_4:3. Under the elements of the world.—The rudimentary religious teaching of a non-religious character. The elementary lessons of outward things.

Gal_4:4. God sent forth His Son.—Sent forth out of heaven from Himself. Implies the pre-existence of the Son. Made of a woman.—Made to be born of a woman. Indicating a special interposition of God in His birth as man. Made under the law.—By His Father’s appointment and His own free will, subject to the law, to keep it all, ceremonial and moral, for us, as the Representative Man, and to suffer and exhaust the full penalty of our violation of it.

Gal_4:5. The adoption of sons.—Receive as something destined or due. Herein God makes of sons of men sons of God, inasmuch as God made of the Son of God the Son of man (Augustine).

Gal_4:6. Abba, Father.—Abba is the Chaldee for father. The early use of it illustrates what Paul has been saying (Gal_3:28) of the unity resulting from the gospel; for Abba, Father, unites Hebrew and Greek on one lip, making the petitioner at once a Jew and a Gentile.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Gal_4:1-7

The Nonage of the Pre-Christian World.

I. Mankind in pre-Christian times was like the heir in his minority.—

1. In a state of temporary servitude, though having great expectations. “The heir differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all; but is under tutors and governors” (Gal_4:1-2). Under the Old Testament the bond-servant had this in common with a son, that he was a recognised member of the family; and the son had this in common with the slave, that he was in servitude, but with this difference, the servitude of the son was evanescent, that of the slave was permanent. The heirship is by right of birth, but possession and enjoyment can be reached only by passing through servitude and attaining majority. The minor is in the hands of guardians who care for his person and mental training, and of stewards who manage his estate. So the world, though possessing the promise of great blessing, was held for ages in the servitude of the law.

2. Subject to the restraint of external ordinances.—“Were in bondage under the elements of the world” (Gal_4:3). The commandments and ordinances imposed by the law belonged to an early and elementary period. In their infantile externalism they stand contrasted with the analogous things of the new dispensation, in which the believer is a grown man who casts away childish things. The Mosaic system watched over and guarded the infancy of the world. It exacted a rigid obedience to its mandates, and in doing so trained mankind to see and feel the need and appreciate the rich inheritance of the covenant of grace. Mosaism rendered invaluable service to Christianity. It safe-guarded the writings that contained promises of future blessings, and educated the race throughout the period of its nonage.

II. The matured sonship of mankind is accomplished through redemption.—

1. The Redeemer is divinely provided and of the highest dignity. “God sent forth His Son” (Gal_4:4). The mystical Germans speak of Christ as the ideal Son of man, the foretype of humanity; and there is a sense in which mankind was created in Christ Jesus, who is “the image of God, the firstborn of every creature.” But the apostle refers here to a loftier dignity belonging to Christ. He came in the character of God’s Son, bringing His sonship with Him. The Word, who became flesh, was with God, was God, in the beginning. The divine Son of God was sent forth into the world by the all-loving Father to be the Redeemer of mankind and to put an end to the world’s servitude.

2. The Redeemer assumes the nature and condition of those He redeems.—“Made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law” (Gal_4:4-5). Christ was born of woman as other men are, and, like them, was at first a weak and dependent babe. His child-life has for ever beautified and consecrated child-nature. He was born under law—not the law as a mere Jew, which would have limited His redeeming work to the Jewish nation, but under law in its widest application. He submitted not only to the general moral demands of the divine law for men, but to all the duties and proprieties incident to His position as a man, even to those ritual ordinances which His coming was to abolish. The purpose of His being sent was “to redeem them that were under the law”—to buy them out of their bondage. He voluntarily entered into the condition of the enslaved that He might emancipate them.

3. The sonship acquired through redemption is not by merit or legal right, but by adoption.—“That we might receive the adoption of sons” (Gal_4:5). The sonship is by grace, not of nature. Man lost his sonship by sin; by grace he gets it back again. Adoption we do not get back; we simply receive it. It is an act of God’s free grace.

III. The attainment of sonship is a conscious reality.—

1. Made evident by the Spirit of God witnessing in us and crying to Him as to a Father. “Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father” (Gal_4:6). God sent forth His Son into the world of men: He sent forth the Spirit of His Son into their individual hearts. The filial consciousness was born within them, supernaturally inspired. When they believed in Christ, when they saw in Him the Son of God, their Redeemer, they were stirred with a new ecstatic impulse; a divine glow of love and joy kindled in their breasts; a voice not their own spoke to their spirit; their soul leaped forth upon their lips, crying to God, “Father, Father!” They were children of God, and knew it.

2. Confirmed by the heirship that results from the divine adoption.—“If a son, then an heir of God through Christ” (Gal_4:7). The nonage, the period of servitude and subjection, is passed. It gives place to the unrivalled privilege of a maturer spiritual manhood, and the heirship to an inheritance of indescribable and imperishable blessedness.

Lessons.—

1. The law held the world in bondage.

2. The gospel is a message of liberty by redemption.

3. Redemption by Christ confers distinguished privileges.

GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES

Gal_4:4-5. Christ’s Mission for the Adoption of Sons in the Fulness of Time.

I. The mission of Jesus Christ and the manner in which He manifested Himself.—“God sent forth His Son.” These words present the great fact of Christ’s mission from the Father and His appearance in the world. To denote the inexpressible dignity of Jesus, as being one with the Father in His most essential prerogatives and perfections, He is here styled, “His Son.” He was “made of a woman.” The circumstances of His incarnation placed Him at an immeasurable distance from all other parts of the human race. He was the immediate production of God, by His divine power He was conceived of the Holy Ghost, and thereby completely exempted from the taint of original sin. He was the holy thing born of a virgin. He was by constitution placed in the same state as our first parents. He underwent a similar but severer trial, and maintained His innocence against all the assaults of Satan. He was “made under the law”; whereas all other creatures are under it by the very terms of their existence, by the condition of their nature. He was made under the ceremonial law, under the moral law, under the mediatorial law.

II. The design of Christ’s mission.—“To redeem.” He came not merely to exemplify a rule of life, but to satisfy its violation; not to explain the statutes of heaven, but to pay the penalty arising from the curse announced against their transgression. He came essentially to change the moral situation of mankind. Christ has added to our original brightness; He has not only redeemed us from the first transgression, but accumulated blessings which man, even in innocence, could never have obtained.

III. The fitness of the season at which Christ was manifested.—“The fulness of time.”

1. It was the period foretold by the prophets. Hence the general expectation of His coming.

2. It was a period of advancement in politics, legislation, science and arts, and manners; an age of scepticism.

3. It was a period of toleration. The epoch will arrive when this world shall be thought of as nothing but as it furnished a stage for the manifestation of the Son of God.—Robert Hall.

Gal_4:4. The Fulness of the Time.—Christ comes when a course of preparation, conducted through previous ages, was at last complete. He was not the creation of His own or any preceding age. What is true of all other great men, who are no more than great men, is not true of Him. They receive from their age as much as they give it; they embody and reflect its spirit. Christ really owed nothing to the time or the country which welcomed His advent.

I. The world was prepared politically for Christ’s work.—There was a common language—the Greek; a common government—the Roman.

II. There was a preparation in the convictions of mankind.—The epoch of religious experiments had been closed in an epoch of despair.

III. There was a preparation in the moral experience of mankind.—The dreadful picture of the pagan world which St. Paul draws at the close of the first chapter of his epistle to the Romans is not a darker picture than that of pagan writers—of moralists like Seneca, of satirists like Juvenal, of historians like Tacitus; and yet enough survived of moral truth in the human conscience to condemn average pagan practice. It led them to yearn for a deliverer, although their aspirations were indefinite enough. This widespread corruption, this longing for better things, marked the close of the epoch of moral experiments.

Lessons.—

1. The earthly life of Christ stood in a totally different relation towards moral truth from that of every other man.

2. It was a life at harmony with itself and a revelation of higher truth.

3. His incarnation delivers us from false views of the world and of life, from base and desponding views of our human nature, and from bondage.—H. P. Liddon.

Christ Obedient to the Law.

I. This obedience was not a matter of course, following upon His incarnation. He might have lived and died, had it been consistent with His high purpose, in sinless purity, without expressly undertaking as He did openly to fulfil the law. It was a voluntary act, becoming and fit for the great work He had in hand.

II. This obedience was not only an integral but also a necessary part of His work of redemption.—Had this not been so, redemption would have been incomplete. Not only God’s unwritten law in the conscience, but God’s written law in the tables of stone, must be completely satisfied. It being shown, by both Gentile and Jew, that neither by nature nor by revealed light was man capable of pleasing God, all men were left simply and solely dependent on His free and unmerited grace. All cases of guilt must be covered, all situations of disobedience taken up and borne and carried triumphantly out into perfection and accordance with the Father’s will, by the Son of God in our flesh.

III. This obedience for man was to be not only complete, so that Christ should stand in the root of our nature as the accepted man, but was to be our pattern, that as He was holy so we might be holy also.

IV. This obedience arose from the requirements of His office connected with the law.—He was the end of the law. It all pointed to Him. Its types and ceremonies all found fulfilment in His person and work. All has been fulfilled. All looked forward to One that was to come—to one who has come, and in His own person has superseded that law by exhausting its requirements, has glorified that law by filling out and animating with spiritual life its waste and barren places. So that God has not changed, nor has His purpose wavered, nor are His people resting on other than their old foundation.—Dean Alford.

Gal_4:5. Under the Law—

I. As the rule of life.—Thus angels are under the law, Adam was before his fall, and the saints in heaven are so now. None yield more subjection to the law than they, and this subjection is their liberty.

II. As a grievous yoke which none can bear.—

1. It bound the Church of the Old Testament to the observance of many and costly ceremonies.

2. It binds every offender to everlasting death.

3. It is a yoke as it increases sin and is the strength of it. The wicked nature of man is the more to do a thing the more he is forbidden.—Perkins.

Adoption.

I. In what adoption consists.—

1. The points of resemblance between natural and spiritual adoption.

(1) We cease to have our former name, and are designated after the name of God.

(2) We change our abode. Once in the world, now in the Church and family of God.

(3) We change our costume. Conform to the family dress: garments of salvation.

2. The points of difference between natural and spiritual adoption.

(1) Natural adoption was to supply a family defect. God had hosts of children.

(2) Natural adoption was only of sons. No distinction in God’s adoption.

(3) In natural adoption there was only a change of condition. God makes His children partakers of His own nature.

(4) In natural adoption only one was adopted, but God adopts multitudes.

(5) In natural adoption only temporal advantages were derived, but in spiritual the blessings are eternal.

II. Signs of adoption.—

1. Internal signs. Described in Gal_4:6; Rom_8:14 to Rom_16:2. External signs.

(1) Language;

(2) Profession;

(3) Obedience.

III. Privileges of adoption.—

1. Deliverance from the miseries of our natural state.

2. Investiture into all the benefits of Christ’s family.

3. A title to the celestial inheritance.

Learn—

1. The importance of the blessing.

2. Seek the good of God’s family.

3. Invite strangers to become sons and heirs of God.—Sketches.

Adoption and its Claims.—Among the American Indians when a captive was saved to be adopted in the place of some chieftain who had fallen, his allegiance and his identity were looked upon as changed. If he left a wife and children behind him, they were to be forgotten and blotted from memory. He stood in the place of the dead warrior, assumed his responsibilities, was supposed to cherish those whom he had cherished and hate those whom he had hated; in fact, he was supposed to stand in the same relation of consanguinity to the tribe.—Bancroft.

Gal_4:6-7. Evidences of Sonship.

I. The presence of the Spirit in the heart.—

1. The beginning of our new birth is in the heart, when a new light is put into the mind, a new and heavenly disposition into the will and affection.

2. The principal part of our renovation is in the heart where the Spirit abides.

3. The beginning and principal part of God’s worship is in the heart.

4. Keep watch and ward about thy heart, that it may be a fit place of entertainment for the Spirit, who is an Ambassador sent from God to thee.

II. The work of the Spirit.—

1. Bestowing conviction that the Scriptures are the word of God.

2. Submission to God and a desire to obey Him.

3. The testimony of the Spirit—a divine manner of reasoning framed in the mind—that we are God’s children.

4. Peace of conscience, joy, and affiance in God.

III. The desires of the heart directed towards God.—

1. Our cries are to be directed to God with reverence.

2. With submission to His will.

3. With importunity and constancy.—Perkins.

The Character and Privileges of the Children of God.

I. The distinguishing characteristic of the children of God.—

1. It is a spirit of filial confidence as opposed to servile fear. No unpardoned sinner has a sufficient ground of confidence in God. Till assured that God loves him, he knows not how God may treat him at any particular time. But we cannot believe that God loves us and at the same time doubt His mercy. He that heartily reposes on God’s favour cannot dread His vengeance.

2. This filial spirit is one of holy love as opposed to the bondage of sin.—The love of God is a powerful element well calculated to change the whole of our inner man. It gives a new bias to our wayward affections and a healthful vigour to every good desire.

3. The filial spirit is one of ready obedience as opposed to the gloomy spirit of servitude.—The service of a slave is unwilling, extorted, unsatisfactory; the obedience of a child is ready, loving, energetic. Love is self-denying, soul-absorbing, devoted.

II. Some of the distinguishing privileges of the children of God.—

1. The child of God has a part in the Father’s love and care.

2. Has a filial resemblance to the heavenly Father.

3. Children of God have the privileges of family communion and fellowship.

4. Have a share in the family provisions.

5. Have a title to the future inheritance.—Robert M. Macbrair.

Gal_4:7. God’s Offspring.—

1. This is the state of all poor heathen, whether in England or foreign countries: they are children, ignorant and unable to take care of themselves, because they do not know what they are. Paul tells them they are God’s offspring, though they know it not. He does not mean that we are not God’s children till we find out that we are God’s children. You were God’s heirs all along, although you differed nothing from slaves; for as long as you were in heathen ignorance and foolishness God had to treat you as His slaves, not as His children. They thought that God did not love them, that they must buy His favours. They thought religion meant a plan for making God love them.

2. Then appeared the love of God in Jesus Christ, who told men of their heavenly Father. He preached to them the good news of the kingdom of God, that God had not forgotten them, did not hate them, would freely forgive them all that was past; and why? Because He was their Father, and loved them so that He spared not His only begotten Son. And now God looks at us in the light of Jesus Christ. He does not wish us to remain merely His child, under tutors and governors, forced to do what is right outwardly and whether it likes or not. God wishes each of us to become His son, His grown-up and reasonable Song of Solomon 3. It is a fearful thing to despise the mercies of the living God, and when you are called to be His sons to fall back under the terrors of His law in slavish fear and a guilty conscience and remorse which cannot repent. He has told you to call Him your Father; and if you speak to Him in any other way, you insult Him and trample underfoot the riches of His grace. You are not God’s slaves, but His sons, heirs of God and joint-heirs of Christ. What an inheritance of glory and bliss that must be which the Lord Jesus Christ Himself is to inherit with us—an inheritance of all that is wise, loving, noble, holy, peaceful, all that can make us happy and like God Himself.—C. Kingsley.

The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.

c. In their condition of minority the sons of God were indeed held as servants = were under the law; but with the sending of the Son fo God the time of majority, and therefore of the full position of sons and heirs, is come.

(Gal_4:1-7)

(The Epistle for the Sunday after Christmas.)

1Now I say, That the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing [in nothing] from a servant, though he be lord of all; 2But is under tutors and governors [guardians and stewards]1 until the time appointed of the father. 3Even so we, when we were children, were [or were kept]2 in bondage under the elements [στοιχεῖα, rudiments]3 of the world: 4But when the fulness of the time was come [came], God sent 5forth his Son, made [born]4 of a woman, made [born] under the law, To redeem [That he might redeem]5 them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. 6And because ye are sons,6 God hath [omit hath] sent forth the 7Spirit of his Son into your [our]7 hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Wherefore [So then, ὥστε] thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ [heir through God].8

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

This section depends on the proposition which Paul announced at the close of the preceding one, that Christians are no longer under the νόμος παιδαγωγός, because they are sons of God, and heirs. It distinguishes, with a reference to Israel, which was God’s son, and yet was under the law, a twofold condition of the sons of God, the condition of minority, when they were still kept in bondage, and the condition of majority, when that bondage ceased, and therewith the proper position of sons first began.

Gal_4:1. Now I say, that the heir, as long as he is a child—“The heir”=the son, as the one who—by law and descent.—is heir, even though he does not until afterwards come into possession of the property. He is lord of all =has the right thereto; nay, if the father is dead, he is actual possessor, only he cannot enjoy it, cannot assert his character as master, so long as he is under guardians as νήπιος, a child, [an infant, a minor. Lightfoot: “The minor was legally in much the same position as the slave. He could perform no act, except through his legal representative. This responsible person, the guardian in the case of the minor, the master in case of the slave, who represents him to the state—was termed in Attic law κύριος Prospectively, however, though not actually, the minor was κν́ριος πάντων, which the slave was not.”—R.] The most natural reference is to a child placed under guardianship, whose father is dead, especially on account of the expression κύριος πάντων; and this is favored by the direct application to the son, of the term κληρονόμος, heir. Some interpreters, it is true, cite the expression: “until the time appointed of the father,” as inconsistent with this, on the ground that the age of majority was legally determined; but this objection has too pedantic a character. [Alford: “The question, whether the father of the heir here is to be thought of as dead, or absent, or living and present, is in fact one of no importance; nor does it belong properly to the consideration of this passage. The fact is, the antitype breaks through the type, and disturbs it; as is the case wherever the idea of inheritance is spiritualized. The supposition in our text is, that a father has pre-ordained a time for his son and heir to come of age, and till that time, has subjected him to guardians and stewards. In the type, the reason might be absence, or decease, or even high office or intense occupation of the father; in the antitype, it is the Father’s sovereign will; but the circumstances equally exist.” So Ellicott and Lightfoot.—R.]

Gal_4:2. Guardians and stewards.—Επίτροπος also usually signifies guardian. Here, as =he who counsels the ward, defends him, and directs him. It is distinguished from οἰκονόμος =agent, a steward of the estate. The twofold expression is meant to bring out more strongly the idea of dependence.—Until the time appointed of the father.—Προθεσμία “tempus præstitutum, appointed term, only here in n. t., but frequently in the classics, Philo and Josephus.” Meyer. [Objection is made to the view that the definite time was appointed by the father (Meyer and others), since the term was fixed by statute in Roman law. Some suppose a reference to some exceptional legislation as respected the Galatians. But this difficulty arises only on the supposition that the father is conceived of as dead, which is but a supposition. Besides it is unnecessary, as implied above, to press the illustration.—R.]

Gal_4:3. Even so we.—To be taken strictly = the Jewish Christians. They must be such as were “under the law” (Gal_4:5). [Meyer objects strongly to this limitation and with reason, urging 1) the sense of “rudiments of the world,” 2) that in Gal_4:5, where the first clause evidently refers to the Jewish Christians alone, the second, taking up ἡμεῖς again, as evidently refers to Christians generally, since Gal_4:6 addresses such, and 3) that οὐκέτι (Gal_4:7) and τότε (Gal_4:8), applied to the Galatians, refer back to the servile condition. Alford, Ellicott and others admit only a secondary reference to the Gentile Christians. This is perhaps sufficiently satisfactory, but the whole context seems to refer it to Jews and Gentiles alike (Lightfoot).—R.] When we were children, νήπιοι.—The pre-christian state is regarded as a childhood in relation to the Christian state of the same persons, only the Christian state then is regarded as ripe age (the comparison is differently applied 1Co_13:11; Eph_4:13). In childhood a state of bondage existed [the perfect indicating a continued state.—R.]; the external position was that of a servant, not that of the free son. For we were yet ὑπὸ τὰ στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου, under the rudiments of the world.—For the different explanations which this difficult expression has received, see Meyer or Wieseler. According to my view the expression applies in any case only to Judaism, especially to the “law” (an Apostle Paul could not possibly comprehend Heathenism and Judaism under one idea, regarding them thus as virtually equivalent); and moreover στοιχεῖα, especially in view of Gal_4:9, is to be taken in any case in a spiritual sense=beginnings of religion, elementary wisdom; for only with that do the expressions άσθενῆ καὶ πτωχά, “weak and beggarly,” agree. [Στοιχεῖα, originally the letters of the alphabet, as being set in rows. The question here is, has it a physical or an ethical reference. The fathers adopted the former view. The latter: “elementary teaching,” is now generally received, and is supported by its simplicity, its accordance with the idea of “minor” running through the context, as well as by Col_2:8. See notes on that passage. Against the limitation to Judaism, see below.—R. ]

Τοῦ κόσμου is either general = Mankind; “the collective human world is conceived as an I individual subject, needing the Divine training, to which God, in its boyish age, lasting till the sending of Christ, gave the elementary instruction of the law” (Wieseler). It is true that the heathen world=this part of the κόσμος, had not these rudiments, but for that very reason does not here, where the object is the exposition of the Divine pedagogy, come into consideration. Or could “the world” be taken in a more specific sense, more fully characterizing the “rudiments” themselves = elements, which primarily belong only to the sphere of “the world,” of the visible, the external, and hence themselves having the like character, themselves external (comp. Luther), opposed to the higher stage, as pneumatic or heavenly? Comp. τὸ ἅγιον κοσμικόν, Heb_9:1 (Wieseler). [The first view seems preferable, but without the limitation to Judaism, which grows out of Schmoller’s view of “we.” For there was a Divine pedagogy in heathenism also, under which most of these to whom Paul wrote “were kept in bondage.” Lexically such a limitation is highly improbable. Meyer refers “world” to non-Christian humanity, and “the rudiments of the world” would then mean, not anti-Christian teachings, but the rudimentary training of non-Christian, ante-Christian humanity, including both Judaism and the strivings of heathenism, which may indeed have generally taken the form of external ceremonies, but which were alike propædeutic, the one containing besides an element absolutely good, absorbed in the gospel, the other, an element absolutely bad, antagonistic to the gospel. The Christian view of Ancient History, now generally received, strongly favors this interpretation. See Calvin, Meyer, and comp. Col_2:8; also a thoughtful note of Lightfoot, p. 170 sq., comparing the component parts of Judaism and heathenism.—R.]

Gal_4:4-5. But when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth his Son. = When the measure of time was full: and this was full when the time appointed by God had elapsed. The time is conceived as a measure. [Lightfoot: “It was ‘the fulness of time.’ First: in reference to the giver. The moment had arrived which God had ordained from the beginning and foretold by His prophets for Messiah’s coming. This is implied in the comparison ‘the time appointed of the Father.’ Secondly: In reference to the recipient. The gospel was withheld until the world had arrived at mature age; law had worked out its educational purpose and now was superseded. This educational work had been twofold: 1. Negative: It was the purpose of all law, but especially of the Mosaic law, to deepen the conviction of sin and thus to show the inability of all existing systems to bring men near to God This idea which is so prominent in the Epistle to the Romans appears in the context here, Gal_4:19; Gal_4:21. 2. Positive: The comparison of the child implies more than a negative effect. A moral and spiritual expansion, which rendered the world more capable of apprehending the gospel than it would have been at an earlier age, must be assumed, corresponding to the growth of the individual; since otherwise the metaphor would be robbed of more than half its meaning.—The primary re ference in all this is plainly to the Mosaic law; but the whole context shows that the Gentile converts of Galatia are also included, and that they too are regarded as having undergone an elementary discipline, up to a certain point analogous to that of the Jew.”—R.]

Born of a woman.—Conveying no allusion to His miraculous conception, but simply an emphatic designation of the Incarnation, defining precisely “sent forth.” The reality of the Incarnation is emphasized, in order, in the first place, to bring fully into view the humiliation which God imposed on His Son, and to make this contrast felt: He humbled Himself—we were exalted. But this humiliation did not consist in the Incarnation alone, it was only the beginning; its full expression is found in born under the law, and the contrast becomes thereby still stronger: He was brought under bondage—we, into freedom. Yet of course the object is not merely to make the contrast sensible, but “born of a woman” and “under the law” is mentioned, because it was the means of attaining the end which was to be attained, namely, that he might redeem, etc.—i. e., primarily and principally the being “born under the law” was this means, but this again was only possible through His really becoming man.—Τενόμενον ὑπὸ νόμον, probably simply=born under the law, not: brought under the law. The primary meaning of this is, in general, that by virtue of His Jewish birth, He, like every Israelite, was subordinated to the requirements of the law, and we are therefore to supplement “redeem them that were under the law” with ἐκ τοῦ νόμου, “from the law=that He might make those subjected to the law free from the law=that He might free them from the state of subjection under it, from their obligation to it, from the “bondage” just mentioned. The sense of “redeem” is given by the simple addition: ἵνα τὴν υἱοθεσ.κ.τ.λ., = might translate us from the position of servants into the free position of sons. Primarily, only this is implied in the words, and the expression therefore is not immediately convertible with the narrower, more defined one in Gal_3:13; although, indeed, if we look for the causal nexus between Christ’s being born under the law and His redeeming those under the law, we shall be led back to the thought expressed Gal_3:13, as the connecting one, namely, that the one who stood “under the law” became by this law “a curse” =bore also the curse of this law, and thus freed the men who stood under the curse of this law from this curse of the law, and therewith from the law altogether, from dependence on it, since in the place of that dependence there now naturally came a believing self-surrendering to the Liberator. This filling out the thought by a reference to the death of Christ, gives moreover to “born of woman” also, its full significance; for only through this was death itself possible, as only through the being “born under the law” was it possible as a death under the curse of the law.

That we might receive the adoption of Sons.—Properly the position of sons [υἱο θε σία] as opposed to the position of servants. Even “under the law” they were in themselves ὑιοί , but as yet differing in nothing from servants; through Christ they first attained also to the position of sons, differed from servants.Υἱοθεσία There means then more exactly: the right of the free, major son. This may very well be designated simply as υἱοθεσία, since sonship de facto really begins with it, the son thereby first becomes properly a son.—That a sonship relatively to God is here treated of, is made apparent by the connection. [Schmoller evidently refers “we,” in this clause, to Jewish Christians alone; but the objections of Meyer and others to such a limitation (see on Gal_4:3), apply with great force here. That it breaks the force of the Apostle’s argument, and destroys the connection of the whole passage, to restrict it thus, is evident from the explanation into which Schmoller is forced in his remarks on the succeeding verse. It may be allowed that, in the previous clause, “those under the law” refers to Jewish Christians alone, but a wider reference of “we” to all Christians must be insisted upon.—R.]

Gal_4:6. And because ye are sons.—Remarkable is the abrupt transition into the address to the Galatians, whereas what preceded applied to the Jewish Christians; for these were “those under the law,” while the Galatians were, at all events, predominantly Gentile Christians. But through the sending of the Son the Gentiles also were to obtain the sonship with God, and they did actually obtain it through faith in Him. He can therefore naturally say to Gentile Christians also: Ye are sons,—and can appeal to the witness of the Spirit concerning this, which they have in themselves. And the discussion had properly direct reference to the Gentile Christians, the Galatians, to their freedom from the law; the remarks Gal_4:1 sq., were only as it were episodically woven in [?!], in order to explain the peculiar position of Israel under the law.—[Accepting the wider reference of “we” (Gal_4:6), we find here no “abrupt transition,” but a change to the second person, in order to apply to the Galatians, what had been affirmed of all Christians. Of course this obviates the necessity of such an explanation of the connection, as Schmoller makes.—R.]—With this sentence Paul wishes to confirm to the Galatians, in a way indisputable to themselves, that they actually have the position of sons and no longer that of servants; they also (he says) have this, as well as the Jewish Christians, as certainly as the Spirit also utters His voice in them. The primary purpose of the sending of the Son, stopped with this υἱοθεσἰα. That the purpose has been accomplished, is shown first in this, the Spirit’s witness of adoption. Gal_4:7 therefore contains the simple conclusion from Gal_4:6 : Accordingly thou art, etc. [It is a question whether ὅτι should be rendered “because,” quoniam, or “that,” i. e., to show that ye are sons (Ellicott). Most commentators incline to the former view. Alford in his notes opposes Meyer, who adopted the latter view, which in his fourth edition, however, he characterizes as “harsh and unusual.” Still the. proof of sonship remains. He would not have sent the Spirit, if they had not been “sons.”—R.]

God sent.—At the regeneration of each of the readers, or what may here be taken as identical, at their baptism. Yet naturally a continuous sending from that time forward, is not excluded but included. [The aorist is used as in Gal_4:4, referring to a definite act. Meyer notes the similarity of form, as “a solemn expression of the objective (Gal_4:4) and subjective (Gal_4:5) certainty of salvation,” and also as indicating doctrinally “the same personal relation of the Spirit, which God has sent from Himself as He did Christ.”—R.]—Spirit of His Son.—A peculiar expression; not immediately convertible with the conception: spirit of sonship, but = the Spirit, which the Son of God has; plainly, moreover, which He has peculiarly as Son; hence, the Spirit, in which, with Him the consciousness of sonship relatively to God rests and expresses itself, and so = the Son of God’s Spirit of sonship. God gives the very same Spirit into the hearts of those whom He has accepted as His sons for the sake of His Son Christ; and therewith they also attain to the consciousness of sons relatively to God, so that they cry: Abba, etc.—Crying.—This strong word, κράζειν, doubtless expresses, first and chiefly, the assurance and the strength of the persuasion, the full undoubting faith of having in God our Father; also, however, as resulting from this, the fervor with which the soul turns to this Father, yet without, direct reference to a condition of trouble, in which a call is made for help.—Abba, Father!—“It is simplest to suppose that the juxtaposition of the two equivalent expressions is meant to emphasize more strongly the idea of Father.” Wieseler. Meyer with less probability thinks, that Ἀφφᾶ had become so settled and sacred a term, as an address to God in Christian prayer, that it had acquired the nature of a proper name, admitting thus the addition of the appellative ὁ πατήρ. The ancients found in it an intimation: quod idem Spiritus fidei sit Judæorum et gentium. [It seems best to regard this repetition as taken from a liturgical formula, which may have originated among the Hellenistic Jews, who retained the consecrated word “Abba,” or among the Jews of Palestine, after they became acquainted with the Greek language. The latter theory best explains the expression as used Mar_14:36 (Lightfoot). There may be a reason for retaining “Abba” in its affectionate character, “My Father” (Alford). And the repetition may contain the hint, which the Fathers, Luther, Calvin and Bengel find, of the union of Jew and Gentile in Christ. Certainly an advance from the “Abba” of childhood to the “Father” of maturity, on the part of the believer, is not implied, nor is there a reference “to the fact that a freedman might by addressing any one with the title Abba, prepare the way for adoption by him,” since they are enabled thus to cry, “because ye are sons.”—R.]

Gal_4:7. So then thou art.—A progress in individualizing for a practical purpose; namely, to bring home fully to each one separately, what he possesses through Christ.—No more a servant.—This refers back to the being “in bondage under the rudiments of the world,” and applies to the Jewish Christians in its full sense, and then to the Gentile Christians also, in this respect, that in consequence of the sending of the Son, the necessity of giving themselves up to be held in bondage “under the rudiments of the world” was done away for them also; that in Christ these have lost their force. [In the wider view of “we” (Gal_4:3) this explanation is unnecessary.—R]. In what special, still more wretched sense, they too were actually slaves, and so the state of servitude was abolished for them, appears immediately after in Gal_4:8.—But a son.—The contrast between “servant” and “son,” as applied to the Jewish Christians, is limited to their being now in actual enjoyment of the son’s privileges; as applied to Gentile Christians it is without restriction.—And if a son, then an heir through God.—“Through God” makes prominent that the one character, as well as the other, proceeds from grace, as opposed to all desert of works. Because a son (sc of God), therefore according to the well-known hereditary right, also an heir, sc. of God. The controversy, whether Jewish or Roman right of inheritance is meant, may be called pedantic. Heir of God= to whom God’s possession appertains, eternal life. [The briefer reading, διὰ θεοῦ now generally adopted, is thus remarked upon by Windischmann: “It combines, on behalf of our race, the whole before-mentioned agency of the Blessed Trinity: the Father has sent the Son and the Spirit, the Son has freed us from the law, the Spirit has completed our sonship; and thus the redeemed are heirs through the Triune God Himself, not through the law, nor through fleshly descent.”—R.]—This gives another basis for “heirs,” Gal_3:29, and the train of argument thus reaches its conclusion.

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. The rudiments of the world. Respecting the characterizing of the law as “rudiments of the world,” comp. the remark of Luther: Learn from this, when it concerns the business of justification before God, to speak of the law most contemptuously, following the Apostle. But when we are not treating of how a man may become acceptable and righteous before God, we are to reckon the law most highly and honorably, and with St. Paul, to call it holy, righteous, good, spiritual, and divine, as indeed it truly is.—St. Paul is alone among all the Apostles, in speaking so scornfully as it may appear, of the law. The other Apostles make it not their wont, so to speak. Therefore ought every one, who will study in the Christian theology, to take careful note of this diverse manner in St. Paul’s writings. He has been called by our Lord Jesus Christ Himself His chosen vessel, and therefore also He gave him an elect mouth, and a diverse way of speaking above the other Apostles, so that he, as chosen vessel [Rüstzeug, lit. weapon], might most firmly and most faithfully found the citadel of the faith, even the article which teaches how a man must become righteous before God, and might teach the same most perspicuously, and most clearly,

2. Law and Old Testament. “Law is not synonymous with Old Testament, gospel with New Testament; as if we could say: The law has been abrogated by the gospel, Christ is the end of the law, therefore for us Christians the Old Testament has no more validity. It is not so, but the Old Testament as well as the New, contains gospel promise of grace, and the New as well as the Old contains law Only that in the Old Testament the law, the schoolmaster unto Christ, prevails, the gospel, on the other hand, appears in the form of promise of the future salvation, and so is more veiled; but in the New Testament the gospel of the accomplished salvation strikes the key-note, and the law, as a threatening might, only opposes itself to the despisers of salvation, and is written in the hearts of believers. And since the gospel extends through the whole Holy Scripture of the Old and New Testament, every Christian must necessarily count the Old Testament also honorable and holy. It is true here also: What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” Anacker.

3. The fulness of the time. For a full historical demonstration of Christ’s having come in the fulness of time, see e. g., Anacker. [Schaff: History of the Apostolic Church, and History of the Christian Church, vol. I. “It was a great idea of Dionysius ‘the little,’ to date our era from the birth of the Saviour. Jesus Christ, the God-man, the prophet, priest, and king of mankind, is, in part, the centre and turning point not only of chronology, but of all history, and the key to all its mysteries. All history before His birth must be viewed as a preparation for His coming, and all history after His birth as a gradual diffusion of His spirit and establishment of His king dom. He is ‘the desire of all nations.’ He appeared in the ‘fulness of time,’ when the process of preparation was finished, and the world’s need of redemption fully disclosed.”

“As Christianity is the reconciliation and union of God and man in and through Jesus Christ, the God-Man and Saviour, it must have been preceded by a two fold process of preparation, an approach of God to man, and an approach of man to God.—In Judaism the true religion is prepared for man; in heathenism man is prepared for the true religion. There the divine substance is begotten; here the human form is moulded to receive it. Heathenism is the starry night, full of darkness and fear, but of mysterious presage also, and of anxious waiting for the dawn of day: Judaism, the dawn, full of the fresh hope and promise of the rising sun; both lose themselves in the sunlight of Christianity, and attest its claim to be the only true and the perfect religion for mankind.”

“The way for Christianity was prepared on every side, positively and negatively, directly and indirectly, in theory and in practice, by truth and by error, by false belief and by unbelief—those hostile brothers, which yet cannot live apart—by Jewish religion, by Grecian culture, and by Roman conquest; by the vainly attempted amalgamation of Jewish and heathen thought, by the exposed impotence of natural civilization, philosophy, art and political power, by the decay of the old religions by the universal distraction and hopeless misery of the age, and by the yearnings of all earnest and noble souls for the unknown God. ‘In the fulness of time,’ when the fairest flowers of science and art had withered, and the world was on the verge of despair, the Virgin’s Son was born to heal the infirmities of mankind. Christ entered a dying world as the author of a new and imperishable life.”—R.]

4. God sent His Son, born of a woman. In these few words we have the sum of the second article [i. e., of the Augsburg Confession]: “Jesus Christ, true God, born of the Father in eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary.” Anacker.—If the preëxistence of the Son does not follow of necessity from the expression: God sent Him, it follows so much the more necessarily from the added clause: “Born of a woman,” i. e., from the fact that this is predicated of the Son as something peculiar. Paul cannot have been thinking of a man, to whom the character of God’s Son belonged only in some theocratic sense, who had been elevated to it by God: for why then the particularizing clause: born of a woman? It would be absolutely meaningless. It has a meaning only in the case of One, who in Himself was not one born of woman, who only became so, with whom this was something entirely peculiar. The peculiarity and note-worthiness of the fact, also, that the Son of God was born under the law, depended, in reality, upon this, that in His original state He had not human nature.—The supernatural conception, it is true, is by no means implied in the expression: born of a woman, in itself, as if by this the concurrence of the man were to be excluded. But if we take this expression together with “God sent His Son,” we are almost necessarily constrained to assume another than the ordinary origin through the generative activity of the man, an immediate activity, instead, of the God who purposed to send the Son.—The Divine Sonship of Christ is one belonging to Him in Himself, essential to His nature, so essential, that even by being born of a woman, and under the law, it was not nullified. It is on this account entirely different from our Divine sonship: this is an acquired, a mediated one; mediated through God’s Son Christ.—On the other hand in this passage the true humanity of Christ is most distinctly declared. He did not bring His body from Heaven, and did not pass with it through Mary quasi per canalem, nor did He merely assume a body like an angel. Either is excluded by the expression: born of a woman. And the tenor of the passage shows plainly that it is meant, not to declare His pre-existent being (this we can infer only by reasoning back), but precisely His true humanity, that God sent Him in such wise that He caused Him to be born and be manifested as man; it was precisely this which made it an actual sending, fulfilling the promise. But on the other hand this Man=God’s Son; for if not, the purpose would in this way have failed in accomplishment, since it was no other than His Son that God would send.

5. Born under the Law. By this is made prominent not the legal obedience which Christ rendered, or anything performed by Him, but something to which He subjected Himself, the dependence on the law, in which He was placed—according to the whole connection: a δουλοῦσθαι (comp. τοὺς ὑπὸ νόμον), primarily dependence in general, and then as the culmination of it, the curse of the law, to which He subjected Himself. This passage therefore is no proof of the “active obedience of Christ,” as it is termed. Christ, it is true, was in such a sense under the the law that He observed it; He did not resist it; He was content with this dependence, and fulfilled the requirements of the law. But it is inappropriate to designate the obedience, which Christ indeed rendered in fullest measure towards His Father, as fulfilment of the law, and to designate the (active) fulfilment of the law as that which was great and meritorious in Christ. Christ’s obedience was an essentially free obedience of a child towards the Father, and thus far surpassing a bare law-obedience.—On the other hand, the statement of doctrinal theology, which in many quarters causes scandal, that Christ was in Himself not subject to the law, is in itself not incorrect. Only we must then take law in the entirely definite Biblical sense. The γενέσθαι ὑπὸ νόμον which was added because of transgressions, was of course something in itself wholly inadequate to His sinless being, wholly obedient as it was to God; He stood, as concerned Himself, in the Son’s relation to God, not in the servant’s relation, was no minor, needed no παιδαγωγός. This γεν.ὑπὸ̀ νόμου, therefore, was something in itself foreign to Him, imposed upon Him, and undertaken by Him, for the definite purpose of the redemption of those under the law. But He was the first one “under the law” who yet was sinless, obedient to God, and this availed to the good of the men who were under the law

6. Adoption and the consciousness of it. From the attainment of the filial relation to God [Gottes-Kindschaft] Paul distinguishes again the certainty of the same, so to speak, the conscious exercise of the privilege of children. Agreeably to this he distinguishes a twofold sending: the sending of the Son into the world and the sending of the Spirit of the Son into human hearts. On the first is grounded the attainment of the adoption of God’s children, inasmuch as the sending of the Son led to the ransoming of those under the law. This is the objective side. Yet this hardly denotes merely the redemptive act of Christ, but includes doubtless, even at this point, faith in this act, as without this faith there is not an actual adoption, a being a son (comp. ὅτι δέ ἐστε υἱοί).But to this is yet added the sending of the Spirit of the Son into the hearts of the redeemed, or more specifically: His crying Abba in the heart. Primarily this serves for the sealing and making sure of the now established filial right (comp. Rom_8:16). Yet it is not bare assurance that is wanted, but the exercise, the use of the right; and this first becomes possible by receiving the Spirit of Sonship, exclaiming Abba. “Should we wish to do it of our own desire and folly (namely, use such an heartily filial address to God), the word would die upon our lips; for we cannot make God our Father, only He Himself can do it.” It is this Spirit of adoption Himself, says Paul here, that cries Abba in us, of course, by uniting Himself with the spirit of the suppliant, and forming in it the language of filial address to God. Therefore Rom_8:15 : We cry Abba by this Spirit.

Paul distinguishes, as has been said, two stages, but yet plainly not in such a sense as if the first were something complete within itself, and the second added to it, as something distinct, but whoever is “son” receives eo ipso this Spirit, and if he did not receive it, the Apostle would not predicate the being a son of him. The receiving of this Spirit is for him, and is meant to be for the readers (on which account he alludes to it), the criterion of having become a “son of God.” He cannot conceive the being a son without this Spirit in the heart exclaiming Abba. Therefore he affirms it at once and in reference to all: “Because ye are sons, God sent forth,” etc. The same faith which translates us into the position of children, opens also the access to this Spirit. Yet of course this receiving of the Spirit of sons or children, is again somewhat successive, and Paul does not mean to say that this crying Abba takes place always with uniform strength and joyfulness; he will not deny that there come times of spiritual conflict; he only expresses what is normal.

7. Son, not servant. The idea of Divine sonship is a twofold idea, for the υἱὸς θεοῦ is first (υἱὸς) θεοῦ and then υἱὸς (θεοῦ) In Rom_8:14 sq., the previous context shows the former to be the main idea, for “being a son of God” is opposed to living “after the flesh,” and is defined by “led by the Spirit of God.” In this passage the essential idea is the second one: the Son of God is son and no longer servant (with which we may also supply “of God”), or the filial relation of the Christian to God, as it is brought into effect by Christ, involves the idea of religious maturity. The Christian has through his faith come religiously to majority; he no longer stands to God in the relation of the minor son, still kept in bondage. This latter relation of man to God is also one in itself possible and relatively admissible. God Himself placed man in it by the law (Gal_4:3); Israel itself stood by God’s appointment in the relation to God of religious minority, was as yet “kept in bondage under the rudiments of the world.” This was at that time what was fitting and wholesome for the people of God. (And in a certain sense the man who as yet knows nothing of Christ, is, even now, in this relation to God, is the unfreed minor, kept in by legal restraints, at least by the inward law of the conscience. It is true this law is a far more imperfect one than the positive law of God. Therefore the natural man without Christ is far more a δοῦλος than Israel was—a δοῦλος rather to the σάρξ or the φύσει μὴ ὅντες θεοί than to God; and there is needed at first a special activity directed to the awakening of the conscience. See below.) It is otherwise with the Christian; he has gained through faith in Christ, or rather through the Spirit of Christ, the position towards God of the free major son: this position, because established through Christ, has its direct analogy in the relation of Christ to His Father. It is true there is in this no independent dignity [Selbstherrlichkeit]; but it is not so much that this is forbidden him, as that he himself is the farthest possible from wishing it, recognizing in it, as he does, an illusive image, knowing that thereby he would in truth lose his freedom, that true freedom consists in this very obedience of love towards God, in speaking nothing else than what He teaches, in doing nothing else than what He points out. Thus, although not living to himself, he is yet truly free, even towards God, as one of full age; is, sui juris, independent. For his conduct is not prescribed to him in legal injunctions, regulating even the outward life, and seeking in his way to conform the inner life to God’s will; he recognizes the “living to God” as his very element, the condition of his happiness. His obedience is not merely an obedience of law towards a ruler, but a life in trustful love to Him who is recognized as Father and sealed through the Spirit.

But especially does the maturity of the Christian consist in this, that he is heir, in possession of the paternal estate. For thus the minor is distinguished from the major son; for the former the inheritance is as yet administered by others, and he himself is not yet in enjoyment of it, but only, it may be, from time to time, receives out of it what is necessary for him, and on the other hand, may, on occasion, be kept in straits, or even subjected to punishment. So with man under the law; as he first sees in God One who commands and strictly regulates life, so also he sees in Him one who bestows good only according to desert, and who just as certainly, where punishment is deserved (as is more often the case), inflicts punishment, and instead of a blessing communicates a curse. It is otherwise with the son of full age and with the Christian. He is heir, is in possession and enjoyment of the paternal estate. This actual enjoyment of the inheritance he possesses in the first instance in justification and the state of grace connected therewith. As the major son freely disposes of the paternal estate, so also the Christian, in faith freely applies himself, as it were, when he will and as oft as he will, to his Father’s treasure, and takes from it whatever he desires. Only this possession and enjoyment of his is, as it were, still embarrassed by the “sufferings of this present time,” and the glory of the inheritance is still “to be revealed” (Rom_8:17-18), as indeed the major son also, who has come into possession of the paternal estate, has still to struggle with many inconveniences, and so cannot as yet give himself up to the undisturbed enjoyment of his estate, and yet is none the less the free son, of full age, and by no means any longer in his minority. From this the simple inference is: (1) That as the Christian may not deprive himself of his position as Christian, if he would not incur the reproach in Gal_4:9, so also he may not be robbed of this rank or denied it, he may not be again placed. under guardianship, and thus reduced from one of full age to a minor again, that therefore in particular the law may not be again imposed upon him, and his relation to God represented as conditioned by that; (2) that a Christian church, which does not regard her members as mature children of God, and train them to be such, but which instead retains them under the guardianship of the Divine law, or, more than that, of self-devised human ordinances, and accords to them only such a share in the benefits of Divine grace as suits her own discretion, if indeed, she does not wholly conceal them and set an inheritance invented by herself in their place—that such a Christian church misapprehends her most essential character (for Christ was no new lawgiver), and that therefore the Romish church, which does this, incurs this reproach, and that the evangelical church would incur the like reproach, so far as she imitated her in this, in a supposed pedagogic interest, or for the sake of discipline and order.9 She has simply to be God’s almoner by offering the means of grace which excite and strengthen faith, as the condition of adoption as God’s children, and what she ordains can lawfully have no other end than directly or indirectly to further such beneficence. True, individually as well as historically, the state of maturity, in the child of God, is preceded by that of immaturity; for just so certainly as a Christian is in the former state, just so certainly is he there no otherwise than through actual heart faith. But the true way, that agreeable to the Divine order in such a case, is (according to remarks on the foregoing section) to hold up the law for this end and this only, that the man’s conscience and with it the knowledge of sin may be awakened, that the law may prove itself in him also “a schoolmaster unto Christ.” Now this comes to pass only through the preaching of the word of God in its completeness, inasmuch as thereby the law also is set forth, but now, of course, only with the intention of leading to the Gospel and therewith to the condition of spiritual maturity.

8. Old Testament believers not of full age.—As respects Christians the believers of the old covenant were accordingly not yet in the full sense “sons of God,” i. e., “major sons.” “But how were then the holy prophets, the great heroes, the upright men of God, who lived from Moses until Christ, minor children, that must be kept under the figurative rudiments of divine instruction as under tutors and governors? Doubtless in a certain sense they were. It is true that in much they have surpassed us; but what was spiritual, heavenly, eternally permanent in the kingdom of God, what Paul ever calls ‘a mystery,’ was not revealed to them so plainly as to us” (Roos). In order to judge correctly, we must however, with the Apostle himself, distinguish the period before the law from that under the law. For example, the patriarchs, although in another respect also children, stood in immediate intercourse with God, were not in the position of servants. On the other hand there certainly was also in the believers under the law, in proportion as the promise of the new covenant was living in them, e. g., in the prophets, an anticipation, in a certain sense, of the position of major sons of God, although rather in some single moments of elevation.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

Gal_4:2. Starke:—Human ordinances, which are directed to the well-being of the commonwealth, are in themselves in no wise contrary to the Divine law.—When the Prince of Wales in his childhood once refused obedience to his governess, appealing to his dignity as heir to the throne, Prince Albert brought the Bible, read him this passage, and chastised him.

Gal_4:3. Heubner:—The human race has had authorized and unauthorized guardians. Moses was authorized, for God had appointed him, on the other hand the Pope and Mohammed without authority have endeavored to bring back the race, now free and of full age, to minority again. The authority of revelation does not retain us in minority; for the faith which it requires is no blind second hand piety, but first makes us truly free from all that darkens and binds.—Spener:—God has His wise distribution of the measure of grace at various times, with which we must be content and learn to accommodate ourselves thereto. He has also His holy order, according to which He leads His children in conversion from the law into grace.—Berlenber. Bible:—This guardianship was designed only for minors; hence it is all wrong when Christians allow themselves to be brought into bondage again under ordinances, which are urged upon souls as good and necessary to salvation, and made a burden, beyond and without God’s Word and revealed will, which therefore proceed not from nor are approved of Christ and His Spirit. O how many, that otherwise have a good degree of knowledge and personal piety, are in a pitiable bondage under such things! Either they are things which are counted as belonging to outward worship, or which should otherwise serve to make people pious. Now it is not indeed to be denied that some incitements in themselves innocent may help beginners somewhat. But so soon however as a rule and necessity, or it may be even a holiness, is make out of it, it is a yoke. But the main cause why such ordinances of men are a slavery of souls is, because men commonly therein seek and exalt themselves. Our crafty nature seeks with its tricks to maintain itself in its false life, and conceals itself behind outward observances and human usages. Meanwhile it secretly carries on its sins, as before, and will not drown and die in the death of Christ.—It is enough to suffer that other hard yoke, which presses the man at his first conversion. The law of God itself knows how to press him hard enough then, with its righteous judgments and requirements. Matters go laboriously and wretchedly enough with a young believer.

Gal_4:4-5. For this fulness of the time the fathers and all believers in the Old Testament waited with great pangs and earnestness. Not less longingly then, even now, must he wait and look for this Deliverer, who feels his imprisonment. For the fulness of the time, which began with Jesus’ birth, continues ever from then on through all times, our own times among them.—As this took place as to the outward work, so does it now come to pass as to the inward, since the revelation of the Son breaks forth at the time which the Lord has decreed, and His government takes the upper hand in order to bring matters to that stage, to which under the drawing of the Father they could not attain. If thou therefore spyest in thyself a mighty drawing towards faith and hungering after Jesus, take heed that thou neglect it not. For this is even the fulness of thy time, when thy Saviour is about to be sent into thy heart by the Father. In the same hour learn thou to watch and pray, and to forget all else, that thou mayst win thy freedom.

Luther:—Hear thou, O law, thou hast no right nor might over me; therefore I concern myself nothing, that thou accusest and condemnest me long and much; for I believe on Jesus Christ, God’s Son, whom God the Father hath sent into this world, that He might redeem us poor, wretched sinners, who were in bondage under the law’s constraint and tyranny.—Christ hath redeemed us, in that He was made under the law. When He came, He found all of us together guarded and shut up under the law. What did He then? Because He is God’s Son and Lord over the law, the law hath no right nor power over Him, nor can it accuse Him. Now, although He was not under the law, yea, was its Lord, He nevertheless willingly subjected Himself to the law. Christ incurred no debt to the law, yet did the law nevertheless behave itself towards this innocent, holy One, &c, even so as towards us, yea, it raged much more and more cruelly against Him than it is wont to do against us men. For it accused Him as if He were the very worst blasphemer and mover of sedition, and pronounced that He was guilty of all the sins of the whole world, and finally it condemned Him by its sentence to death, and moreover to the most shameful of all deaths on the cross.—Because now the law has dealt so cruelly against its God, Christ now appears against the law, and speaks on this wise: Good mistress Law, you are indeed a mighty invincible empress and tyrant over the whole race of man, and have moreover a right thereto; but what have I done to you, that you have so cruelly and contumeliously accused and condemned me the Innocent? Then must the law, because it can by no means answer for this, nor excuse itself, suffer for it in turn, and allow itself also to be condemned and strangled, so that it may therefore retain no right, nor power, not alone against Christ, whom it hath so injuriously assailed, but also against all who believe on Him.—So has Christ now through this His victory chased the law away out of our conscience in such manner that it can no more put us to shame before God. This one thing it does yet, it still continues to reveal sin to accuse and terrify us; but the conscience lays hold against it of these words of the apostle: Christ hath redeemed us from the law, maintains itself thereon by faith and comforts itself therewith. Yea, so proud and courageous moreover does it become in the Holy Ghost, that it dares bid defiance to the law, and say: I care little for all thy threatening. For the victory, which Christ hath won of thee, He hath bestowed upon us; therefore we are now become free of the law unto eternity, if so be we abide in Christ. Therefore let there be praise and thanks to our dear God, who hath given us such victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

[Gal_4:4-5. Robert Hall:—(1) The mission of Jesus Christ, and the manner in which He manifested Himself. The Son of God, “made of a woman, made under the law.” (2) The design of His mission; “to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.” (3) The fitness of that season which God in His infinite wisdom appointed for this purpose.—It was a most favorable time to prevent imposture in matter of fact; an age the furthest removed from credulity, an age of skepticism. The Infinite wisdom saw fit to select this time to silence forever the vain babblings of philosophy, to “destroy the wisdom of the wise.”—Because the fulness of the time was come, the event here referred to was the most important that had ever distinguished the annals of the world. The epoch will arrive when this world will be thought of as nothing, but as it has furnished a stage for the “manifestation of the Son of God.”—R.]

Gal_4:6. Luther:—When we stand in the midst and deepest in the terrors of the law, when sin as it were thunders over us, death makes us tremble and quake, the devil roars most cruelly, then begins the Holy Ghost to cry: Abba, dear Father! And this, His cry, is much mightier than the law’s, sin’s, death’s, and the devil’s cry, let it sound ever so loud and hideously, it breaks and presses with all might through the clouds and the heavens, comes before God’s ears, and is heard, &c.—Although I am on all sides in great terrors and distresses, and it seems as if I, Lord, were wholly and utterly forsaken by thee, yet am I nevertheless child, thou, Father, for Christ’s sake. I am to thee dear and pleasant for the Beloved’s sake. But for man in his heart to be able to utter the little word “Father” in time of temptation in true earnestness, there needs such a deep skill thereto, as truly neither Cicero, nor Demosthenes, nor any other accomplished orator has had; yea, should they even melt together all their skill in one heap it were not yet possible for them perfectly to utter forth what is meant by the Holy Ghost in the single word “Father” in believer’s hearts.—We ought to let go the injurious, damned doctrine (wherewith the pope hath denied all Christendom), that man cannot be certain whether he is in grace before God, or not, and hold for certain that we have a gracious and compassionate God, who has in us a gracious complacency, cares for us as His dear children in earnest and most heartily—for Christ’s sake; item, that we also have the Holy Ghost, which intercedes for us with crying and groanings unutterable.—In Starke:—Behold the nature of ejaculatory prayers [Stossgebetlein], as they are called, wherein only the heart is lifted to God. In such a way can a believing soul very well pray without ceasing.—[Bunyan:—O how great a task is it for a poor soul that comes, sensible of sin and the wrath of God, to say in faith but this one word, Father! The Spirit must be sent into the heart for this very thing; it being too great a work for any man to do knowingly and believingly without it.—That one word spoken in faith, is better than a thousand prayers in a formal, lukewarm way.—I myself have often found that when I can say but this word, Father, it doth me more good than when I call Him by any other Christian name.—R.]

Gal_4:7. Luther:—Because Christ has redeemed us, that were under the law, there is no servant any more, nothing but children; therefore can thy power and tyranny, good mistress Law, have no place upon the lordly throne where my Lord Christ is to sit; therefore now I heed thee not, for I am free and a child, that is to be subjected to no servant’s place.—The law may well rule and reign over the body and the old man; but the bridal bed, wherein Christ is to have His rest, it should leave unstained; that is, the law should leave the conscience at ease and undisturbed, for this is to reign alone with its bridegroom Christ, in the realm of freedom and of sonship.—“And if a son, then an heir.” No one through his works or merit succeeds in becoming heir, but birth alone brings it to him; even so do we also come to the eternal, heavenly possessions, such as forgiveness of sins, righteousness, the glorious resurrection, and eternal life, not through our cöoperation, but without any act of ours—we suffer them to be bestowed upon us, and receive them from God through Christ.—Whoever could believe without any doubt, that it were true, and certainly comprehend, how immeasurably great a thing it is, that one should be God’s child and heir, such an one would without doubt take little account of the world, with all that therein is esteemed precious and honorable, such as human righteousness, wisdom, dominion, power, money, possessions, honor, pleasure, and the like; yea, all that in the world is honorable and glorious, would be to him loathsome and an abomination.—How great and glorious a bestowment the eternal kingdom and the heavenly inheritance is man’s heart in this life can not understand, and still less express. We see in this life only the central point, but in the life to come, we shall see the whole infinite circle.

Gal_4:1-7. There are two degrees of the adoption of God’s children: the degree of minority, where one is rather servant than child, and the degree of majority, where one has the place of a child.—The bondage of the law the way to the full adoption of God’s children.—The relation of the law and of the gospel to adoption with God—The son, still a minor, must wait till God declares him of age; while the son of full age is not to abdicate the child’s place, else he makes a retrogression displeasing to God. Without Christ, under age, through Christ, of full age.—When Christ came, came the time of majority for the people of God; when He comes to thee, it comes also for thee, not earlier—but then, really.—Glöckler: The wisdom and love of God in the sending of His Son: Wisdom: He came, when the time was fulfilled: Love: He came to bring redemption, and the adoption of children.—The true intent, virtue, and fruit of the incarnation of the Son of God.—When the time is fulfilled, God will send also to thee His Son, and His Spirit into thy heart; only wait and doubt not!—Every time, even the longest, has its fulfillment, for it is subject to God, in the service of His purpose.—Kapff: The blessedness of the adoption of God’s children: It is (1) a condition of freedom, (2) of joyfulness in faith, (3) of heirship to God.—W. Hofacker:—On the family or house of God, into which, to us as children, access stands open in Christ Jesus: 1) The house or the family of God: there is there a Father, God, a mother-free, unmerited grace, a first-born Brother; many brothers and sisters besides, and a ministering retinue in the holy angels. 2) The different relations in which we may stand to the household of God: a. there are some, and they are greatest in number, who stand in a far distant and alien relation to the family of God , b. a smaller, less considerable number stand to the family of God in a nearer, but yet not the nearest relation; c. the third class stands to it in the full, conscious relation of children, as Paul says, Gal_4:6. 3) The laborious [aufgabenreiche] and yet glorious condition of those, who walk as children of the house of God: a. the first task is, to learn more and more the true temper of children; b. the second, to show faithfulness and diligence in the daily work entrusted to them by the Lord; c. the third is, to wait in patience and hope for the promised inheritance.—Mühlhäuser: The Abba cry: 1) a sign of being God’s child; 2) but only possible through the Spirit of God.—Christ the Redeemer from the bondage of the law, 2) the redemption itself, 3) the consequence of this redemption.—Hesse: In what does sonahip with God consist? 1) In the maturity of the spirit; 2) in the joyfulness of prayer; 3) in the certainty of salvation.—Ahlfeld: Redemption through Jesus Christ. 1) From what has He redeemed us? From the law, from the constraint and from the curse of the law. 2) What does God offer us through our redemption? Sonship: the spirit of a child and the inheritance of a child.

Footnotes:

[1]Gal_4:2.—[Ἐπιτρόπους … καὶοἰκονόμους ; the first referring to controllers of his person, i.e, guardians, “the latter, to managers of his property i.e. “stewards.” See Lightfoot.—R.]

[2]Gal_4:3.—[Ἠμεν δεδουλωμἐνοι: the force of the perfect participle is more accurately expressed by “were kept in bondage.”—R.]

[3]Gal_4:3.—[“Rudiments” is preferable to “elements,” as bringing out more distinctly the ethical meaning. See Exes, Notes.—R.]

[4]Gal_4:4.—[Τενόμενον must be rendered alike in both cases. “Born,” natum, is the interpretation now generally adopted. So Koppe, Schott, Meyer, and later English commentators.—R]

[5]Gal_4:5.—[“It seems more exact to indicate the repeated ἵνα by the same form of translation” (Elliott).—R.]

[6]Gal_4:6.—[On the exact force of ὅτι κ.τ.λ, see Exeg. Notes. “Sent forth” is the better rendering of the aorist.—R.]

[7]Gal_4:6—Elz. has ὑμῶν against preponderating authority. Altered to conform to the foregoing [Ἡμῶν, א.A. B. C. D. F , adopted by the best editors.—R.]

[8]Gal_4:7.—The reading κληρονόμος διὰ θεοῦ is with good reason approved by Lachmann, Tischendorf, [Meyer, Ellicott, Alford, Lightfoot.] א. has it. “It is commended also by its comparative difficulty.” The κληρονόμος θεοῦ δια Χριστοῦ of the Rec. has arisen from a wish to lighten the difficulty, and is founded on Rom_8:17. So also the simple θεοῦ. The reading κληρονόμος alone is without any authority. [Wordsworth alone, among many recent English editors, adopts the longer reading.—R.]

[9][There is doubtless a polemical reference in these statements of Schmoller, of no special interest to the American reader. It need only be suggested that Lutheran antinomism sometimes seems (but only seems, it may be conceded; to verge on antinomianism.—R.]

Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

CHAPTER 4

1. Under the law in the state of minority. (Gal 4:1-3)

2. The Son revealed to redeem. (Gal 4:4-5)

3. Because ye are Sons; the Spirit of Sonship. (Gal 4:6-7)

4. The backsliding Galatians. (Gal 4:8-20)

5. The sons of the bondwoman and of the free woman. (Gal 4:21-31)

Jewish believers were, before Christ had died, the children of God, and as such they did not differ from servants. They were in a state of minority, as children who do not know the father’s thoughts, nor could they fully know God as Father.

“He compares the believer before the coming of Christ to a child under age, who has no direct relation with his father as to his thoughts, but who receives his father’s orders, without his accounting for them to him, as a servant would receive them. He is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father. Thus the Jews, although they were heirs of the promises, were not in connection with the Father and His counsels in Jesus, but were in tutelage to principles that appertained to the system of the present world, which is but a corrupt and fallen creation. Their walk was ordained of God in this system, but did not go beyond it. We speak of the system by which they were guided, whatever divine light they might receive, from time to time, to reveal heaven to them, to encourage them in hope, while making the system under the rule of which they were placed yet darker. Under the law then, heirs as they were, they were still in bondage.”--Synopsis

But a great change had taken place. “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, that He might redeem those under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.” God sent His Son from His bosom to become man and “made under the law.” He took His place down here in two relationships. First with man, through the woman, and with the Jews, as born under the law. Sin and death came in by the woman; Christ came into this world by woman also. Through the law, man is under condemnation and Christ came as under that law. But that law was no bondage for Him. He fully worked out the righteousness of the law. Yet his righteous and holy life could not redeem those under the law. Redemption from the curse of the law was accomplished in the death of the Cross. And the glorious result of the coming of the Son of God and His finished work is for all believers in Him “the adoption of sons”--that is, placed, through grace, before God as sons. And because believing Jews and Gentiles are sons, through the efficacy of the redemption wrought by the Lord Jesus Christ, God sent the blessed proof and power of sonship. “He sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.” The Holy Spirit was given as the seal of redemption, and as the joy of sonship. “Wherefore, thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.”

“Was it possible, then, that any could desire to put the Gentiles under the law, when they (the Jews) had been brought out from it themselves by the will of God, the work of Christ, and the witness of the Holy Spirit? What a gross inconsistency! What a subversion, not only of the truth of God revealed in the gospel, but also of redemption, which is its basis! For Christ bought off those that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons, bringing them, by grace, into a place of known salvation and intelligent joy in relation with our God and Father, out of that bondage and nonage which the law supposes.”--W. Kelly

Then follows the appeal of the apostle to the backsliding Galatians, who were fast falling away from grace and turning to the weak and beggarly elements. Gal 4:8-10 are of much interest and significance. They were heathen, and knowing not God, they served idols. Now, as being converted, they had known God, or rather God had known them. Turning to Judaism, to the law with its ordinances, meant, for them, a turning back to the weak and beggarly elementary things in which they were as heathen. They were, practically, turning again to that which they had left--”how turn ye again?” As heathen they had ceremonies, different offerings, and they observed different days by which they tried to please their supposed gods. Ritualistic observances upon Christian ground are more than a perverted gospel: they are heathenish in principle. Some African fetich-priest attires himself in a fantastic costume. He takes a rattle, dances and mumbles something in an unintelligible way. Then he declares what he does will induce the gods to send rain. In a magnificent edifice caged “church” stands a man who wears different colored robes. This man goes through different ceremonies, bows and crosses himself, mumbles something in a foreign language, then lifts up a receptacle before which the people bow in worship. He claims that, through him, blessing comes upon the people. Both, the African heathen-priest and the ritualistic-priest follow the same principle, and the practice of the so-called “Christian priest” is as much heathenish as the practice of the other. And so as to the observance of special holy days, months and years. “Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain.” The gospel knows nothing of the observance of days and seasons such as saint-days, Lent, etc. All these special saint-days and most of the feast-days kept in Christendom were taken from the heathen.

Then what a tender appeal follows! He reminds them of the former days when he preached first the gospel unto them. In the infirmity of the flesh, physical weakness, they had not despised nor rejected him, but received him as an angel of God, as the Christ whose blessed ambassador he was. Then they enjoyed great blessedness and would have plucked out their own eyes and given them to him. But where was their blessedness now? Had he become their enemy in speaking the truth to them? He addresses them as His little children “of whom I travail in birth again.”

He needed, so to speak, to travail in birth afresh with them till Christ should be formed in them. Nevertheless, he calls them his children: his love inspired him with confidence, and yet filled his heart with uneasiness. He would have desired to be with them that he might change his voice, suiting it to their state; not only teaching them the truth, but doing whatever their need required. Mark here the deep love of the apostle. Moses, faithful as he was, grew weary of the burden of the people and said: Have I conceived all this people? have I begotten them, that thou shouldest say unto me, Carry them in thy bosom, as a nursing father beareth the sucking child, unto the land which thou swearest unto their fathers? (Num 11:19); but the apostle is willing to travail in birth with them as his children a second time, in order that their souls might be saved.

Gal 4:21-31 give an interesting, typical foreshadowing and contrast. As they were abandoning grace, he wants the law to speak to them. Abraham had two sons, one by Hagar, the bondmaid, born after the flesh; the other son was Isaac, the son of promise, born by Sarah, the free woman. Both illustrate the covenants of God. Mount Sinai, the law-covenant, which gendereth to bondage, is represented in Hagar and her son; the other, the covenant of promise, “Jerusalem which is above”--the mother of us all--it is the true church of God viewed in her heavenly state; she is free. He quotes Isa 54:1, “Rejoice thou, barren, that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not, for the desolate has many more children than she which hath an husband.” These words are addressed to Jerusalem during the millennial kingdom, in the time of her promised restoration. Then Israel, redeemed and blessed, will look back and find that, during our age, this gospel-age, many more children were begotten by the gospel, during the time when Israel was cast off and Jerusalem trodden down by the Gentiles than at the time when Jerusalem flourished and enjoyed the favor of Jehovah. “Now, we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise.” Those who believe and are saved by grace are, therefore, the true children of promise. But, as then, he that was born after the flesh persecuted “him that was after the Spirit, even so it is now.” The Jews persecuted Paul for preaching the gospel. They opposed the gospel and all those who believed in Christ. But what was said about the bondwoman and her son? “Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the free woman.” This has happened to Israel ; she, for a time, is disowned and their house is left desolate. “So then, therefore, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free.” It would be impossible to be children of both. Equally impossible is it to be under law and under grace. The two cannot exist together. We are children of the free woman and of her only and have nothing whatever to do with the law-covenant. We belong to a risen Christ, with whom we have died, who has borne the curse for us and bestowed upon us life and righteousness, and, therefore, we are free from the law, from its service and ceremonies.

Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Subdivision 1. (Gal 4:1-20.)

The Grace given.

1. The apostle, therefore, now naturally returns to what he has already spoken of as the manifest peculiar blessing of Christianity itself, the coming of the Spirit. "We are all the sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus;" but then there were children of God before Christianity. The children of God were not gathered together as such; the true children were not acknowledged as such; but they were there. Christ died, not for the nation of Israel only, but that He might gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad. There were, then, children, even while they were scattered. There were children of God under the law, but as long as they were there, they differed nothing from servants. There was no cry of "Abba, Father." There was no Father openly acknowledging them. The children were just as much children. They were, in that sense, "lords of all." Nevertheless, they differed nothing from servants as to their practical condition. They were "under tutors and governors," for their own good, "until the time appointed of the Father." Now this tutelage, as the apostle tells us, was yet a real bondage. The law was the elements of the world. It is, in fact, what enters into every system of natural religion that was ever in man’s mind. It is the principle upon which the whole world goes on, which is necessary to it, and man can conceive no other; but, by that very fact, it was bondage to the child of God. He was under that which denied him the nearness which was truly his own and prevented his serving in the liberty of the child’s place.

2. But the "fulness of time" came. God had steadfastly in view the Object which was before Him and He could not delay longer than necessity demanded. "When the fulness of the time" then "was come, God sent forth His Son," the One in whom there was necessarily, by what He was, the greatest possible nearness to Himself, yet now apparently at a distance, "come of a woman" and actually Man, but "come under the law" also, under that which to every other was bondage, which for Himself could be none. With Him there was no impossibility of working out the righteousness of the law. It could only testify to the perfection that was in Him, and thus, after His thirty years of probation, the Spirit of God comes openly upon Him, marking Him out as the Object of God’s fullest delight.

He was sealed, as we are not, because of His own perfection; but He entered, in that very act, upon a course of ministry to others in which redemption would be accomplished for those under the law, that now "we might receive the adoption of sons"; that is, the full place of children, as well as the reality of being such.

3. For this is what sonship means, in contrast with children, as the terms are used here. The child (teknon) is the one by nature that. He is born to it, and if born he can never cease to be the child of the one of whom he is born; but he may not have the place of child, and that is what in Scripture, "sonship" implies. The son (huios) is the acknowledged child, the child in the child’s place; and that is what is proper to Christianity. Children there were before it, but now they are "sons"; and we have received, in that way, the adoption. The consequence is: "Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying Abba, Father." Notice that the place as given of God must be ours first, then comes the qualification for the place, the Spirit of His Son. How wonderfully does that speak! It is not the spirit of a son simply, but the Spirit of His Son. In fact, it is the perfection of Christ which has rendered possible this reception by us of the Spirit of Christ, and which, therefore, brings us into the sweetness of the assurance of what Christ Himself is to God, in the value of which we abide. How then, asks the apostle as it were, is it possible, in such a place, to be a servant any longer, that is, a slave? It is the bondage of slavery of which he is speaking. Servants, of course, we are in a true sense, by the very fact that we are sons. We serve as such. God has title to service, surely, from all His sons, but there is no bondage in this. If sons, we are gloriously free, and if sons, we are heirs of God through Christ. This, then, is the characteristic of Christianity.

4. The apostle turns now, therefore, to the Galatians, to appeal to them as to their lapse from such conscious blessedness. The going into Judaism is for him much the same thing as going back to the heathenism out of which, in fact, they had been brought. They had not known God, and then were doing service to those who by nature were no gods. Now they had known Him, or rather He had known them. Known and recognized, how could they turn to "the weak and beggarly elements of the world" whereunto they desired again to be in bondage? It was heathenism in which, in fact, they had been. These "elements of the world" for them had been in heathenism, and yet he says "How turn ye again?" It was all the same thing, in fact; if Christ were given up, what did it matter? They were observing days and months and times and years. Nothing very dreadful, people would say, in that; but he immediately comments upon it: "I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain." Then he beseeches them that they should be still as he himself continued to be; their lapse could not injure him in one sense. They knew how, in spite of infirmity of the flesh, he had preached the gospel to them at the first. They had not taken offence at the weakness, the physical weakness that they saw in him; they had not rejected him on account of that, which, in fact, was only designed to make the power of the Spirit in him more apparent. They had received him as an angel of God, even as the Christ he represented. Had they then, in fact, known that blessedness of which they had certainly spoken? They would have plucked out their own eyes and have given them to him. How was it now? Did telling them the truth make him their enemy? But there were others who were manifesting great zeal in their behalf, not in a right way. They were acting, as he puts it, for a purpose, -would exclude the apostle, that they might have themselves that place in their affections which they had robbed him of; but if they had really found the blessing which they declared, would it not be good for them to abide in that, to show their zeal after that manner? In fact, he was full of longing after them. He had been the one who had brought them into this blessing in Christ. Now he was travailing in birth again, as it were, (had all the sorrow and pain of that), until Christ should be formed in them. He desired to be present with them, yet with a changed voice. He had had to change it, for he stood in doubt of them.

F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Chapter 16

THE HEIRS COMING OF AGE.

Gal_4:1-7

THE main thesis of the Epistle is now established. Gentile Christians, Paul has shown, are in the true Abrahamic succession of faith. And this devolution of the Promise discloses the real intent of the Mosaic law, as an intermediate and disciplinary system. Christ was the heir of Abrahams testament; He was therefore the end of Moses law. And those who are Christs inherit the blessings of the Promise, while they escape the curse and condemnation of the Law. The remainder of the Apostles polemic, down to Gal_5:12, is devoted to the illustration and enforcement of this position.

In this, as in the previous chapter, the pre-Christian state is assigned to the Jew, who was the chief subject of Divine teaching in the former dispensation; it is set forth under the first person (Gal_4:3), in the language of recollection. Describing the opposite condition of sonship, the Apostle reverts from the first to the second person, identifying his readers with himself. {comp. Gal_3:25-26} True, the Gentiles had been in bondage (Gal_4:7-8). This goes without saying. Pauls object is to show that Judaism is a bondage. Upon this he insists with all the emphasis he can command. Moreover, the legal system contained worldly, unspiritual elements, crude and childish conceptions of truth, marking it, in comparison with Christianity, as an inferior religion. Let the Galatians be convinced of this, and they will understand what Paul is going to say directly; they will perceive that Judaic conformity is for them a backsliding in the direction of their former heathenism (Gal_4:8-10). But the force of this latter warning is discounted and its effect weakened when he is supposed, as by some interpreters, to include Gentile along with Jewish "rudiments" already in Gal_4:3. His readers could not have suspected this. The "So we also" and the "held in bondage" of this verse carry them back to Gal_3:23. By calling the Mosaic ceremonies "rudiments of the world" he gives Jewish susceptibilities just such a shock as prepares for the declaration of Gal_4:9, which put them on a level with heathen rites.

The difference between Judaism and Christianity, historically unfolded in chap. 3, is here restated in graphic summary. We see, first, the heir of God in his minority; and again, the same heir in possession of his estate.

I. One can fancy the Jew replying to Pauls previous argument in some such style as this. "You pour contempt," he would say, "on the religion of your fathers. You make them out to have been no better than slaves. Abrahams inheritance, you pretend, under the Mosaic dispensation lay dormant, and is revived in order to be taken from his children and conferred on aliens." No, Paul would answer: I admit that the saints of Israel were sons of God; I glory in the fact-"who are Israelites, whose is the adoption of sons and the glory and the covenants and the law-giving and the promises, whose are the fathers" {Rom_9:4-5} -But they were sons in their minority. "And I say that as long as the heir is [legally] an infant, he differs in nothing from a slave, though [by title] lord of all."

The man of the Old Covenant was a child of God in posse, not in esse, in right but not in fact. The "infant" is his fathers trueborn son. In time he will be full owner. Meanwhile he is as subject as any slave on the estate. There is nothing he can command for his own. He is treated and provided for as a bondman might be; put "under stewards" who manage his property, "and guardians" in charge of his person, "until, the day fore appointed of the father." This situation does not exclude, it implies fatherly affection and care on the one side, and heirship on the other. But it forbids the recognition of the heir, his investment with filial rights. It precludes the access to the father and acquaintance with him, which the boy will gain in after-years. He sees him at a distance and through others, under the aspect of authority rather than of love. In this position he does not yet possess the spirit of a son. Such was in truth the condition of Hebrew saints-heirs of God, but knowing it not.

This illustration raises in Gal_4:2 an interesting legal question, touching the latitude given by Roman or other current law to the father in dealing with his heirs. Pauls language is good evidence for the existence of the power he refers to. In Roman and in Jewish law the date of civil majority was fixed. Local usage may have been more elastic. But the case supposed, we observe, is not that of a dead father, into whose place the son steps at the proper age. A grant is made by a father still living, who keeps his son in pupilage, till he sees fit to put him in possession of the promised estate. There is nothing to show that paternal discretion was limited in these circumstances, any more than it is in English law. The father might fix eighteen, or twenty-one, or thirty years as the age at which he would give his son a settlement, just as he thought best.

This analogy, like that of the "testament" in chap. 3, is not complete at all points; nor could any human figure of these Divine things be made so. The essential particulars involved in it are first, the childishness of the infant heir; secondly, the subordinate position in which he is placed for the time; and thirdly, the right of the father to determine the expiry of his infancy.

1. "When we were children," says the Apostle. This implies, not a merely formal and legal bar, but an intrinsic disqualification. To treat the child as a man is preposterous. The responsibilities of property are beyond his strength and his understanding. Such powers in his hands could only be instruments of mischief, to himself most of all. In the Divine order, calling is suited to capacity, privilege to age. The coming of Christ was timed to the hour. The world of the Old Testament, at its wisest and highest, was unripe for His gospel. The revelation made to Paul could not have been received by Moses, or David, or Isaiah. His doctrine was only possible after-and in consequence of theirs. There was a training of faculty, a deepening of conscience, a patient course of instruction and chastening to be carried out, before the heirs of the promise were fit for their heritage. Looking back to his own youthful days, the Apostle sees in them a reflex of the discipline which the people of God had required. The views he then held of Divine truth appear to him low and childish, in comparison with the manly freedom of spirit, the breadth of knowledge, the fulness of joy which he has attained as a son of God through Christ.

2. But what is meant by the "stewards and guardians" of this Jewish period of infancy? Gal_4:3 tells us this, in language, however, somewhat obscure: "We were held in bondage under the rudiments (or elements) of the world" - a phrase synonymous with the foregoing "under law". {Gal_3:23} The "guard" and "tutor" of the previous section reappears, with these "rudiments of the world" in his hand. They form the system under which the young heir was schooled, up to the time of his majority. They belonged to "the world" inasmuch as they were, in comparison with Christianity, unspiritual in their nature, uninformed by "the Spirit of Gods Son" (Gal_4:6). The language of Heb_9:1; Heb_9:10 explains this phrase: "The first covenant had a worldly sanctuary," with "ordinances of flesh, imposed-till the time of rectification." The sensuous factor that entered into the Jewish revelation formed the point of contact with Paganism which Paul brings into view in the next paragraph. Yet, rude and earthly as the Mosaic system was in some of its features, it was Divinely ordained and served an essential purpose in the progress of revelation. It shielded the Churchs infancy. It acted the part of a prudent steward, a watchful guardian. The heritage of Abraham came into possession of his heirs enriched by their long minority. Mosaism therefore, while spiritually inferior to the Covenant of grace in Christ, has rendered invaluable service to it (comp. Gal_4:24; chapter 14).

3. The will of the Father determined the period of this guardianship. However it may be in human law, this right of fore-ordination resides in the Divine Fatherhood. In His unerring foresight He fixed the hour when His sons should step into their filial place. All such "times and seasons," Christ declared, "the Father hath appointed on His own authority". {Act_1:7} He imposed the law of Moses, and annulled it, when He would. He kept the Jewish people, for their own and the worlds benefit, tied to the legal "rudiments," held in the leading-strings of Judaism. It was His to say when this subjection should cease, when the Church might receive the Spirit of His Son. If this decree appeared to be arbitrary, if it was strange that the Jewish fathers-men so noble in faith and character-were kept in bondage and fear, we must remind ourselves that "so it seemed good in the Fathers sight." Hebrew pride found this hard to brook. To think that God had denied this privilege in time past to His chosen people to bestow it all at once and by mere grace on Gentile sinners, making them at "the eleventh hour" equal to those who had borne for so long the burden and heat of the day! that the children of Abraham had been, as Paul maintains, for centuries treated as slaves, and now these heathen aliens are made sons just as much as they! But this was Gods plan; and it must be right. "Who art thou, O man, that repliest against God?"

II. However, the nonage of the Church has passed. Gods sons are now to be owned for such. It is Christs mission to constitute men sons of God (Gal_4:4-5).

His advent was the turning-point of human affairs, "the fulness of time." Pauls glance in these verses takes in a vast horizon. He views Christ in His relation both to God and to humanity, both to law and redemption. The appearance of "the Son of God, woman-born," completes the previous Course of time; it is the goal of antecedent revelation, unfolding "the mystery kept secret through times eternal," but now "made known to all the nations". {Rom_16:25-26} Promise and Law both looked forward to this hour. Sin has been "passed by" in prospect of it, receiving hitherto a partial and provisional forgiveness. The aspirations excited, the needs created by earlier religion demanded their satisfaction. The symbolism of type and ceremony, with their rude picture-writing, waited for their Interpreter. The prophetic soul of "the wide world, dreaming of things to come," watched for this day. They that looked-for Israels redemption, the Simeons and Annas of the time, the authentic heirs of the promise, knew by sure tokens that it was near. Their aged eyes in the sight of the infant Jesus descried its rising. The set time had come, to which all times looked since Adams fall and the first promise. At the moment when Israel seemed farthest from help and hope, the "horn of salvation was raised up in the house of David," - God sent forth His Son.

1. The sending of the Son brought the worlds servitude to an end. "Henceforth," said Jesus, "I call you not servants". {Joh_15:15} Till now "servants of God" had been the highest title men could wear. The heathen were enslaved to false gods (Gal_4:8). And Israel, knowing the true God, knew Him at a distance, serving too often in the spirit of the elder son of the parable, who said, "Lo these many years do I slave for thee." {Luk_15:29} None could with free soul lift his eyes to heaven and say, "Abba, Father." Men had great thoughts about God, high speculations. They had learnt imperishable truths concerning His unity, His holiness, His majesty as Creator and Lawgiver. They named him the "Lord," the "Almighty," the "I Am." But His Fatherhood, as Christ revealed it, they had scarcely guessed. They thought of Him as humble bondmen of a revered and august master, as sheep might of a good shepherd. The idea of a personal Sonship toward the Holy One of Israel was inconceivable, till Christ brought it with Him into the world, till God sent forth His Son.

He sent Him as "His Son." To speak of Christ, with the mystical Germans, as the ideal Urmensch- the ideal Son of man, the foretype of humanity - is to express a great truth. Mankind was created in Christ, who is "the image of God, firstborn of all creation." But this is not what Paul is saying here. The doubly compounded Greek verb at the head of this sentence (repeated with like emphasis in Gal_4:6) signifies "sent forth from" Himself: He came in the character of Gods Son, bringing His sonship with Him. He was the Son of God before He was sent out. He did not become so in virtue of His mission to mankind. His relations with men, in Pauls conception, rested upon His pre-existing relationship to God. "The Word" who "became flesh, was with God, was God in the beginning." "He called God His own Father, making Himself equal with God": {Joh_5:18} so the Jews had gathered from His own declarations. Paul admitted the claim when "God revealed His Son" to him, and affirms it here unequivocally.

"The Son of God," arriving "in the fulness of time," enters human life. Like any other son of man, He is born of a woman, born under law. Here is the kenosis, the emptying of Divinity, of which the Apostle speaks in Php_2:5-8. The phrase "born of woman," does not refer specifically to the virgin-birth; this term describes human origin on the side of its weakness and dependence. {Job_14:1; Mat_11:11} Paul is thinking not of the difference, but of the identity of Christs birth and our own. We are carried back to Bethlehem. We see Jesus a babe lying in His mothers arms-Gods Son a human infant, drawing His life from a weak woman! {Comp. Rom_1:3-4; Rom_9:5; 2Co_13:4; Eph_4:9-10; Col_1:15; Col_1:18; Col_2:9; 1Ti_3:16}

Nor is "born under law" a distinction intended to limit the previous term, as though it meant a born Jew, and not a mere womans son. This expression, to the mind of the reader of chap. 3, conveys the idea of subjection, of humiliation rather than eminence. "Though He was (Gods) Son," Christ must needs "learn His obedience". {Heb_5:8} The Jewish people experienced above all others the power of the law to chasten and humble. Their law was to them more sensibly what the moral law is in varying degree to the world everywhere, an instrument of condemnation. Gods Son was now put under its power. As a man He was "under law"; as a Jew He came under its most stringent application. He declined none of the burdens of His birth. He submitted not only to the general moral demands of the Divine law for men, but to all the duties and proprieties incident to His position as a man, even to those ritual ordinances which His coming was to abolish. He set a perfect example of loyalty. "Thus it becometh us," He said, "to fulfil all righteousness."

The Son of God who was to end the legal bondage was sent into it Himself. He wore the legal yoke that He might break it. He took "the form of a servant," to win our enfranchisement. "God sent forth His son, human, law-bound-that He might redeem those under law."

Redemption was Christs errand. We have learned already how "He redeemed us from the curse of the law," by the sacrifice of the cross. {Gal_3:13} This was the primary object of His mission: to ransom men from the guilt of past sin. Now we discern its further purpose-the positive and constructive side of the Divine counsel. Justification, is the preface to adoption. The man under law is not only cursed by his failure to keep it; he lives in a servile state, debarred from filial rights. Christ "bought us out" of this condition. While the expiation rendered in His death clears off the entail of human guilt, His incarnate life and spiritual union with believing men sustain that action, making the redemption complete and permanent. As enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son; now "reconciled, we shall be saved by His life". {Rom_5:10} Salvation is not through the death of Christ alone. The Babe of Bethlehem, the crowned Lord of glory, is our Redeemer, as well as the Man of Calvary. The cross is indeed the centre of His redemption; but it has a vast circumference. All that Christ is, all that He has done and is doing as the Incarnate Son, the God-man, helps to make men sons of God. The purpose of His mission is therefore stated a second time and made complete in the words of ver. 5b: "that we might receive the adoption of sons." The sonship carries everything else with it-"if children, then heirs" (Gal_4:7). There is no room for any supplementary office of Jewish ritual. That is left behind with our babyhood.

2. So much for the ground of sonship. Its proof lay in the sending forth of the Spirit of the Son.

The mission of the Son and that of the Spirit are spoken of in Gal_4:3-6 in parallel terms: "God sent forth His Son-sent forth the Spirit of His Son," the former into the world of men, the latter "into" their individual "hearts." The second act matches the first, and crowns it. Pentecost is the sequel of the Incarnation. {Joh_2:21; 1Co_6:19-20} And Pentecost is repeated in the heart of every child of God. The Apostle addresses himself to his readers experience ("because ye are sons") as in Gal_3:3-6, and on the same point. They had "received the Spirit": this marked them indubitably as heirs of Abraham {Gal_3:14} -and what is more, sons of God. Had not the mystic cry, Abba, Father, sounded in their hearts? The filial consciousness was born within them, supernaturally inspired. When they believed in Christ, when they saw in Him the Son of God, their Redeemer, they were stirred with a new, ecstatic impulse; a Divine glow of love and joy kindled in their breasts; a voice not their own spoke to their Spirit-their soul leaped forth upon their lips, crying to God, "Father, Father!" They were children of God, and knew it. "The Spirit Himself bore them witness". {Rom_8:15}

This sentiment was not due to their own reflection, not the mere opening of a buried spring of feeling in their nature. God sent it into their hearts. The outward miracles which attended the first bestowment of this gift, showed from what source it came. {Gal_3:5} Nor did Christ personally impart the assurance. He had gone, that the Paraclete might come. Here was another Witness, sent by a second mission from the Father. {Joh_16:7} His advent is signalised in clear distinction from that of the Son. He comes in the joint name of Father and of Son. Jesus called Him "the Spirit of the Father"; {Mat_10:20; Luk_11:13; Act_1:4-5} the Apostle, "the Spirit of Gods Son."

To us He is "the Spirit of adoption," replacing the former "spirit of bondage unto fear." For by His indwelling we are "joined to the Lord" and made "one spirit" with Him, so that Christ lives in us. {Gal_2:20} And since Christ is above all things the Son, His Spirit is a spirit of sonship; those who receive Him are sons of God. Our sonship is through the Holy Spirit derived from His. Till Christs redemption was effected, such adoption was in the nature of things impossible. This filial cry of Gentile hearts attested the entrance of a Divine life into the world. The Spirit of Gods Son had become the new spirit of mankind.

Abba, the Syrian vocative for father, was a word familiar to the lips of Jesus. The instance of its use recorded in Mar_14:36, was but one of many such. No one had hitherto approached God as He did. His utterance of this word, expressing the attitude of His life of prayer and breathing the whole spirit of His religion, profoundly affected His disciples. So that the Abba of Jesus became a watchword of His Church, being the proper name of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Gentile believers pronounced it, conscious that in doing so they were joined in spirit to the Lord who said, "My Father, and your Father!" Greek-speaking Christians supplemented it by their own equivalent, as we by the English Father. This precious vocable is carried down the ages and round the whole world in the mother-tongue of Jesus, a memorial of the hour when through Him men learned to call God Father.

"Because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit," with this cry. The witness of sonship follows on the adoption, and seals it. The child is born, then cries; the cry is the evidence of life. But this is not the first office of the Holy Spirit to the regenerate soul. Many a silent impulse has He given, frequent and long-continued may have been His visitations, before His presence reveals itself audibly. From the first the new life of grace is implanted by His influence. "That which is born of the Spirit, is spirit." "He dwelleth with you, and is in you, " said Jesus to His disciples, before the Pentecostal effusion. Important and decisive as the witness of the Holy Spirit to our sonship is, we must not limit His operation to this event. Deeply has He wrought already on the soul in which His work reaches this issue; and when it is reached, He has still much to bestow, much to accomplish in us. All truth, all holiness, all comfort are His; and into these He leads the children of God. Living by the Spirit, in Him we proceed to Gal_5:25.

The interchange of person in the subject in Gal_4:5-8 is very noticeable. This agitated style betrays high strung emotion. Writing first, in Gal_4:3 in the language of Jewish experience, in Gal_4:6 Paul turns upon his readers and claims them for witnesses to the same adoption which Jewish believers in Christ (Gal_4:5) had received. Instantly he falls back into the first person; it is his own joyous consciousness that breaks forth in the filial cry of ver. 6b. In the more calm concluding sentence the second person is resumed; and now in the individualising singular, as though he would lay hold of his readers one by one, and bid them look each into his own heart to find the proof of sonship, as he writes: "So that thou art no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, also an heir through God."

An heir through God- this is the true reading. and is greatly to the point. It carries to a climax the emphatic repetition of "God" observed in Gal_4:4; Gal_4:6. "God sent His Son" into the world; "God sent" in turn "His Sons Spirit into your hearts." God then, and no other, has bestowed your inheritance. It is yours by His fiat. Who dares challenge it? {Comp. Rom_8:31-35; Act_11:17} Words how suitable to reassure Gentile Christians, browbeaten by arrogant Judaism! Our reply is the same to those who at this day deny our Christian and churchly standing, because we reject their sacerdotal claims.

What this inheritance includes in its final attainment, "doth not yet appear." Enough to know that "now are we children of God." The redemption of the body, the deliverance of nature from its sentence of dissolution, the abolishment of death-these are amongst its certainties. Its supreme joy lies in the promise of being with Christ, to witness and share His glory. "Heirs of God, joint-heirs with Christ"-a destiny like this overwhelms thought and makes hope a rapture. Gods sons may be content to wait and see how their heritage will turn out. Only let us be sure that we are His sons. Doctrinal orthodoxy, ritual observance, moral propriety do not impart, and do not supersede, "the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts." The religion of Jesus the Son of God is the religion of the filial consciousness.

William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.

4:1-7 Paul supports his argument that the law’s purpose for God’s children was fulfilled when Christ came, so that we are no longer bound by it.

4:1-3 A child inheriting an estate might receive a large fortune, but before coming of age, the child must obey guardians and trustees until the time set by the father. Similarly, before Christ came, God’s people were under the guardianship of the law (see 3:23-24).

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Gal 4:1. Λέγω δὲ, Now I say) He explains what he said, Gal 3:24, concerning the schoolmaster.—ὁ κληρονόμος, the heir) This term is brought from ch. Gal 3:29.—νήπιος) a child, under age.—οὐδὲν διαφέρει δούλου, differs nothing from a servant) Because he is not at his own disposal, regarding deeds and contracts.—πάντων, of all) Those things which relate to the inheritance.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Gal_4:1. λέγω δέ] Comp. Gal_3:17, Gal_5:16; Rom_15:8; 1Co_1:12 : now I mean, in reference to this κληρονομία brought in through Christ, the idea of which I have now more exactly to illustrate to you as for the first time realized in Christ. This illustration is derived by Paul from a comparison of the pre-Christian period to the period of the non-free, slave-like childhood of the heir-apparent.

ἐφʼ ὅσον χρόνον] As in Rom_7:1; 1Co_7:39.

ὁ κληρονόμος] The article as in ὁ μεσίτης, Gal_3:20 : the heir in any given case. Κληρ. is, however, to be conceived here, as in Mat_21:38, as the heir of the fathers goods, who is so not yet in actual personal possession, but de jurethe heir apparent, whose father is still alive. So Cameron, Neubour (Bibl. Brem. v. p. 40), Wolf, Baumgarten, Semler, Michaelis, and many others, including Winer, Schott, Wieseler, Reithmayr. But Rückert, Studer (in Usteri), Olshausen (undecided), Baumgarten-Crusius, de Wette, Hilgenfeld, Hofmann, following Chrysostom, Theodoret, and most of the older expositors, conceive the heir as one whose father is dead. Incorrectly, on account of Gal_4:2; for the duration of the guardianship (in which sense ὑπὸ ἐπιτρόπους, Gal_4:2, must then be understood) could not have been determined by the will of the father,[173] but would have depended on the law (Hermann, Staatsalterth. § 121). Hofmann thinks, indeed, that the point whether the father was bound by a law of majority is not taken into account, but only the fact, that it is the father himself who has made arrangements respecting his heir. But in this view the προθεσμία, as prescribed by the father, would be entirely illusory; the notice would be absurd, because the προθεσμία would be not τοῦ πατρός, but τοῦ νόμου.

νήπιος] still in boyhood. Comp. 1Co_13:11. Imberbis juvenis tandem custode remoto gaudet equis, etc., Virg. Aen. ix. 649. Quite in opposition to the context, Chrysostom and Oecumenius refer it to mental immaturity (Rom_2:20; Hom. Il. v. 406, xvi. 46, et al.).

οὐδὲν διαφέρει δούλου] because he is not sui juris. Comp. Liban. in Chiis, p. 11 D, in Wetstein.

κύριος πάντων ὤν] although he is lord of all, namely de jure, in eventum, as the heir-apparent of all the fathers goods. Consequently neither this nor the preceding point is inconsistent with the hypothesis that the father is still alive (as Hofmann and others have objected). Comp. Luk_16:31.

The κληρονόμος νήπιος represents, not the people of Israel (Wieseler); but, according to the connection with Gal_3:29 (comp. Gal_4:3), the Christians as a body, regarded in their earlier pre-Christian condition. In this condition, whether Jewish or Gentile, they were the heir-apparent, according to the idea of the divine predestination (Rom_8:28 ff.; Eph_1:11; Joh_11:52), in virtue of which they were ordained to be the Israel of God (Gal_6:16), the true σπέρμα of Abraham.

[173] Baumgarten-Crusius, indeed, appeals to the proof adduced by Göttling (Gesch. d. Röm. Staatsverf. pp. 109, 517), that Gaius, I. 55. 65, 189, comp. Caes. Bell. Gall. vi. 19, mentions the existence of a higher grade of the patria potestas among the Galatians. But in this way it is by no means shown that the time of majority was, after the death of the father, dependent on the settlement which he had previously made.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Gal 4:1-7 . THERE WERE IN THE GENTILE WORLD ALSO BEFORE CHRIST CHILDREN OF GOD IN BONDAGE TO HUMAN RULE, THAT KNEW NOT THE UNSEEN FATHER IN HEAVEN WHO WAS ORDERING THEIR LIVES. THEY WERE LIKE ORPHAN CHILDREN, WHOM A DEPARTED FATHER HAS WITH LOVING CARE CONSIGNED DURING CHILDHOOD TO THE CHARGE OF GUARDIANS AND STEWARDS. IN DUE TIME, HOWEVER, GOD SENT FORTH HIS SON TO REDEEM THEM ALSO FROM BONDAGE, AND HAS MADE US SONS AND HEIRS, SENDING FORTH THE SPIRIT OF HIS SON INTO OUR HEARTS.

In dealing with the relation of the Mosaic Law to the antecedent covenant and with its subsequent fulfilment in Christ, the Apostle necessarily limited his view of the seed of Abraham, who were covenanted heirs of salvation between Moses and the Advent, to Israel. He likened these accordingly to children growing up in their father’s house under domestic control. But as most of those to whom he wrote had been converts from heathenism, he now extends his view of the world before Christ so as to embrace Gentiles also within its scope. Amidst the heathen were other children of God, a faithful seed, potential heirs of salvation, who passed through a like stage of spiritual childhood under different conditions. They were like orphan children committed by the watchful care of an unseen and unknown father to the custody of others. For they were subject to human systems of religion, government and law, neither knowing their Heavenly Father nor comprehending His love for them. The conception of a dead father providing by his will for the due education of his orphan children serves admirably to illustrate the mutual relations between God and the Gentile world, and to set forth the combination of steadfast love on one side with utter ignorance on the other. The illustration is obviously borrowed from testamentary systems prevailing among Greeks and Romans (not among Hebrews) which enabled a father to appoint guardians for his orphan children during their minority. These testamentary powers differed considerably in different parts of the Roman world according to the municipal laws of various cities. Whereas Roman citizens became wards of the state at fourteen, so that the powers of testamentary guardians were strictly limited, the discretion of the father was allowed a wider range in Greek cities. At Athens, for instance, the guardians of Demosthenes retained control over his property till he became a full citizen after eighteen; and in Asiatic Greece the custody of property was sometimes prolonged to twenty-five, though the personal authority ceased at fourteen. The dependent position of an orphan is described in popular language without legal precision; νήπιος is not a legal term, but an appropriate description for a child of tender years, naturally subject to the control of guardians ( ἐπιτρόπους ) and subordinate agents whom they might employ for household management or care of property ( οἰκονόμους ). It can hardly be right to identify the latter with the Roman curatores , for the special function of these officers was custody of property and not personal.

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

23–4:7. The contrast between our former state of pupillage under the Law, and our present state in Christ, full sonship

This is brought out under two aspects:

I. Gal 3:23-29. The preparative character of the Law; faith in Christ makes us Abraham’s seed, (a) Gal 3:23-24. We were protected by the Law with the hope of the future faith. The Law has been our paedagogue, leading us to Christ. (b) Gal 3:25-29. Now we are all sons of God by our faith in Christ, and therefore Abraham’s seed, heirs according to promise.

II. Gal 4:1-7. Temporary submission to laws, for those who are in an inferior position, is common. But Christ has delivered us and brought us into full sonship, as our experience tells us.

1–7. (See note at Gal 3:23.) Temporary submission to laws, by which one is in an inferior position, is common. But we have been delivered from these by Christ’s coming, as the testimony of our hearts tells us. Each believer is a son and heir by the grace of God

(Gal 4:1) But I say (in contrast to the thought of freedom and power suggested by “heir”) while an heir is a child he does not differ from a slave though in fact lord of all. (Gal 4:2) But he is under guardians and stewards, until the time fixed by his father. (Gal 4:3) So we also (first we Jews, but Gentiles as well) when we were children were enslaved under the elementary rules connected with merely external things. (Gal 4:4) But when the time was filled up—the time appointed by God, with its effect on us in discipline—God sent out from Himself His Son, who passed through the stages of humanity and entered on life as a Jew, to experience fully the claims and effect of the Law, (Gal 4:5) in order that He might redeem those who were under His discipline of the Law, and therefore, if them, others also, in order that (this redemption being accomplished) all we believers may receive in correspondence with the promises our adoption by grace into His family (Gal 4:6) But, to give a proof that ye now are sons, God sent out from Himself the spirit of His Son into our hearts crying (with a fervour that compels a foreign word to be translated into our mother tongue) “Abba,” “Father”! (Gal 4:7) So that (after God’s work external and internal) thou (each believer) art no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then also an heir, both facts, that of sonship and becoming an heir, being by (the power and grace, I say, of) God.

1. λέγω δὲ. Elsewhere in St Paul’s writings only in Gal 5:16, where, as here, it introduces a sharp contrast; here to heirship (Gal 3:29) and what it seems to imply; there to a wrong means of success. Contrast τοῦτο δὲ λέγω, Gal 3:17; ἴδε ἐγὼ Παῦλος λέγω ὑμῖν, Gal 5:2; and ἀλλὰ λέγω, Rom 10:18.

ἐφʼ ὅσον χρόνον. The full form (Rom 7:1; 1Co 7:39[113]) lays the greater stress on the duration of the time; contrast Mar 2:19 and also Mat 9:15.

[113] Is affixed to a word it means that all the passages are mentioned where that word occurs in the New Testament.

ὁ κληρονόμος (generic) νήπιός ἐστιν. If St Paul were writing a legal document νήπιος would doubtless = infans, minor, who in Roman law did not attain his majority till he was twenty-five years old. But it is more natural to suppose that in this letter to the people he uses the term more generally, as it is always used in the N.T., of children in contrast to adults; cf. 1Co 13:11; Eph 4:14; Heb 5:13. The Vulgate rightly gives parvulus.

οὐδὲν διαφέρει. Cf. Gal 2:6; “differs,” 1Co 15:41; not “is superior,” Mat 6:26.

δούλον. Wetstein quotes a long and interesting passage from Dio Chrys. XV. p. 240 a, showing the power of fathers over sons, ending ἐφεῖται γὰρ αὐτοῖς ἀποκτεῖναι μήτε κρίναντας, μήτε ὅλως αἰτιασαμένους, ἀλλʼ ὅμως οὐδὲν μᾶλλον δοῦλοί εἰσι πατέρων, ἀλλὰ νἱεῖς.

κύριος πάντων ὤν. Over all the things given to him by the father. In reality, if the father is regarded as dead; potentially, if as alive. See the following notes.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

4:1-7.] The Apostle shews the correspondence between our treatment under the law and that of heirs in general: and thus, by God’s dealing with us, in sending forth His Son, whose Spirit of Sonship we have received, confirms (ver. 7) the conclusion that we are heirs.

1.] λέγωδέ refers to what follows (reff.), and does not imply, ‘What I mean, is.’

ὁ κληρ., generic, as ὁ μεσίτης, ch. 3:20. The question, whether the father of the κληρονόμος here is to be thought of as dead, or absent, or living and present, is in fact one of no importance: nor does it belong properly to the consideration of the passage. The fact is, the antitype breaks through the type, and disturbs it: as is the case, wherever the idea of inheritance is spiritualized. The supposition in our text is, that a father (from what reason or under what circumstances matters not. Mr. Bagge quotes from Ulpian, speaking of the right of a testator appointing guardians, “Tutorem autem et a certo tempore dare et usque ad certum tempus licet.” Digest. xxvi. 2. 8) has preordained a time for his son and heir to come of age, and till that time, has subjected him to guardians and stewards. In the type, the reason might be absence, or decease, or even high office or intense occupation, of the father: in the antitype, it is the Father’s sovereign will: but the circumstances equally exist.

οὐδὲν διαφ. δούλου] διὰ τοῦτο γὰρ κ. παίειν κ. ἄγχειν κ. στρεβλοῦν, κ. ἃ τῶν δεσποτῶν πρὸς τοὺς οἰκέτας, ταῦτα τῶν υἱέων τοῖς ἐφεστῶσιν ἀξιοῦσιν ὑπάρχειν. Libanius (Wetst.). See below on ver. 3: and Plato, Lysis, pp. 207. 8, cited at length in Bagge.

κύριος πάντων ὤν must be understood essentially, rather than prospectively. It is said of him in virtue of his rank, rather than of his actual estate: in posse, rather than in esse.

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1. Λέγω δέ, ἐφʼ ὄσον χρόνον ὁ κληρονόμος νήπιός ἐστιν, οὐδὲν διαφέρει δούλου κύριος πάντων ὤν, 2. ἀλλὰ ὑπὸ ἐπιτρόπους ἐστὶ καὶ οἰκονόμους ἄχρι τῆς προθεσμίας τοῦ πατρός. “Now I say, so long as the heir is a child, he differs in no way from a slave, though he is lord of all, but is under guardians and stewards until the time set by the father.” Though the argument introduced in 3:23 was brought to a conclusion in v. 29 with a reversion to the thought of 3:7, the apostle now takes up again the thought of the inferiority of the condition under law (note the resumptive λέγω δέ; cf. on 3:17 and 5:16); availing himself of the familiar custom of guardianship and of current laws or usages concerning it, he compares the condition of those under law to that of an heir who in his youth and till a time appointed by his father, though prospective owner of the whole estate, is subject to guardians, and characterises it as practical slavery. The sting of the argument is in νήπιος, δοῦλος, and ὑπὸ ἐπιτρόπους καὶ οἰκονόμους, which he employs to describe the condition of those under law; its persuasive element is in ἄχρι…πατρός which suggests that the time of slavery has gone by, and men ought now to be free.

The term κληρονόμος, “heir,” suggests that the illustration is taken from the law or custom of inheritance, the son inheriting from a deceased father (πατρός) under the will of the latter. Nor does this element of the illustration create serious incongruity between illustration and thing illustrated. For an illustration is not necessarily perfect at every point, and there is no decisive reason why the apostle should not illustrate the condition of the Jewish nation or of the human race in the period of law by that of a son who is under guardians awaiting an appointed time to take possession of the property left him by his father’s will; the point of the illustration lying not in the condition of the father, but in the relation of the son to his guardians. But neither does κληρονόμος necessarily imply that in the illustration, still less in the thing illustrated, the father is dead in the period of the guardianship; since a guardianship may be created during the lifetime of the father, and the term κληρονόμος may be used proleptically simply to describe the son as the one who is eventually to possess the property. Cf. κύριος πάντων ὤν, and see detached note on Διαθήκη, p. 496.

Νήπιος, properly “one without understanding,” is used by Greek writers and in the Lxx both in this sense and with the meaning “child”; in N. T. apparently in the latter sense (1Co 13:11, Eph 4:14) with the added implication of immaturity, intellectual or moral. No instance has been pointed out of its use as a technical term for a minor, a child not possessed of manhood’s rights, but it is evidently this characteristic of a child that the apostle here has specially in mind. κύριος is used in the sense, rather infrequent in N. T., of “owner,” with the added idea of control. Cf. Mat 20:8, Mat 21:40. The participle ὤν is, of course, concessive. See BMT 437.8.

The phrase ἐπιτρόπους καὶ οἰκονόμους has given rise to much discussion as to the precise meaning of the words and the law which the apostle has in mind. The difficulty, however, pertains not to ἐπίτροπος. This is a frequent word for the guardian of a minor orphan. See Plato, Legg. VI 766 C: καὶ ἐὰν ὀρφανῶν ἐπίτροπος τελευτήση τις. Dem. 988:2: τούτων Ἀρίσταιχμος ἐπίτροπος καὶ κηδεμὼν ἐγένεθʼ ἑκκαίδεκα ἔτη. Xen. Mem. 1. 2:40: λέγεται γὰρ Ἀλκιβιάδην, πρὶν εἴκοσιν ἐτῶν εἶναι, Περικλεῖ ἐπιτρόπῳ μὲν ὄντι ἑαυτοῦ προστάτῃ δὲ τῆς πόλεως τοιάδε διαλεκθἤναι περὶ νόμων. Arius Did. quoted in Mullach, Frag. Phil. Gr. II 87:2-5: ἀπὸ ταύτης γοῦν τῆς φιλοστοργίας καὶ διαθήκας τελευτᾶν μέλλοντας διατίθεσθαι, καὶ τῶν ἔτι κυοφορουμένων φροντίζειν, ἐπιτρόπους ἀπολιπόντας καὶ κηδεμόνας, καὶ τοῖς φιλτάτοις παρατιθεμένους, καὶ παρακαλοῦντας ἐπικουρεῖν αὐτοῖς. οἰκονόμος, on the other hand, usually denotes a slave acting as house-steward for his master, or an employed steward acting as agent for his principal, or a treasurer. See 1Ki 4:6, 1Ki 4:18:3, 1Ki 4:1 Esd. 4:47, Luk 12:42, Luk 16:1, Rom 16:23. Paul also uses it in a figurative sense of those to whom the gospel is entrusted, 1Co 4:1, 1Co 4:2. There is no clear instance of its use with reference to one who has charge of the person or estate of a minor heir, and in particular no other instance of the use of the two terms ἐπίτροπος and οἰκονόμος together.

Under Roman law indeed (of a period a little later than that of Paul—see Sief. ad loc., p. 234) the minor was under a tutor till his fourteenth year, and thereafter under a curator until his twenty-fifth year. But against the supposition that it was this usage that Paul had in mind is the fact that he adds ἂχρι τῆς προθεσμίας τοῦ πατρός, whereas Roman law itself fixed the time during which the child was under the tutor and curator respectively. On προθεσμίας, a frequent legal term, see Dem. 952:19; Plato, Legg. XII 954 D,* etc. Cf. Job 28:3, Dan 9:20 (Sym.). It is not found in Lxx and occurs here only in N. T.

Ramsay holds that Paul refers to the law followed in Greco-Phrygian cities, and cites the Syrian law book of the fifth century A. D., according to which the practice was the same as under the Roman law except that whereas under Roman law the father appointed only the tutor, and could not appoint the curator, under the Syrian law the father appointed both the ἐπίτροπος who, like the Roman tutor, had charge of the child till he reached the age of fourteen, and the curator who had the management of the property till the son was twenty-five years old. *

But aside from the fact that it is precarious to assume that the law found in a Syrian law book of the fifth century was in force in Phrygian cities in the first century, Ram. overlooks the fact that this usage is equally at variance with the language of Paul, who says nothing about who appoints the ἐπίτροπος and οἰκονόμος but does indicate that the father fixes the time at which the son passes from under their control.

In Greek, e. g., Athenian, law there was, so far as has been pointed out, no such distinction between tutor and curator or ἐπίτροπος and οἰκονόμος.

But the use of ἐπίτροπος καὶ κηδεμών in Dem. 988:2 as a double title of one person (see the passage above) suggests that we should not seek to distinguish between the functions of the ἐπίτροπος and those of the οἰκονόμος, but regard οἰκονόμος as Paul’s synonym for κηδεμών and, like that word, a further description of the ἐπίτροπος. Cf., also, Seneca, De Beneficiis, Lib. IV, chap. XXVII, ad fin.: quomodo dementissime testabitur, qui tutorem filio reliquerit pupillorum spoliatorem: “As he makes a most mad will who leaves as tutor to his son one who has been a spoiler of orphans.” There remains, however, the difficulty that we have no knowledge of a guardianship the period of which is fixed by the father. If, therefore, the apostle is speaking of inheritance of property from a deceased father, dying while the son is still a child, he must apparently be speaking in terms of some usage not otherwise definitely known to us.

In view of this fact, recourse may be had to a guardianship established for special reasons during the lifetime of the father, such as is illustrated in the case of Antiochus Epiphanes and his son, Antiochus Eupator. In 1 Mac. 3:32, 33 it is stated that Antiochus Epiphanes, being about to go on a military expedition into Persia, left Lysias ἐπὶ τῶν πραγμάτων τοῦ βασιλέως … καὶ τρέφειν Ἀντίοχον τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ ἕως τοῦ ἐπιστρέψαι αὐτόν. In 1 Mac. 6:17 it is said that when Lysias knew that the king was dead he set up Antiochus, his son, to reign in his stead, whom he had brought up (ἔτρεψεν). From these two passages it appears that Antiochus, the father, appointed Lysias to be steward of the affairs of the kingdom and guardian of his son until a specified time, in effect directing that such stewardship and guardianship terminate by the resumption of authority by the father on his return, or by succession of his son on the father’s death. While, therefore, the precise terms used by Paul do not occur, equivalents of all three of them (ἐπίτροπος, οἰκονόμος, προθεσμίας τοῦ πατρός) are found in the passage in 1 Mac. This equivalence is, moreover, somewhat confirmed by certain passages in 2 Mac. In 10:11 it is stated that Antiochus Eupator, παραλαβὼν τὴν βασιλείαν, ἀνέδειξεν ἐπὶ τῶν πραγμάτων Λυσίαν, and thereafter, in 2 Mac. 11:1 and 13:2 (cf. also 14:2), Lysias is referred to as ἐπίτροπος τοῦ βασιλέως καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν πραγμάτων, “guardian of the king and chancellor or steward.” Thus the son, on acquiring his throne, re-established for himself the relation which his father had created, and the author of 2 Mac. employs to designate the office of Lysias ἐπίτροπος καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν πραγμάτων, which are evidently nearly or quite the equivalent of Paul’s ἐπίτροπος καὶ οἰκονόμος. If it may be supposed that these passages were before the apostle’s mind, or that he had in mind such a case as that of Antiochus Ep phanes and his son, his language would become entirely clear, as referring to the case of a father who during his life placed his son for special reasons under the care of one who was at the same time ἐπίτροπος and οἰκονόμος and who was to hold that office for a period the limit of which was indicated by the father. The two terms would not then designate different persons, but two functions of one person, and the plural would be a qualitative plural. It is, perhaps, also in favour of this understanding of the passage that the situations compared are alike even in the fact that the father, corresponding to God, is still alive in the period of the stewardship. Yet reference to an ordinary guardianship of a minor orphan, in the terms of some existing legal usage not definitely known to us, remains a possibility. Fortunately the application of the illustration to the condition of men under law is but little affected by any uncertainty respecting the source of the illustration

1. To speak allegorically, to utter something which has another meaning than that of the words taken literally—the object of the verb or subject in the passive being the words uttered: Philo, Leg. alleg. II 5 (2): ἀλλὰ καὶ ταῦτα φυσικῶς ἀλληγορεῖ. Mut. nom. 67 (9); Jos. Ant. Proem. 24 (4); Clem. Alex. Paed. I 45 (chap. vi); Porphyr. Antr. Nymph. 4. In the passive, to be spoken allegorically: Porphyr. Vita Pythag. 12; Origen, Cels. 4:38: ἠσιόδῳ εἰρημένα ἐν μύθου σχήματι περὶ τῆς γυναικὸς ἀλληγορεῖται. Philo, Vita contempl. 29 (3 b) πολλὰ μνημεῖα τῆς ἐν τοῖς ἀλληγορουμένοις ἰδέας ἀπέλιπον. Execrat. 159 (7)

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

He declareth that by another double similitude, which he said before concerning the keeper and schoolmaster. For he saith, that the Law, (that is, the whole government of God’s house according to the Law) was as it were a tutor or overseer appointed for a time, until such time as that protection and overseeing which was but for a time, being ended, we should at length come to be at our own liberty, and should live as children, and not as servants. Moreover, he showeth by the way, that that governance of the Law, was as it were an ABC, and as certain principles in comparison of the doctrine of the Gospel.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

In this chapter the apostle deals plainly with those who hearkened to the judaizing teachers, who cried up the law of Moses in competition with the gospel of Christ, and endeavored to bring them under the bondage of it. To convince them of their folly, and to rectify their mistake herein, in these verses he prosecutes the comparison of a child under age, which he had touched upon in the foregoing chapter, and thence shows what great advantages we have now, under the gospel, above what they had under the law. And here.

I. He acquaints us with the state of the Old Testament church: it was like a child under age, and it was used accordingly, being kept in a state of darkness and bondage, in comparison of the greater light and liberty which we enjoy under the gospel. That was indeed a dispensation of grace, and yet it was comparatively a dispensation of darkness; for as the heir, in his minority, is under tutors and governors till the time appointed of his father, by whom he is educated and instructed in those things which at present he knows little of the meaning of, though afterwards they are likely to be of great use to him; so it was with the Old Testament church - the Mosaic economy, which they were under, was what they could not fully understand the meaning of; for, as the apostle says (Co2 3:13), They could not stedfastly look to the end of that which is abolished. But to the church, when grown up to maturity, in gospel days, it becomes of great use. And as that was a dispensation of darkness, so of bondage too; for they were in bondage under the elements of the world, being tied to a great number of burdensome rites and observances, by which, as by a kind of first rudiments, they were taught and instructed, and whereby they were kept in a state of subjection, like a child under tutors and governors. The church then lay more under the character of a servant, being obliged to do every thing according to the command of God, without being fully acquainted with the reason of it; but the service under the gospel appears to be more reasonable than that was. The time appointed of the Father having come, when the church was to arrive at its full age, the darkness and bondage under which it before lay are removed, and we are under a dispensation of greater light and liberty.

II. He acquaints us with the much happier state of Christians under the gospel-dispensation, Gal 4:4-7. When the fulness of time had come, the time appointed of the Father, when he would put an end to the legal dispensation, and set up another and a better in the room of it, he sent forth his Son, etc. The person who was employed to introduce this new dispensation was no other than the Son of God himself, the only-begotten of the Father, who, as he had been prophesied of and promised from the foundation of the world, so in due time he was manifested for this purpose. He, in pursuance of the great design he had undertaken, submitted to be made of a woman - there is his incarnation; and to be made under the law - there is his subjection. He who was truly God for our sakes became man; and he who was Lord of all consented to come into a state of subjection and to take upon him the form of a servant; and one great end of all this was to redeem those that were under the law - to save us from that intolerable yoke and to appoint gospel ordinances more rational and easy. He had indeed something more and greater in his view, in coming into the world, than merely to deliver us from the bondage of the ceremonial law; for he came in our nature, and consented to suffer and die for us, that hereby he might redeem us from the wrath of God, and from the curse of the moral law, which, as sinners, we all lay under. But that was one end of it, and a mercy reserved to be bestowed at the time of his manifestation; then the more servile state of the church was to come to a period, and a better to succeed in the place of it; for he was sent to redeem us, that we might receive the adoption of sons - that we might no longer be accounted and treated as servants, but as sons grown up to maturity, who are allowed greater freedoms, and admitted to larger privileges, than while they were under tutors and governors. This the course of the apostle's argument leads us to take notice of, as one thing intended by this expression, though no doubt it may also be understood as signifying that gracious adoption which the gospel so often speaks of as the privilege of those who believe in Christ. Israel was God's son, his first-born, Rom 9:4. But now, under the gospel, particular believers receive the adoption; and, as an earnest and evidence of it, they have together therewith the Spirit of adoption, putting them upon the duty of prayer, and enabling them in prayer to eye God as a Father (Gal 4:6): Because you are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying Abba, Father. And hereupon (Gal 4:7) the apostle concludes this argument by adding, Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and, if a son, then an heir of God through Christ; that is, Now, under the gospel state, we are no longer under the servitude of the law, but, upon our believing in Christ, become the sons of God; we are thereupon accepted of him, and adopted by him; and, being the sons, we are also heirs of God, and are entitled to the heavenly inheritance (as he also reasons Rom 8:17), and therefore it must needs be the greatest weakness and folly to turn back to the law, and to seek justification by the works of it. From what the apostle says in these verses, we may observe,

1. The wonders of divine love and mercy towards us, particularly of God the Father, in sending his Son into the world to redeem and save us, - of the Son of God, in submitting so low, and suffering so much, for us, in pursuance of that design, - and of the Holy Spirit, in condescending to dwell in the hearts of believers for such gracious purposes.

2. The great and invaluable advantages which Christians enjoy under the gospel; for, (1.) We receive the adoption of sons. Whence note, It is the great privilege which believers have through Christ that they are adopted children of the God of heaven. We who by nature are children of wrath and disobedience have become by grace children of love. (2.) We receive the Spirit of adoption. Note, [1.] All who have the privilege of adoption have the Spirit of adoption - all who are received into the number partake of the nature of the children of God; for he will have all his children to resemble him. [2.] The Spirit of adoption is always the Spirit of prayer, and it is our duty in prayer to eye God as a Father. Christ has taught us in prayer to eye God as our Father in heaven. [3.] If we are his sons, then his heirs. It is not so among men, with whom the eldest son is heir; but all God's children are heirs. Those who have the nature of sons shall have the inheritance of sons.

Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

CHAPTER IV.

The apostle shows that, as an heir in nonage is under tutors

and guardians, so were the Galatians while under the law; and,

as the heir when he comes of age is no longer under guardians,

so they, when the Gospel came, arrived at full maturity, and

were redeemed from the law, 1-3.

He shows, farther, that when the fulness of the time came God

sent forth his Son, that we might obtain the adoption of sons,

and have the strongest evidence of that adoption, 4-6.

Those who are children of God are heirs of heaven, 7.

He compares their former and latter state, and shows the reason

he had to fear that his labour on their behalf was in vain,

8-11.

He mentions his trials among them, and their kindness to him,

12-16.

Shows his tender affection for them, and exhorts them to return

to the Gospel, 17-20.

Shows the excellence of the Gospel beyond that of the law, by

the allegory of Mount Sinai and Jerusalem, 21-27.

Shows also that the believing Gentiles are children of the

promise, as Isaac was; and have been elected in the place of

the Jews, who have been cast out according to the Scriptures,

28-31.

NOTES ON CHAP. IV.

Verse 1. The heir, as long as He is a child] Though he be appointed by his father's will heir of all his possessions yet till he arrive at the legal age he is master of nothing, and does not differ from one of the common domestics.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

1. Now I say. Whoever made the division into chapters has improperly separated this paragraph from the preceding, as it is nothing else than the concluding section, (ἐπεξεργασία,) in which Paul explains and illustrates the difference that exists between us and the ancient people. He does so by introducing a third comparison, drawn from the relation which a person under age bears to his tutor. The young man, though he is free, though he is lord of all his father’s family, still resembles a slave; for he is under the government of tutors. But the period of guardianship lasts only “until the time appointed by the father” after which he enjoys his freedom. In this respect the fathers under the Old Testament, being the sons of God, were free; but they were not in possession of freedom, while the law held the place of their tutor, and kept them under its yoke. That slavery of the law lasted as long as it pleased God, who put an end to it at the coming of Christ. Lawyers enumerate various methods by which the tutelage or guardianship is brought to a close; but of all these methods, the only one adapted to this comparison is that which Paul has selected, “the appointment of the father.”

Let us now examine the separate clauses. Some apply the comparison in a different manner to the case of any man whatever, whereas Paul is speaking of two nations. What they say, I acknowledge, is true; but it has nothing to do with the present passage. The elect, though they are the children of God from the womb, yet, until by faith they come to the possession of freedom, remain like slaves under the law; but, from the time that they have known Christ, they no longer require this kind of tutelage. Granting all this, I deny that Paul here treats of individuals, or draws a distinction between the time of unbelief and the calling by faith. The matters in dispute were these. Since the church of God is one, how comes it that our condition is different from that of the Israelites? Since we are free by faith, how comes it that they, who had faith in common with us, were not partakers with us of the same freedom? Since we are all equally the children of God, how comes it that we at this day are exempt from a yoke which they were forced to bear? On these points the controversy turned, and not on the manner in which the law reigns over each of us before we are freed by faith from its slavery. Let this point be first of all settled, that Paul here compares the Israelitish church, which existed under the Old Testament, with the Christian church, that thus we may perceive in what points we agree and in what we differ. This comparison furnishes most abundant and most profitable instruction.

First, we learn from it that our hope at the present day, and that of the fathers under the Old Testament, have been directed to the same inheritance; for they were partakers of the same adoption. According to the dreams of some fanatics, and of Servetus among others, the fathers were divinely elected for the sole purpose of prefiguring to us a people of God. Paul, on the other hand, contends that they were elected in order to be together with us the children of God, and particularly attests that to them, not less than to us, belonged the spiritual blessing promised to Abraham.

Secondly, we learn that, notwithstanding their outward slavery, their consciences were still free. The obligation to keep the law did not hinder Moses and Daniel, all the pious kings, priests, and prophets, and the whole company of believers, from being free in spirit. They bore the yoke of the law upon their shoulders, but with a free spirit they worshipped God. More particularly, having been instructed concerning the free pardon of sin, their consciences were delivered from the tyranny of sin and death. Hence we ought to conclude that they held the same doctrine, were joined with us in the true unity of faith, placed reliance on the one Mediator, called on God as their Father, and were led by the same Spirit. All this leads to the conclusion, that the difference between us and the ancient fathers lies in accidents, not in substance. In all the leading characters of the Testament or Covenant we agree: the ceremonies and form of government, in which we differ, are mere additions. Besides, that period was the infancy of the church; but now that Christ is come, the church has arrived at the estate of manhood.

The meaning of Paul’s words is clear, but has he not some appearance of contradicting himself? In the Epistle to the Ephesians he exhorts us to make daily progress

“till we come to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” (Ephesians 4:13.)

In the first Epistle to the Corinthians he says, (1 Corinthians 3:2,)

“I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able;”

and shortly after this he compares the Galatians to children. (Galatians 4:19) In those passages, I reply, the apostle speaks of particular men, and of their faith as individuals; but here he speaks generally of two bodies without regard to persons. This reply will assist us in resolving a much greater difficulty. When we look at the matchless faith of Abraham, and the vast intelligence of the holy prophets, with what effrontery shall we dare to talk of such men as our inferiors? Were not they rather the heroes, and we the children? To say nothing of ourselves, who among the Galatians would have been found equal to any of those men?

But here, as I have already said, the apostle describes not particular persons, but the universal condition of both nations. Some men were endowed with extraordinary gifts; but they were few, and the whole body did not share with them. Besides, though they had been numerous, we must inquire not what they inwardly were, but what was that kind or government under which God had placed them; and that was manifestly a school, παιδαγωγία, a system of instruction for children. And what are we now? God has broken those chains, governs his church in a more indulgent manner, and lays not upon us such severe restraint. At the same time, we may remark in passing, that whatever amount of knowledge they might attain partook of the nature of the period; for a dark cloud continually rested on the revelation which they enjoyed. And hence that saying of our Savior,

“Blessed are the eyes which see the things that ye see: for I tell you that many prophets and kings have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them.” (Luke 10: 23, 24.)

We now understand in what respect we are preferred to those who were greatly our superiors; for the statements are not applied to persons, but relate entirely to the economy of the Divine administration.

This passage will prove a most powerful battery for destroying the pageantry of ceremonies, which constitutes the entire splendor of the Papal system. For what else is it that dazzles the eyes of simple people, so as to lead them to regard the dominion of the Pope, if not with admiration, at least with some degree of reverence, but the magnificent army of ceremonies, rites, gesticulations, and equipage of every description, contrived for the express purpose of amazing the ignorant? From this passage it appears that they are false disguises, by which the true beauty of the church is impaired. I do not now speak of greater and more frightful corruptions, such as, that they hold them out for divine worship, imagine them to possess the power of meriting salvation, and enforce with more rigid severity the observation of those trifles than the whole law of God. I only advert to the specious pretext under which our modern contrivers apologize for such a multitude of abominations. What though they object that the ignorance of the multitude prevails to a greater extent than it formerly did among the Israelites, and that many assistances are therefore required? They will never be able in this way to prove that the people must be placed under the discipline or a school similar to what existed among the people of Israel; for I shall always meet them with the declaration, that the appointment of God is totally different.

If they plead expediency, I ask, are they better judges of what is expedient than God himself? Let us entertain the firm conviction that the highest advantage, as well as the highest propriety, will be found in whatever God has determined. In aiding the ignorant, we must employ not those methods which the fancy of men may have been pleased to contrive, but those which had been fixed by God themself, who unquestionably has left out nothing that was fitted to assist their weakness. Let this shield suffice for repelling any objections: “God has judged otherwise, and his purpose supplies to us the place of all arguments; unless it be supposed that men are capable of devising better aids than those which God had provided, and which he afterwards threw aside as useless.” Let it be carefully observed, Paul does not merely say that the yoke which had been laid upon the Jews is removed from us, but expressly lays down a distinction in the government which God has commanded to be observed. I acknowledge that we are now at liberty as to all outward matters, but only on the condition that the church shall not be burdened with a multitude of ceremonies, nor Christianity confounded with Judaism. The reason of this we shall afterwards consider in the proper place.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

(1) Now I say.—This phrase introduces a further and fuller explanation of what is involved in the state of nonage, as compared with that of adult freedom.

A child—i.e., an infant, a minor; though the term is not technically chosen.

Differeth nothing from a servant.—Both the child and the slave were incapable of any valid act in a legal sense; the guardian was as entirely the representative of the one as the master of the other. Both the child and the slave were subject to the same restraint, discipline, correction.

Though he be lord of all.—Strictly speaking, the inference from this would be that the father was dead. This, however, is a point that does not really enter into the Apostle’s thoughts. The illustration does not hold good in all particulars, but in the chief particulars—viz., the state of constraint and subordination in which the minor is placed so long as he is a minor.

(1-7) A further description, continued from the last chapter, of the state of wardship, with its restraints and servitude, compared with that Christian freedom—the freedom of sons—to which the Galatians had been admitted through their adoption into the Messianic family by adhesion to Christ.

It may be observed that the allusions to the condition of minors are not in strict accordance either with Jewish or Roman law. It has been suggested that they have reference to a special code current in Galatia. It is, however, far more probable that the Apostle is referring exclusively to neither, but has in his mind a sort of abstraction of the law of minority, such as would present itself to one who had not himself had a legal education.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1. The word ‘heirs’ at the end of the preceding chapter suggests another illustration. In human affairs the condition of a minor is antecedent to the enjoyment of the liberty and the civil rights which accrue to him on coming of age. He is a son and an heir, but during minority his position is that of a slave.

Now I say] This is my meaning, comp. ch. Gal_3:17.

a child] lit. ‘an infant’, the legal term to designate ‘a minor’.

differeth nothing from a servant] rather, from a slave. It is doubtful whether this description (continued in Gal_4:2) applies to a minor under Roman or Jewish or Colonial (Galatian) law. Cæsar says that among the Gallic tribes a father had power of life and death over wife and children (B. G. vi. 9). It would seem from a passage in Gaius (Inst. 1. 55[28]) that by a local law a Galatian father had this exceptional power. We may however regard St Paul’s description as generally applicable to the condition of a minor without reference to any particular code.

[28] Bp Lightfoot considers that ‘this view seems to rest on a mistaken interpretation’ of the words of Gaius. It is however maintained by an eminent living jurist.

though he be lord of all] Though, unlike the slave, he is lord of all, lord, by right of ultimate succession, whether his father be living or dead. Our Lord uses a similar figure, Joh_8:35, ‘The slave abideth not in the house for ever; but the son abideth ever. If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed’.

“He is the free man whom the truth makes free,

And all are slaves besides.” Cowper.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Now I say,.... To illustrate what he had said of the law's being a schoolmaster to the Jews until the coming of Christ, and then ceasing as such, he proposes the case of an heir during his minority, till he come to the proper time of enjoying his estate.

that the heir, as long as he is a child; anyone that is an heir to his father's estate, or another's, whilst under age, being reckoned as a child, as he is from his infancy to his manhood,

differeth nothing from a servant: he is not his own man, nor at his own dispose; he cannot do as he pleases; he is under restraint; he is kept to school or to business, and is liable to correction and chastisement according as he behaves; nor can he have the free use of his father's estate,

though he be Lord of all, of all the servants, according to the Arabic version; or of the whole estate his father left him, of which he is Lord in right, but not in possession; he is right heir to it, though as yet it is not in his hands, nor can he do with it as he will.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

1 Now I say, That the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all;

Ver. 1. Differeth nothing from a servant] In allusion whereunto there is written upon the prince’s arms, Ich dien, that is, I serve. Henry the Second, king of England, crowned his eldest son Henry while he was yet alive; which made his ambition quite turn off his obedience. Ambition ever rides without reins. That king, at his son’s coronation, renounced the name of king for that day, and as a servant, served at the table; for which he was thus requited, My father, said he, is not dishonoured by attending on me, for I am both a king and a queen’s son, and so is not he. After this he bore arms against his father, and died in open rebellion.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Now I say - He had before said Gal 3:24-25 that while they were under the Law they were in a state of minority. This sentiment he proceeds further to illustrate by showing the true condition of one who was a minor.

That the heir - Any heir to an estate, or one who has a prospect of an inheritance. No matter how great is the estate; no matter how wealthy his father; no matter to how elevated a rank he may be raised on the moment that he enters on his inheritance, yet until that time he is in the condition of a servant.

As long as he is a child - Until he arrives at the age. The word rendered “child” (νήπιοι nēpioi) properly means an infant; literally, “one not speaking” (νη nē insep. un, ἔπος epos), and hence, a child or babe, but without any definite limitation - Robinson. It is used as the word “infant” is with us in law, to denote “a minor.”

Differeth nothing from a servant - That is, he has no more control of his property; he has it not at his command. This does not mean that he does not differ in any respect, but only that in the matter under consideration he does not differ. He differs in his prospects of inheriting the property, and in the affections of the father, and usually in the advantages of education, and in the respect and attention shown him. but in regard to property, he does not differ, and he is like a servant, under the control and direction of others.

Though he be lord of all - That is, in prospect. He has a prospective right to all the property, which no one else has. The word “lord” here (κύριος kurios), is used in the same sense in which it is often in the Scriptures, to denote master or owner. The idea which this is designed to illustrate is, that the condition of the Jews before the coming of the Messiah was inferior in many respects to what the condition of the friends of God would be under him - as inferior as the condition of an heir was before he was of age, to what it would be when he should enter on his inheritance. The Jews claimed, indeed, that they were the children or the sons of God, a title which the apostle would not withhold from the pious part of the nation; but it was a condition in which they had not entered on the full inheritance, and which was far inferior to that of those who had embraced the Messiah, and who were admitted to the full privileges of sonship. They were indeed heirs. They were interested in the promises. But still they were in a condition of comparative servitude, and could be made free only by the gospel.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

By the child, in this place, the apostles understands all the Jewish people, who, as long as they were under the childhood of the law, were subject to numerous restrictions, although they were the favorite children of God. But when the fulness of time came, they received the adoption of children, and were in possession of the liberty of the law of grace. They were no longer obliged to observe the legal rites. Whence the apostle wishes the conclusion to be drawn, that if persons once subject to the law were now exempt from it, how much more will those be excused from its yoke, who were never under its control. (Calmet)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

The apostle had before determined, that the whole body of such as believed in Jesus Christ, were that seed of Abraham to which the promise was made, and so heirs of the promises made to him; yet so, that, as it is among men, though a child be a great heir, and lord of a great estate, yet while he is under age he is used like a servant; so the time of the law being as it were the time of believers’ nonage, those who lived in that time were used like servants.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

The Bondage of the Law. Freedom in Christ

1-7. Under the Law we were in bondage; under the Gospel we have received the freedom of sons.

Paraphrase. '(1) The heir before he comes of age can no more enter upon his inheritance than a servant in the family can possess himself of it, (2) but must continue, until the set time, in a subordinate position, and under the authority and training of others. (3) So, when we were under the elementary Law system, we were in a position like that of the heir in his minority; (4) but when the appointed time arrived, God sent His Son, subject not only to human conditions, but also to the Jewish Law, (5) in order that He might set free all who were in bondage to the Law and put them in possession of full liberty and all the rights of the sons of God. (6) And God also gave us the Spirit of His Son, and imparted to us the sense of sonship, (7) so that we now know ourselves as no longer bondmen to the Law, but freemen, and heirs of the salvation which is our rightful, destined possession.'

1. The heir] is, of course, a son, as Gal_4:2 shows. A child] i.e. under age; a minor.

Differeth nothing] as respects the control of his destined possessions, though, in prospect, lord of all.

2. Tutors] RV 'guardians'; the regular term for the guardian of a minor.

Governors] RV 'stewards,' who have the management of his prospective property. Time (RV 'term') appointed] the time of reaching his majority. Ramsay points out that under the Syrian law, which prevailed in S. Galatia, a child was subject to a 'tutor' until he was 14, after that he could make a will and dispose of his property; but the management of his estate was under a 'governor' or curator until he reached the age of 25.

3. Children] in a state of tutelage under the Law. Elements] RV 'rudiments' (cp. Gal_4:9; Col_2:8); elementary religious observances belonging to the outward, visible world.

4. Cp. Gal_3:19, Gal_3:24; Rom_5:20, Rom_5:21. Made] RV 'born'; entering fully into our human lot.

5. Redeem] i.e. save us from our bondage in sin under the Law, and introduce us into full sonship to God. Under the law] and therefore bound to obey it, and yet guilty of infringing it. Adoption] Redemption is followed by the admission of the sinner among the children of grace.

6. This emancipation being accomplished, a new sense of sonship fills the heart. Abba] an Aramaic word commonly used in prayer, meaning 'Father.' Christ's love for us exhibited in His incarnation and all that it includes wins our love, and for His sake we overcome sin.

7. Thou art] application of the conclusion to the individual. An heir of God] RV 'an heir through' (the adopting act of) 'God.'

8-11. In the past the Galatians had been idolators, in bondage to gods that were 'no gods' at all. Now they are going back again to a similar bondage.

Paraphrase. '(8) Before your conversion you Gentiles were victims of idol-worship; (9) but now, since the true God has revealed Himself to you in Christ, how can you desire to return again to a lower plane of religious knowledge and practice? (10) This you are doing in taking up the observance of Jewish feast-days and ceremonies. (11) This action causes me to fear lest my labours on your behalf should prove to have been in vain.'

8. Howbeit then] RV 'At that time,' when they were yet unconverted heathen. No gods] cp. 1Co_8:5; 1Co_10:20 the so-called divinities of the heathen.

9. Their lapse into Judaism is a return, not, indeed, into idolatry, but into an imperfect and rudimentary religion. In this point of view only does the Apostle class heathenism and Judaism together. The Law is weak, etc., as being powerless to justify and give the assurance of sonship. Known God, or rather are known of God] i.e. now that ye have come to know the nature and love of God, or rather that God has recognised you and bestowed upon you His gifts.

10. Days] Jewish feast-or fast-days. Months] new moons: cp. Col_2:16. Times] RV 'seasons,' such as Passover, Pentecost, etc. Years] e.g. sabbatic years. These observances are 'weak and beggarly elements' (Gal_4:9), because they are matters of dry routine, customs which the Gentiles would adopt without understanding their meaning or catching anything of the spirit which lay behind them. They were of no avail for salvation.

11. Afraid] anxiously solicitous lest they should repudiate their Christian profession.

12-20. The Apostle appeals to his readers to return to their former allegiance to the gospel.

Paraphrase. '(12) I plead with you to come to my point of view, even as I in renouncing slavery to the Law, have become as a Gentile to you Gentiles. (13) I hope for this result on the ground of your former kindness to me; you remember that it was in consequence of an illness that I was led to become your Christian teacher, (14) but you did not consider the care of me at that time burdensome, but received and treated me with the greatest honour and deference. (15) How great is the change in you since that time when you would have made any sacrifice for me! (16) Do you now regard me as hostile to you because I urge you to loyalty to Christ? (17) The Jndaisers are courting your favour only that they may make you their partisans and supporters. (18) It is well to be the object of others' interest in a good cause—and that at all times and not merely when I am with you. (19, 20) I assure you my desire that you should be moulded after Christ's pattern is intense; and I would fain visit you and adopt a less censorious tone in the hope of winning you back.'

12. As I am] loyal to Christ: cp. 1Co_11:1. I am as ye are] cp. 1Co_9:19-23. RV puts a period after 'ye are,' and then reads 'Ye did me no wrong; but ye know that because of an infirmity,' etc. Ye have not injured me] i.e. I am not personally offended.

13. The first] lit, as RM 'the former time.' The Gk. word, accurately interpreted, indicates that St. Paul had paid the Galatians two visits before the date of this letter. This 'former' visit is of course that recorded in Act_13:14 to Act_14:24. St. Paul probably intended preaching at Perga when he landed there; but being seized by illness was compelled to leave the low ground of Pamphylia and seek health and strength on the high plateau further inland. His journey brought him first to Pisidian Antioch, then to Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe. On his return to Perga, on his way back to Antioch in Syria, he preached the gospel there, as he had not been able to do it on his outward way: cp. Act_13:13-14 with Act_14:25.

14. My temptation which was in my flesh] RV 'That which was a temptation to you in my flesh.' The bodily infirmity which had attacked him had left such traces that they might have been excused for rejecting one whose 'bodily presence was weak': see 2Co_12:7 and note there. As an angel] with even excessive reverence. This spirit had been exhibited towards him in Lystra, even by the heathen (Act_14:13); and, indeed, in all the cities of Galatia by those who had received his message and become followers of Christ.

15. Blessedness] RV 'Gratulation,' your felicitation of yourselves in my teaching.

Plucked.. eyes] made any sacrifice for me, so great was your former kindness.

17. RV 'They zealously seek you in no good way; nay, they desire to shut you out that ye may seek them.' They] the Jewish extremists.

Not well] i.e. in a party spirit. Exclude you] from the influence of other teachers, especially from my own. Affect (RV 'seek') them] cling zealously to them as partisan adherents.

18. RV 'But it is good to be zealously sought in a good matter at all times.' I am glad that you are the objects of others' zeal and interest, whether I am present or absent, provided your favour is courted in a good cause.

19. I travail in birth again] RV 'I am again in travail.' In his anxiety and distress he would reconvert them to Christ.

20. Desire] RV 'could wish,' i.e. if such a thing were possible. Change my voice] i.e. change my tone, speak more mildly.

21-31. This passage is an example of the rabbinical method of interpretation, which found a hidden sense, embodied and intended, in many parts of Scripture. Here a historical narrative is taken as revealing the truth that those who adhere to the Law are in bondage, and those living by faith in Christ, free.

Paraphrase. '(21) You who are so zealous for the Law will surely take a lesson from the Law itself. (22) You know the story of Abraham's two children, Ishmael and Isaac, (23) the former the child of the bondwoman, Hagar, the latter of Sarah, born in accordance with a divine promise. (24) These two women represent, in the allegorical application, two covenants, the old and the new. Hagar represents the Law, whose symbol is Mt. Sinai, since her descendants, like the adherents of this old covenant, are born into a state of bondage. (25) Indeed, Hagar is a name of Mt. Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to Jerusalem, the sacred seat of the Law system, which, again, is a symbol of bondage. (26) But the spiritual Jerusalem, answering to Sarah, is, like her, the mother of freemen. (27, 28) For our spiritual mother has fulfilled the promise of Scripture to the childless, by making us like Isaac, the heirs of God's gracious promise. (29) But just as then, so now, the unspiritual persecutes the spiritual. (30) And as then the Ishmaelites were rejected from the heirship of the promises, so now God will reject the slaves of the Law. (31) It is the Christian believers who are God's true freemen and heirs of His promises.'

21. The very Law in which the Judaisers trust is shown to be against their contentions.

22. One son, from the circumstances of his birth, typifies bondage; the other, freedom: cp. Genesis 16, 21. It is written] This does not introduce a quotation here, but simply indicates the facts as recorded in the Scripture history.

23. One was born in a relation merely carnal, the other in fulfilment of a special. promise of God: cp. Heb_11:11, Heb_11:12.

24. Are (RV 'contain') an allegory] i.e. are spoken allegorically. An allegory is a narrative where the literal sense 'half reveals and half conceals' a spiritual meaning. The best example of allegory in the English language is Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress.' Hagar and Sarah represent, respectively, the Law and the Gospel—bondage and freedom. Of the former, Sinai, as the place where the Law was given, is the symbol.

25. Hagar] Some MSS of the Epistle omit this word here, in which case we should render: 'Sinai is a mountain in Arabia' (so RM)—the land of Hagar's descendants. Sinai and Jerusalem mean the same thing—law and bondage; Hagar typifies both. On St. Paul's use of allegorical interpretation, cp. 1Co_9:9-10; Gal_3:18; 2Co_3:13, 2Co_3:14. As Hagar corresponds to (Mount Sinai, which is now represented by) the earthly Jerusalem, so Sarah corresponds to the ideal Jerusalem which is in heaven, of which all true Christians are citizens. With the whole passage cp. Heb_12:18-24.

26. Jerusalem.. above] the spiritual commonwealth or city of God, of which believers are citizens. The mother of us all] RV 'our mother,' prefigured by Sarah.

27. This v. in its original context (Isa_54:1) had no reference to the Jerusalem above, only to the actual Jerusalem. It is quite in the rabbinical style for St. Paul to give it another, more spiritual application.

28. Conclusion and application. We believers stand in a relation to God's promise and favour analogous to the descendants of Sarah, while the Judaisers take the place of the Ishmaelites.

29. Cp. Gen_21:9. The 'mocking' there mentioned hardly amounts to persecution. Perhaps the general hostility of Hagar's descendants to Israel is referred to: cp. Psa_83:6; 1Ch_5:10, 1Ch_5:19. History was now repeating itself in the persecution of the Christians of Galatia by Jews and Judaisers.

30. Cast out] cp. Gen_21:10, Gen_21:12.; Hagar's spiritual descendants are the Jews and the Judaisers, who are the natural descendants of Sarah; while the heathen who have accepted Christ are the spiritual descendants of Sarah, and inherit the blessings promised to her children. For similar ideas in the teaching of Jesus cp. Joh_8:31-43.

31. So then] RV 'Wherefore'; since this rejection does not apply to us; we belong to a higher lineage and order. And as we are thus spiritually free (Gal_5:1), let us take care to maintain our freedom.

J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Now I say (legw de). A form of expression usual with the apostle when introducing a new statement designed either to explain or elucidate something before said of, (Gal_3:17 Gal_5:16; Rom_15:8) according to the Received Text; (1Co_1:12 touto de 1Co_7:29 1Co_15:50) So it is intended apparently to quicken attention: "Now I wish to say this." In the present case the apostle designs to throw further light upon the position taken in Gal_3:24, that God"s people, while under the Law, were under a bondage from which they have now been emancipated. Compare the somewhat similar process of illustration adopted innonoJ Rom_7:2-4. In both passages it is not a logical demonstration that is put forward, but an illustratively analogous case in human experience. A metaphor, though not strictly an argument, yet frequently helps the reader to an intuitive perception of the justness of the position laid down. That the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all (ejf oson cro) klhronomov nhpiov ejstin oujdeerei dolou kuriov pantwn wn); so long as the heir is a child, he differeth nothing from a bondservant, though he is lord of all. The article before klhronomov, heir, is the class article, as before mesithv, mediator. (Gal_3:20) heir." In the word nhpiov the apostle evidently has in view one who as yet is in his nonage as in English law phrase, "an infant." In Roman law language, infans is a child under seven, the period of minority reaching to twenty-five. In Attic Greek, the correlate to one registered amongst "men" was a paiv. It does not appear that the apostle means to use a technical legal expression. He contrasts nhpiov with ajnhr in 1Co_13:11; Eph_4:13, Eph_4:14. "Differeth nothing from a bond-servant;" i.e. is nothing better than a bond-servant, asrein Mat_6:26 Mat_10:31 Mat_12:12. The verb diafe seems used only in the sense of your differing from another to your advantage, so that taronta are things that are more excellent. "Lord," "proprietor;" the title to the property inheres in him, though he is not yet fit to handle it.

Vers. 1-3.

The Church of God in its minority.

The apostle now passes to a new phase of argument. He has used the similitudes of a testament, a prison, a schoolmaster, to mark the condition of believers under the Law; he now uses the similitude of an heir in his nonage. The Galatians are here taught that the state of men under the Law, so far from being an advanced religious position, was rather low and infantile. Mark

I THE HEIR"S POTENTIAL POSITION. He is "lord of all." He is such by birth and condition; and, if his father is dead, he is actual possessor, though he may not in the years of his minority enjoy his property or assert his complete mastery over it. This passage implies that saints under the Law had experience of blessings enjoyed by saints under the gospel, though their dispensational privileges were fewer and their knowledge far less perfect. There is but one inheritance in which the saints of all dispensations share alike they are all "Abraham"s seed" by faith in Christ Jesus.

II THE PERIOD OF DISCIPLINE AND SUBJECTION. "The heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a bond-servant.

1. The infantile period. The apostle does not refer to childhood in the physical sense so as to imply any weakness of understanding or immaturity of judgment, but childhood in its legal aspect. He refers to the lifetime of the Church. The pro-Christian state was childhood; the Christian state was ripe age in full possession. The heir in his nonage thus represented the state of the world before the gospel, when both Jews and Gentiles were under tutelage; because he had said in the third chapter that all, both Jews and Gentiles, were heirs and children of God.

2. Its discipline. The heir is "under guardians and stewards." This subjection is necessary to ensure that he should not misapply his powers or waste his property. The discipline is manifest in two or three respects.

(1) The heir is no better than a bond-servant, who is secured in food and clothing such as his master may allow him, but he has no more power of independent action than the bond-servant. He can do no act except through his legal representative. The guardian watches over his person; the steward over his property. The Law is here represented as filling this double place in relation to Old Testament believers.

(2) The heir is under training, for he is "in bondage under the elements of the world.

(a) It was a burdensome condition; for the Levitical ordinances "gendered to bondage;" "a yoke," says Peter, "which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear very exacting in its demands and ineffectual in the result.

Every duty was minutely prescribed, and nothing left to the discretion of worshippers, as to worship, labour, dress, food, birth, marriage, war, trade, tax, or tithe.

(b) The education was limited to "the elements of this world;" to elementary teaching through worldly symbols the fire, the altar, the incense, the blood-shedding having reference to things material, sensuous, and formal, rather than to things spiritual. Thus the Church in its minority had outlines of spiritual truth suited in a sort to its capacity. The elements in question were "weak and beggarly," though those of the Jews were much superior to those of the Gentiles, because they were appointed by God.

III THE PERIOD OF DISCIPLINE WAS TO BE TEMPORARY. "Till the time appointed of the father." The father"s will was to be supreme in the whole transaction. The Church was not always to be under Law. The fulness of time was to end the nonage of the Church. Believers were not, therefore, to be always children. "This is a powerful battery," says Calvin, "against Roman Catholic ceremonies: they are to aid the ignorant, in sooth; but it was during the nonage." "Are Roman Catholics," he asks, "children or full-grown men?" It also condemns the Judaists for going back to "elements of the world," which had their place and use only in a condition of nonage. "Yet the pope and Mahomet have tried to bring back the race, free and of full age, to its minority again.

HOMILIES BY R.M. EDGAR Vers. 1-7.

Majority through the gospel.

Paul, having spoken of the Law-school in the preceding sections, and of the participation of believing Gentiles in the privileges of the Abrahamic family, proceeds in the present section to speak of the times before Christ"s advent as infantile, of the advent as the fulness of times, and of the majority which is realized by believers through the gospel. Four leading thoughts are thus presented.

I THE IMPERFECT TIMES. (Vers. 1-3.) The Old Testament times represent the experience of all men before the reception of the gospel. They were the minority of humanity. The soul was then like a child who is placed under stewards and guardians, and is not allowed to take charge of itself. It lived by law and rule, and had not entered upon proper self government and independence. Now, all the world was in this legal condition as well as the Jews. Nay, we are all before conversion in it; we are legalists by nature, we do what is prescribed with more or less fidelity, and congratulate ourselves upon the doing of it. It is the "infantile" stage. It is the imperfect times, as contrasted with the riper experience the gospel brings. And yet it is better that the soul should be at the school of Law than wandering waywardly after its own devices. Better be under restraint than be utterly spoiled by getting our own way. We ought not to under-estimate the discipline which the Law-school secured.

II THE ADVENT OF THE SON. (Vers. 4, 5.) It was Christ"s coming which brought in the fulness of times. He came to put an end to the world"s minority and to secure the world"s redemption. He did so by being "born of a woman," by being "born under the Law," and undertaking all his brethren"s responsibilities. Having obeyed the Law in its penalty of death for disobedience as well as in its precepts, he redeemed men from the condemning power of Law, and secured their adoption as sons. The world at the advent of the Son must have looked differently to the eye of God the Father. For milleniums he had been looking anxiously down to see if there were any that did understand and seek God. But, alas! the verdict had to be that "they are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one". (Psa_14:2, Psa_14:3) But at the advent of Christ a new example presented itself, a new type arose a sinless Being appeared upon the stage, with all the interest around him of sinlessness. A breach of continuity took place when the babe was born in Bethlehem. Instead of the world being now condemned wholesale, it possessed for the Divine mind a deep attraction. The drama of sinlessness amid temptation was being carried on, and a repulsive world became the centre of moral and spiritual power. A new age thus dawned upon humanity. Man"s minority was over and his inheritance was at hand.

III THE ADVENT OF THE SPIRIT. (Ver. 6.) The magnificent panorama of sinlessness, however, might have passed impressively before the eye of God, and have given flesh interest to the problem of humanity, without at all affecting men themselves. But the advent of the Spirit secured men in their spiritual inheritance. The cry of the human heart, which had been so indefinite before, became definite and pathetic. It became the cry of children who had learned at last to feel at home with God. The converted Jew and the converted Gentile began to cry to the one Father in heaven, and to feel "orphans" no more (cf. Joh_14:18) The Holy Spirit as the Spirit of adoption enables human hearts to look up hopefully to heaven, and to realize that it is no longer empty, but filled with the presence of an infinite and all-merciful Father, who desires above all things the welfare of his children. It is this marvellous arrangement of the advent of an infinite Spirit of adoption which ensures the reality of adoption, and makes all the sons feel at home. Poets doubtless wrote about man being "God"s offspring", (Act_17:28) but the fancy of the poet could only become a fact of human experience when the indwelling Spirit prompted the cry, "Abba, Father.

IV THE HEIR THEREBY ENTERED UPON HIS MAJORITY. (Ver. 7.) The termination of slavish fear, and the advent of a sense of sonship, is what we call conversion. But we hardly realize at once the meaning of our inheritance. How magnificent it is! To realize that God no longer is angry with us, but looks down with ineffable tenderness as our heavenly Father; to realize that, though we have nothing of ourselves, we have become heirs of all things, and find that all things are being made to work together for our good; (Rom_8:28) to realize that we are "heirs of God through Christ, is surely glorious! There is happiness when noble heirs reach their majority. What feasting and good will and congratulation goes on in the baronial halls! Poets sing of it, and artists paint the scene. But no joy of majority on earth can compare with the joy which attends the sense of our spiritual majority before God. The baron"s heir is filled with mingled feelings if his heart beat true, for he knows that the condition of his inheritance is, alas! his father"s death. He must be base indeed who can contemplate such a condition without emotion. But when the Spirit of adoption comes within us it is to enable us to realize that, not only is our majority come, but also our inheritance as sons of God; into this inheritance we may enter at once. The Father never dies, and his presence, instead of keeping us out of our enjoyment, consecrates and enlarges it to a heavenly fulness. "All things are ours, if we are Christ"s". (1Co_3:20-23) May we no longer live as bond-servants before God, hut enter by adoption into the privileges of sons! R.M.E.

HOMILIES BY R. FINLAYSON Vers. 1-11.

Majority and minority.

I THE CHILD COMING TO HIS MAJORITY. Analogy. "But I say that so long as the heir is a child, he differeth nothing from a bond-servant, though he is lord of all; but is under guardians and stewards until the term appointed of the father." At the close of the preceding chapter Christians were described as Abraham"s seed, heirs according to promise. It is with regard to this that the apostle now makes use of an analogy. It is a very simple and well-known case on which he founds. It is that of an heir, while he is a child or is a minor, as we say, i.e. has the paternal control yet exercised over him. He may be the heir of a kingdom; but, so long as he is in his nonage, he differeth nothing from a bond-servant, though he is lord of all. He is better in some respects, but not better in respect of subjection to control. He is under guardians of his person and stewards of his property. When the Prince of Wales in his childhood on one occasion refused submission to his governess, appealing to his dignity as heir of the throne, Prince Albert very pertinently read him this passage out of the New Testament. The supposition is that a minor has not yet wisdom to guide him; his will therefore, meanwhile, is a cipher. He can only act through guardians and stewards, who are understood to carry out the father"s will. This arrangement continues in force until the term appointed of the father. It has been a question whether Paul contemplates the father here as dead. It is enough to say that he is regarded as in the background, while his will is operative. In the case to which the analogy applies the Father is alive. Objection has been taken to Paul describing the limit of dependence as appointed of the father, when in most countries it is fixed by statute. The infancy of a Roman child ended at seven; he donned the virile gown at seventeen; be was not entirely emancipated from tutelage until he was twenty-five. There is this to be said, that the limit was not necessarily fixed by statute; that when it was so fixed it was in name of the father, and that there was discretionary power within the statute.

1. The Churchs minority. "So we also, when we were children, were held in bondage under the rudiments of the world." The minor here is generally supposed to be both Jews and Gentiles. But it is scarcely a Pauline idea that the heathen compared with Christians were as children compared with men, heirs in their minority compared with heirs come to full rights. Certainly their religions were not the rudiments which God taught them. The reference is to be determined by the way in which the analogy is introduced by the apostle. He points back to his description of Christians as Abraham"s seed, heirs according to promise. He must be understood, therefore, as pointing now to those who were formerly Abraham"s seed, heirs according to promise. These were the children over whom God placed guardians and stewards. The instruction he gave them was of a rudimentary nature. They were not taught religion in its perfect form (which is Christianity), but only the rudiments. These were true so fat" as they went; still, they were only religion in a form suitable for children. They were rudiments of the world, i.e. of the outward and sensible; for the world in an evil sense cannot be brought into connection with the Father teaching his children. It is by the outward and sensible that abstract truth is introduced into the minds of children. So, while the Church was in its childhood, God carried forward its education by outward services and sensible representations. This was inconceivably better than being left to themselves, as the heathen were; but it was bondage in comparison with the spirituality which was to be brought in with a full revelation. "It was a yoke," said Peter, "which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear." The amount of bodily service required by Jews, in their frequent washings and journeys to Jerusalem, was very great. And even the types, in their keeping back the plain meaning, confined the spirit. This was the Church in its state of minority.

2. The Churchs majority. It is matter for thought that the Church came to its majority in connection with the greatest manifestation of Godhead.

(1) Time of the Christian manifestation. But when the fulness of the time came. " The fulness of the time was the moment in which time received its full significance. It was that toward which all that went before was moving, and from which all after-time is dated. It corresponds to "the term appointed of the father." It was the time appointed in the counsels of the Father. But the appointment was founded on the foreseen fitness of circumstances. It would not have been a fitting time, we may understand, if Christ had appeared immediately after the Fall. As the nature of sin had only very partially been manifested at the first, there would have been no proper appreciation of redemption. Neither would it have been a fitting time, we may understand, if Christ had appeared at the commencement of the Jewish nation. It would have been as if some high work of art were submitted for criticism to novices. Christ appeared when circumstances were so prepared that the deepest, most lasting impression of his work could be produced on men. Even heathenism was a preparation for Christianity. It was so chiefly in a negative way. It was, as it is represented in the Bible, the wild olive tree. It was humanity left to itself. It was an experiment on a vast scale as to what man unaided could or could not do. And, though there was a feeling after God, and weak longing for redemption, yet, as the result of the experiment, it was conclusively proved that the world by wisdom knew not God. When Christ came great Pan was dead. The old religions were manifestly powerless to impart any spiritual consolation, or to check sin which came to its full manifestation. The chosen people were sinful humanity with Divine helps. And, though they greatly pointed the lesson of what man could not do, yet there was not a little drilling of them into the idea of the Divine unity, the idea of an overruling Providence, the reality of sin, the conception of righteousness, the certainty and mode of redemption and there were some who had so entered into the preparatory Jewish system that, at the time of Christ"s appearance, they were waiting for the consolation of Israel. In the outward state of the world, too, there was a conspiring of remarkable providences: The whole world was included in one empire. There were facilities of intercourse between nations, such as had never existed before. The great Roman roads were the prepared means by which the gospel was to be carried to all quarters of the earth. There was very much, too, one language. With the victories of Alexander commenced a movement toward the general use of the Greek language, the most expressive of all languages. There was also a cosmopolitizing of the Jews. They were to be found in all the great centres, with their monotheism and Messianic hopes. And lastly, it was a time of universal peace. The whole world was quiet and at rest. The temple of Janus was shut. Such was the time chosen by God for the appearance of Christ.

(2) Manner of the manifestation.

(a) The Divine Messenger. "God sent forth his Son." The pre-existence of Christ is implied. God sent forth from himself from his own immediate presence. It was not an archangel whom he sent forth, but his own Son. As the Son of God, Christ was eternally pre-existent the equal in every respect of the Father. In the Son, the Father saw himself perfectly reflected. And yet he was in a mysterious way subordinated as the Son to the Father. To him, then, it essentially belonged to be sent forth, as on creation, so on redemption. On his part there was a perfect response. For, in the volume of the book of the Divine counsels it was written that he was prepared at the fitting time to speed forth to do the Father"s will.

(b) His birth of humanity. "Born of a woman." Though unborn as the Son of God, he was subjected to the ordinary law of human birth. "Man that is born of a woman," said Job; and so also it was true of Christ that he was born of a woman, lie was not a separate creation from humanity, without father, without mother. But he was brought into the closest relation to humanity by having a human mother. Even from the first he was looked forward to as the Seed of the woman.

(c) His birth of the Jewish race. "Born under the Law." Historically he was connected with the Jewish race. It has been said that what the Jewish nation provided was the mother of our Lord. His surroundings were Jewish. lie was subjected to the rite of circumcision. He was placed under obligation, not only to the Law of God generally, but to the Mosaic Law in particular. It is not to be inferred that he was merely Jewish. For the singular thing is that, though brought up a Jew, in his teaching and life he did not give the impression of belonging to one nation more than to another. Still, the Mosaic system had authority over him, and had to do with his training as the Messiah.

(3) Twofold aim of the manifestation.

(a) Deliverance from the Mosaic system. "That he might redeem them which were under the Law." It is true that God sent forth his Son to redeem from the curse of the broken Law generally, and from the curse of the Mosaic Law in particular; but it is also true that, in connection with that, he had a subsidiary design to which prominence is given here. It was that, by his Son discharging all the obligations of the Mosaic Law, and answering its ends, it should no longer continue a burden on the conscience. And it is well to have this subsidiary design connected with the great sending forth of the Son.

(b) Instating of Christians as sons. "That we might receive the adoption of sons." "We" is to be taken in the wider sense here, as it was taken in the narrower sense in the third verse. The reference is Abraham"s seed, heirs according to promise. As these were, in the minority of the people of God, Jews, so now are they Christians. The design of the sending forth of the Son was to bring up the people of God into the position of sons. Not only does the time of his being sent forth rule the time of their becoming sons; but the fact of his being Son seems to rule their getting the position of sons. The Son goes forth, and it is sons he brings with him to glory. Such was the twofold aim of the manifestation. He proceeds to show how God did not stop short at giving us the position of sons. He followed it up by giving us the qualification of sons. The Spirit of the Son our qualification as sons. "And because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father." Our qualification was the Spirit of his Son, i.e. the Spirit who was sent forth on the Son, and who fitted him for his work. He was within him as the Spirit of the true Son. In the darkest hour Christ conquered by being true to the Father. The Spirit proceeds from Christ upon us. He is also within us as the Spirit of the true Son. He draws us to God as our Father. That is the congenial element of his working. The word "Father" is the outcome. His is the language of filial confidence. His is the language of .filial affection. His is the language of filial obedience. His is withal the language of earnestness. He is represented as crying, i.e. importunately calling. And he is represented as crying, "Abba, Father." The idea is emphasized by repetition. And it is expressed in two languages, Aramaic and Greek, strikingly showing the fusion of Jew and Greek in Christ. According as the Spirit of Christ thus dwells in us are we qualified and have the realization of our freedom as sons. General conclusion regarding heirship. "So that thou art no longer a bondservant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God." He individualizes what he says by changing from the plural to the singular. Even the Gentile had not to pass through Judaism into the kingdom of God. The fact of sonship having been formerly arrived at is simply stated here as the basis on which a conclusion is drawn regarding heirship. If thou hast the position of a son, and the qualification of a son, through God"s infinite love, art thou not certainly an heir through the same love? Thus it is made out that the people of God have attained to their majority. They have the heirship, not of mere children, i.e. without rights, but of sons, i.e. with full rights.

II THE SON FALLING BACK INTO HIS MINORITY. So he represents the Galatians.

1. Their idolatrous past. "Howbeit at that time, not knowing God, ye were in bondage to them which by nature are no gods." It was their disadvantage that they were ignorant of God. That being the case, it was not to be wondered at that they did service to idols. The religious instinct, if it does not find the true, will find the false. If we have not God to fill up the vacuum of our nature, we must have idols. These Galatians had done service to them which by nature were no gods. Paul"s idea in one place (1Co_10:20) is that they were devils whom the heathen worshipped. They certainly were only Divine in their own imagination. They had not the nature of God; they disputed for power; they were not even moral. What bondage to be in error regarding the greatest of all objects! What fearful bondage to think of him as not only imperfect, but as swayed by the vilest passions!

2. Their relapse. "But now that ye have come to know God, or rather to be known of God, how turn ye back again to the weak and beggarly rudiments, whereunto ye desire to be in bondage over again? Ye observe days, and months, and seasons, and years. I am afraid of you, lest by any means I have bestowed labour upon you in vain." They had come to know God, i.e. when the gospel was preached among them. It was then that they first knew God in his unity and in his real character as a God of love. But, having said this, he corrects himself. It was rather that they had come to be known of God; for it was purely of God that the gospel came to them. They were not thinking of it; even Paul was not thinking of it; for it did not lie within his plan to preach the gospel to them. By a singular providence, to which he refers in the next paragraph, he was constrained to turn aside to Galatia. It was God, then, that had given them the advantage. The relapse from Christianity into Judaism as affecting the position of the Christian sabbath. How are we to understand the language which is employed in this place and in Col_2:16, 17? Are we to infer from the teaching of the apostle (for it is no more than an inference, and a startling thing it is to be left to inference) that, as Christians, we are relieved from obligation to keep sacred one day in seven? It is not unnecessary, in view of all that has been written on these passages, to guard against an understatement of the difficulty. For instance, it is said by Ridgeley and others that certain feast days, being withdrawn from a common to a sacred use, were called sabbaths, and that the apostle alludes exclusively to these. Unless the difficulty is fairly admitted and mastered, it is sure to leave doubt on the mind, and to be ever coming up for settlement in exegesis. There is really only one difficulty, but it is presented under different forms. The passages in question are similar; so much so that the same writer can readily be detected in both. There are two statements in Galatians, and these correspond to two statements in Colossians. Taking, then, the parts which correspond as one, we have to deal with two statements.

(a) There is a statement about distinctions of times. The statement made by the apostle in this Epistle is that Christians, by observing days, and months, and seasons, and years, were returning to bondage, and that, on that account, he was afraid of them, lest he had bestowed labour upon them in vain. In the preceding context his teaching is that they have the liberty of sons, and are not as under tutors and governors. It is to be noted that the bondage referred to was in making distinctions as to times. His order of classification is to begin with the more frequent and to proceed to the less frequent observances. There are first days, or weekly observances; then there are months, or observances connected with the new moon; at a longer interval are the seasons, or great festive occasions, of which there were three in the year; and, at the longest interval, are the years, in which the reference is to the sabbatic year and the year of jubilee. The corresponding statement in Colossians is that Christians are not to be judged in meat or in drink (or, in eating and drinking), or in respect of a feast day, or a new moon, or a sabbath day (Revised Version), on the ground, as given in the context, that the handwriting which contained these things has been put out of the way, being nailed to the cross. Under the head of distinctions there is a sub-classification having reference to distinctions in meats and drinks. As to meats, there were some that were appropriated to holy uses, and numerous prohibitions are mentioned in Lev_7:10-27. As for drinks by themselves, wine was forbidden to the Nazarites and also to the priests during the time of service. The apostolic teaching is that Christians are entitled to disregard such distinctions. The classification of times in Colossians (years being omitted) proceeds in the reverse order from the less frequent to the more frequent, beginning with the feast day, and ending with the sabbath day. What meaning is to be attached to the sabbath day will be seen; but the apostolic teaching is plainly this that, as Christians are freed from the observance of the three principal feasts, and freed from the observance connected with the new moon, so also are they freed from the observance of the sabbath day. In reference to the passage in our Epistle, Alford remarks, "Notice how utterly such a verse is at variance with any and every theory of a Christian sabbath, cutting at the root, as it does, of all obligatory observance of times as such." And similar remarks are made by him elsewhere. But:

(a) In that view of it, the conclusion is a much wider one than can consistently be admitted. It is not merely that we are under no obligation to observe a Christian sabbath, or, in other words, that we are free to observe it or not as we see fit; but it goes further, and is this that the observance of a Christian sabbath implies fault. We accept Alford"s remark on the word translated "observe." There does not seem to be any meaning of superstitious or inordinate observance, but merely a statement of the fact. The view, then, is that the ordinary observance of a Christian sabbath supposes the making of distinctions as to (lays which are all done away with under Christianity. How, then, is this observance of one sacred day in seven regarded by the apostle? It is condemned by him as a bondage from which we need to be freed. Nay, more, it is held as affording ground for fears being entertained with regard to our very Christianity. "I am afraid of you, lest by any means I have bestowed labour upon you in vain." If that, then, was really the view of the apostle, should we not have expected of him that, in his own practice, he would have disregarded all distinctions of days? But how does that consist with what is recorded of him? If we turn Act_20:6, Act_20:7, we find what his practice was, upon which Alford thus suitably comments: "We have here an intimation of the continuance of the practice, which seems to have begun immediately after the Resurrection, of assembling on the first day of the week for religious purposes." If we turn next to 1Co_16:2, we find him issuing a general order to the Churches connected with the first day of the week, upon which Alford again suitably remarks, "Here there is no mention of their assembling, which we have in Act_20:7; but a plain indication that the day was already considered as a special one, and one more than others fitting for the performance of a religious duty." If, then, the apostle thus recognized a distinction in time, how can he escape from the condemnation which he passed upon these Galatian Christians? Was he not in bondage in so distinguishing? and have we not reason to be afraid of him? It is either this or the conclusion drawn is too wide. And what are we to make of the consistency of the writers who take this view? They no sooner make out the language of the apostle to have reference to all distinctions of time whatsoever, than forthwith they search about for reasons for the observance of a sacred day. Alford upholds the observance of the Lord"s day as an institution of the Christian Church, analogous to the ancient sabbath, binding on us from considerations of humanity and religious expediency, and by the rules of that branch of the Church in which Providence has placed us. And Frederick William Robertson says, "So far as we are in the Jewish state, the fourth commandment, even in its rigour and strictness, is wisely used by us; nay, we might say, indispensable." And further he says, "Experience tells us, after a trial, that those Sundays are the happiest, the purest, the most rich in blessing, in which the spiritual part has been most attended to those in which the business letter was put aside and the profane literature not opened, and the ordinary occupations entirely suspended." That is to say, the apostle was afraid of the Galatian Christians for making a distinction of one day in seven; and yet the Galatian Christians were right after all. A modification of so wide a conclusion as is supposed is suggested by the passage in Colossians. It is there stated that we are not to be judged in meats and drinks; that is, we are freed from all such distinctions in meats and drinks as existed under the Law. But yet it is the case that, under the New Testament dispensation, there exists a distinction of meat and drink. For in the Lord"s Supper we have bread and wine appropriated to holy uses and placed under certain restrictions. And, if it does not follow from the apostle"s language that all distinctions of meats and drinks are done away with under Christianity, so neither does it necessarily follow that all distinctions of time are done away with.

(b) We are to understand the language of the apostle to have reference to Jewish institutions as a whole. It is not as though there had been before him the one pointIs it right to observe one day in seven? Then his argument would have been The Jews did that; we as Christians are relieved from it, or rather are to be condemned, if we countenance such a distinction. But, instead of that, the apostle is giving a characteristic of Jewish institutions as a whole. There was a multiplying of distinctions in them, both in respect of meats and drinks and in respect of times. And what the Galatian Christians were chargeable with was their abiding by all such distinctions as were made under the Law. Nay, they probably added to them by adopting gospel distinctions or symbols as well. To circumcision they added baptism; to the Passover they added the Lord"s Supper; and to the observance of the seventh day they added the observance of the first. It was a legalistic spirit which possessed them. They were making the gospel more complicated, more burdensome in its outward prescriptions, than the Law, whereas it is characterized by simplicity and freedom. No wonder, then, that the apostle was afraid of them because of their making so many distinctions. They were endangering the gospel; they were forgetting their privileges as sons.

(c) We are to understand the language of the apostle to have reference to Jewish institutions in so far as they were Jewish. The sabbath was not a purely Jewish institution; it existed from the beginning. The essential idea of it was a proportion of time devoted to God in acknowledgment of his sovereign right to all our time. The proportion was sovereignly fixed at one-seventh, and there is reason to believe that it was fixed in relation to our physical constitution. Under the Law the sabbath, while retaining its original character, received certain ceremonial adjuncts. It was numbered among the moadeem, or feasts; and was, indeed, placed at the head of them. "Concerning the feasts of the Lord, which ye shall proclaim to be for holy convocations, even these are my feasts. Six days shall work be done; but the seventh day is the sabbath of rest." The special services appointed for the sabbath in the sanctuary were these: first, the doubling of the daily burnt offering two lambs instead of one, with a corresponding increase in the meat offering; and then the presenting of the fresh loaves of shewbread on the Lord"s table. When, then, the apostle says that we are not to be judged in respect of the sabbath day in the same way in which we are not to be judged in respect of the feast day and in respect of the new moon, this meaning is plainly suggested that we, as Christians, are freed from all the ceremonial adjuncts of the sabbath. But, more than that, there was a practical question as to the observance of what was called the sabbath as distinguished from the Lord"s day the observance of the seventh day as distinguished from the first. The connecting of God"s time with the seventh was from the beginning, but it had been very much bound up with the Jewish ceremonial. It also came to be regarded as the Jewish day as distinguished from the Christian day; and it had a certain position as such during the period of transition. The apostle, then, may be understood as deciding for the Christian Church that they were under no obligation to observe two sacred days in the week. Now that they observed the Lord"s day they were freed from the observance of the sabbath. But at the same time, the sabbath had a broad human aspect. This Christ declared when legalism was expiring, and not certainly as though the sabbath were expiring with it. He said that the sabbath was made for man. It lies embedded in our deepest nature. It is needed under all earthly conditions and dispensations; and is not certainly to be numbered, like the feast day and the observance connected with the new moon, among things Jewish, from which as Christians we are freed. Whether it is the seventh day or the first is matter of Divine arrangement for the time being; but underneath both there is the obligation laid in our nature, from which we cannot be freed, to devote a proportion of our time to God.

(b) There is a statement made regarding the transitory nature of ceremonial institutions in which the sabbath is included. There is not much difficulty presented by the statement in this Epistle, that ceremonial institutions are weak and beggarly elements. This language is to be applied to them in respect of their having served their purpose. They had been, with certain drawbacks, very helpful and rich in blessing to God"s people. They may have been once so to some of these Galatian Christians, but, now that the Divine authority had been removed from them, now that the gospel had come in their place, to turn to them was indeed to turn to the weak and beggarly elements. So it was with the sabbath, or seventh day. It once had the Divine sanction. It once was one of the channels through which the Divine blessing flowed. But, now that it was no longer to be observed as the sacred day, now that the Lord"s day had come in its place, to turn to it was to turn to one of the weak and beggarly elements. Nor is there much difficulty presented by the corresponding statement in Colossians that ceremonial institutions are the shadow of things to come, whereas the body is of Christ. That does not exclude the possibility of there being a sign to represent the substance, the reality, after it had come. We know that circumcision represented regeneration, the putting away of the sin of the flesh. And the Divine blessing accompanied it as the shadow of the coming reality. But when the reality came that corresponded to circumcision, it was put by Christ into the New Testament institution of baptism. In the context here the two ordinances are closely interwoven in the apostolic thought. "In whom ye were also circumcised" (the reference, says Alford, being to the historical fact of their baptism) "with a circumcision not made with hands, in the putting off of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ: having been buried with him in baptism." We know, too, that the Passover pointed forward to a sacrifice to be offered for sin. And it was a nourishing ordinance as the shadow of the coming sacrifice. But when Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us (and it happened at the very time of the offering of the paschal lamb), the great reality was put by Christ into the New Testament institution of the Lord"s Supper. And so it seems to be with regard to the sabbath. It pointed forward to the reality of a rest in Christ, and as such it was refreshing. But when the reality came, and needed no longer to be shadowed, it was put into the institution of the Lord"s day. And we have reason to think that it will remain there for us until its full disclosure in heaven. R.F.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Now - To illustrate by a plain similitude the preeminence of the Christian, over the legal, dispensation. The heir, as long as he is a child - As he is under age. Differeth nothing from a servant - Not being at liberty either to use or enjoy his estate. Though he be Lord - Proprietor of it all.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

VERSE 1. Now I say, That the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be Lord of all;

Martin Luther — Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1535), English translation by Theodore Graebner (Zondervan, 1939) — public domain (U.S. copyright not renewed). Text from a community e-Sword module.

The Sonship of the Believers Opposed to the Bondage of the Law.

The believers sons and heirs through Christ:

v. 1. Now I say, That the heir, as long as he is a child, differs nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all,

v. 2. but is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father.

v. 3. Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world;

v. 4. but when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the Law,

v. 5. to redeem them that were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.

v. 6. And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.

v. 7. Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.

The apostle here gives a further explanation as to the purpose of the Law in the Old Testament, namely, that it was not intended to give life and salvation to men, but to serve as a pedagogue unto Christ: What I mean to say is this, For the length of time that the heir is a minor, he differs in nothing from a servant, although he is lord of all the possessions. This principle, or rule, holds true universally, with only slight modifications. A child, a son, not having reached the legal age is a minor and is not permitted to have charge of the property, either the will of the father or the decree of the probate court providing a guardian or trustee for that purpose. At the time of Paul the minor was legally about in the same position as the slave. No act of his had the sanction of the law, unless it was performed through his legal representative. He was under guardians, or tutors, and stewards, or trustees, until the time appointed of the father, who might even make a provision to limit the heir’s right to his property beyond the age of legal majority. The men named by the father had charge of the property, counseled the boy, defended and directed him. "An infant was under a tutor until he reached the age of fourteen;... thereafter he is able to make a will and dispose of his own property. But the practical management of the property remains in the hands of a curator till the ward reaches the age of twenty-five. This is exactly the state of things which Paul speaks of. " It is plain, of course, that a father is not acting foolishly, or for the purpose of punishing his son, in imposing such restrictions upon him, but for the minor’s benefit, lest he spend and squander his money foolishly. Thus the apostle takes an example from daily life, one with which his readers were familiar, in order to illustrate the relation of the Old Testament believers to the Law, in order to show what object God had in imposing such restrictions upon His children.

The apostle now makes the application: Even so we, when we were minors, were in bondage under the rudiments of this world. Paul here includes himself with the believing Jews, with those that placed their faith in the Messiah. These believers were indeed children of God and heirs of the promise, chap. 3:15. By their faith in the promised salvation they were actually in possession of all heavenly gifts and blessings, of full salvation. But spiritually they were minors; they had not yet come to a mature understanding of God’s counsels and plans; they were restricted under tutors and curators. And among these were the elements, the rudiments, of this world. The word "element" really signifies a peg or stylus standing in a row, from which was derived the meaning "letter," and finally "elementary teaching," 2Pe 3:10-12; Heb 5:12. It is here most probably used in the meaning of "letter" or "statute," for such the Law was to the Old Testament believers, a letter written on stones and on paper, governing their actions, but unable to renew their hearts. As Luther writes: "’Elements’ is here taken according to the peculiar diction of Paul and according to the grammar for the letters of the Law themselves, of which the Law consists, as he also calls it 2Co 3:6 and elsewhere, Rom 2:27-29, ’the letter,’ the conclusion being that elements in the plural is the Scripture or the written Law. " And as for the term "rudiments of the world," Luther explains: "He thus calls the Law ’elements of the world,’ that means, external letters, or statutes, that are written in a certain book. For although the Law in civil matters restrains from evil and insists upon doing good, yet, when it is fulfilled in this manner, it does not liberate from sins, it does not justify, it does not prepare the way to heaven, but leaves the people in this world. For I do not obtain righteousness and eternal life in this way, that I do not kill, that I do not commit adultery, that I do not become guilty of stealing, etc. These external virtues and honest conduct are not the righteousness of Christ or of heaven, but are a righteousness of the flesh and of the world... Therefore he [Paul] rejects and condemns with this little word, ’elements of the world, the entire righteousness of the Law which lay in these external ceremonies, although they were ordained and commanded by God to be kept for a time, and designates them with the most contemptible name ’elements of the world. ’" See Col 2:8-20.

That was the condition of the believers in the Old Testament: they were God’s dear children, heirs of the promise, and were saved through faith in Christ. But they were not yet in full enjoyment of their sonship and of their inheritance. God had laid a yoke upon their necks, the Law of Moses with its many statutes and commandments, with its priests, sacrifices, purifications, etc. Thus they did not yet have free access to the Father, but these statutes stood between them and God. This condition the people were to endure for a time, being under guardians and trustees until the time appointed by God.

And of this time St. Paul writes in a strain of exultant joy: But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, placed under the Law, in order that He might ransom those under the Law, that the sonship we might receive. In the figure used by the apostle, time is regarded as a measure, or vessel, which was filled up to the top. When the time of this present world-age had reached the point which had been determined by God, then His great counsel of love was put into execution. God sent forth His Son, who had been with Him, in His bosom, from eternity. "If He was to send Him, He must have been there before. He must have been in existence before He came and became a man. " God sent forth His Son, begotten out of His own substance, equal with the Father in power and honor, of the same essence, and yet a different person. The Son of God came into the world in a miraculous manner, made or born of a woman, of the Virgin Mary, as a true, natural human being, with flesh of her flesh and blood of her blood. He was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary. Thereby He was placed under the Law, by an act of voluntary humiliation on His part. Unlike the ordinary human being, He was not subject to the demands of the Law, for He Himself was the Lawgiver. But God subjected Him to the Law, and Christ willingly submitted to this humiliation. His circumcision on the eighth day was a sign of this submission, whereby He openly declared that He took upon Himself the obligation to fulfill the Law, to bear the curse and the punishment of the Law. For His object in doing so was to pay the ransom for our deliverance from the power of the Law, which would have continued forever but for His coming. Although Paul refers especially to the believers of the Old Testament as being under the bondage of the Law, his words have a wider application and bring reassuring comfort to the believers of all times. This is brought out by the declaration that we, all believers, whether of the Jews or of the Gentiles, should receive the sonship of God. By fulfilling the Law, Christ has delivered us from the coercion, from the curse of the Law. We are no longer in its power, we are no longer its slaves. The price of our ransom has been paid, the Law no longer has any jurisdiction over us. From the most degrading slavery we have entered into the most honorable relationship to God: we are the children of God, not indeed by nature, but by adoption, by God’s deliberate acceptance of our unworthy selves, for the sake of His only begotten Son. How utterly the claims of the Judaizing teachers were refuted by this powerful Gospel-preaching!

What effect this action on the part of God has in our case, Paul shows in a triumphant conclusion: Because, then, you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. So, then, you are no longer a servant, but a son, but if a son, then also an heir through God. The sonship is not confined to the believers among the Jews, but is expressly designed for the Gentile Christians as well; now that Christ has come, God accepts all that believe in Christ as His dear sons and daughters. And this sonship involves a relation of the most intimate confidence and love between the heavenly Father and His adopted children. To each individual one God has sent and given the Spirit of His Son into his heart. The Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, is active in the work of regeneration and sanctification: the Father sends the Son’s Spirit, but this same Spirit is incidentally the believers’ guarantee of sonship, through Him they attain to the consciousness of sons of God. Because He has taken possession of their hearts, therefore the believers are able to speak to God as their dear Father in full confidence, to cry to Him in the full assurance and strength of their faith’s persuasion: Abba, Father! The Aramaic and the Greek terms are set side by side, the equivalent expressions being intended to emphasize more strongly the idea of Father. So God sends the Spirit that lives in His Son, in order to make us sure that we are His brothers and coheirs; for just as He addresses God as His dear Father, so we also should have the conviction of the unspeakable goodness and grace of God and trust in Him as dear children will in their dear father. And in order to bring this truth home to each and every one of his readers, Paul says, in the singular, that every one of them is no longer a servant, a slave, but a son. God does not send His Spirit to slaves that are still bound with the shackles of the Law; it is to His sons that He gives the Spirit of sonship. The apostle reminds every member of the Galatian congregation and therefore every Christian of all times of the fact that he, by virtue of the indwelling of the Spirit, is a free child of God. What a disgrace, then, for Christ, our Savior, if we should voluntarily place ourselves under the Law and with this idea attempt to fulfill the Law, instead of showing the loving mind of obedient children! This emphasis becomes all the greater if we remember that children are also heirs of all the possessions of the father. The believing Christians are heirs of God; righteousness and salvation, eternal life with all its bliss, is theirs. All these gifts are theirs by virtue of their baptism and faith, and they will enter into the full enjoyment of these blessings when they leave this vale of tears behind them. Note that Paul has taken the last vestige of a foothold from the Judaizing teachers, for not by good works, by faithful and strict observance of the Law of God, but by God’s free grace and mercy, "through God," as He gave evidence of His love in Jesus, the believers are assured of the inheritance of heaven.

Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Gal 4:3

I. Mankind has been in the position of a child, and successive generations have been slowly trained by God’s fatherly care, as a preparation for that liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, that life and immortality brought to light by the Gospel, the all-pervading glory of the Sun of righteousness.

II. Consider the lessons to be learned from the fact that the preparatory discipline of a partial revelation and imperfect religious system in the law has been followed by a complete manifestation of God to man in the Gospel. Throughout the Epistle to the Galatians St. Paul protests against the fatal error of confounding the two dispensations and of viewing the law, not as ordained to make ready the way of the Lord, but as intended to be a permanent rule, entangling us for ever in the yoke of bondage. After that faith is come; faith in Christ as a living Friend and Saviour, whose great love for us constrains us to love Him in return, we are no longer under a schoolmaster, we have no more need of such a tutor, nor would it be natural to submit to such discipline.

III. In reckoning the law among the elements of the unspiritual outer world, St. Paul is only speaking of its transient institutions, its principle of mere obedience to the letter, its temporary permission of imperfect morality, its sacrifices, ceremonies, and types, which were to train mankind for Christianity, and not of its eternal testimony to truth and holiness. (1) We shall fall back under the bondage of the law if we go about to establish our own righteousness, instead of submitting ourselves to the righteousness of God. (2) We return to the law if we content ourselves with a conventional Christianity, a mere conformity to the standard of religion sanctioned by the world. (3) We may also become entangled again in the yoke of bondage by lowering the standard of Christian holiness and adopting some of those inferior principles of morality which, in the times of ignorance, God winked at. (4) Once more, we are falling back, like the Galatians, to the elements of the world if we are led astray, by a formal and ceremonial system of religion, from the simplicity that is in Christ. We Christians are called to the duties and privileges of spiritual manhood, to obedience resulting from principle, from conviction, from gratitude for God’s forgiving mercy, and a desire for true holiness. This desire can only be gratified, these feelings can only be realised, through fellowship with the Lord Jesus by faith. Therefore whatsoever keeps us from Him is a return from the brightness of the New Testament to the twilight of the Old.

G. E. L. Cotton, Sermons on the Epistles, vol. i., p. 64.

Reference: Gal 4:3-6.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxx., No. 1815.

Gal 4:4

Christ Obedient to the Law.

I. Christ’s obedience to the law was not a matter of course, following upon His incarnation. Scripture everywhere separates the two, making His obedience an additional thing, undertaken by Him over and above His becoming man. It was a positive thing, not to be for a moment in our thoughts merged in the mere negative fact of His being pure and free from sin.

II. Secondly, it was not only an integral, but also a necessary, part of His work of redemption. The Jew was lifted above all the other nations, and stood nearer to God. His privilege was greater, and his guilt was different. The guilt of all mankind before God was indeed that of original disobedience, but might now be said to consist in blindly following sinful courses, while Israel’s guilt was that of constant and deliberate disregard of a written and ever-present law. And that righteousness which put man into the position of God’s approval being to come in by one Man, Jesus Christ, all cases of guilt must be covered, all situations of disobedience taken up and borne and carried triumphantly out into perfection and accordance with the Father’s will by the Son of God in our flesh; and this could only be done by His taking upon Himself the situation of the higher responsibility and the deeper guilt. And there was another reason why our Lord should have been made under the law: His fulfilling of the will of God for man was to be, not only complete, but was to be our pattern, that as He was holy, so we might be holy also; and this it could not have been had it not been of the highest kind. He not only fulfilled all righteousness in His own person, but He showed to us, His disciples, a new and better way: He led us up through the law, and out of and above the law, into our obedience and spiritual freedom, so that He has satisfied and abolished the handwriting of ordinances that was against us and has taken it out of the way, nailing it to His cross.

H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons, vol. vi., p. 88.

The Fulness of Time.

I. God sent forth His Son, and sent Him in the fulness of time. In four ways God had prepared the civilised world for the reception of Christianity. (1) By means of the Roman empire He had reduced all the world under one government, so that there was free intercourse between all parts of the known world, and there was no political obstacle to the spread of the faith from one nation to another. (2) By means of the Greek language, the most perfect instrument of thought ever known, He had made the earth to be of one tongue, and thus He had prepared the way for the advent of Christ. (3) By means of the chosen people of the Jews, having still their religious centre at Jerusalem, yet scattered throughout the world, He had provided a nursery for the tender plant of the Gospel. (4) By reason of the general confluence and mutual competition of all kinds of heathen idolatries, He had caused heathenism to lose its old repute and power over souls.

II. Why did God not send His Son sooner into the world to comfort and to save? Is it not hard to think of the Son of God looking calmly down through all the ages on His miserable creatures, tormenting and slaying one another, crying with piteous, unavailing cries to that heaven which, in its unmoved majesty, only seemed to mock their agony? We may ask these questions, but we cannot answer them. Revelation is as dumb as Nature herself to these inquiries. We only know that to God the moment of our Saviour’s advent was the fulness of the time, was the earliest moment in which He could come to our help. But He that stooped from His Divine estate to die upon the cross has surely earned our confidence. We do not know how the history of the world is to be reconciled with the goodness of God, but we can believe. Jesus Christ has surely a right to demand that we should trust Him, not only with the present, but with the past, too.

R. Winterbotham, Sermons and Expositions, p. 323.

The Fulness of Time.

I. There was a threefold work of preparation for the Son of God, carried forward in what was then called the civilised world, and each portion of this preparation demanded the lapse of a certain period. (1) The world had to be prepared in a certain sense politically for His work. In order to spread an idea or a dreed, two instruments are very desirable. The first is a common language, and the second is a common social system, common laws, a common government. The first of these conditions was partly provided by the conquests of Alexander. He spread the Greek language through Western Asia, throughout Egypt; and when Greece itself was conquered, the educated Romans learned the language of the vanquished provincials. And during the half-century which preceded the birth of Christ the Roman empire was finally consolidated into a great political whole, so that Palestine and Spain, so that North Africa and Southern Germany, were administered by a single government. Christianity, indeed, did not need this. It passed beyond the frontiers of the empire in the lifetime of the Apostles. But this preparation was an important element in the process by which preceding ages led up to the fulness of time. (2) There was a preparation in the convictions of mankind. The most gifted of races had done its best with heathenism, and the result was that all the highest and purest minds loathed the present and looked forward to the future. It was the fulness of the time. (3) There was also a preparation in the moral experience of mankind. The widespread corruption of the age, the longing for better things, marked the close of the epoch of moral experiments; it announced that the fulness of the time had come.

II. The fulness of the time came, and God sent forth His Son. If we had seen Jesus Christ in His earthly life and had freely opened our souls without prejudice to the impression He could have produced upon them, what would that impression have been? (1) First of all, we should have observed that He stands in a totally different relation towards moral truth from that of every other man whom we have ever met. His life breathes sinlessness, freedom, peace. To Him the law can bring no curse. The law does but express His character in human words; He is strictly in harmony with it. (2) And not merely is His life thus sinless: it is also at harmony with itself. Precisely because He is not like any individual man, with some great special endowment, with some striking idiosyncrasy, but, on the contrary, of a humanity so universal, so comprehensive, that all feel that they have their share in Him, and even Pilate, unconscious of the mighty truth he was uttering, could cry, "Behold the man," therefore He draws all men to Himself; therefore He can sanctify all human capacities; therefore He can subdue all human wills; therefore the century in which, and the people among which, He appears cannot monopolise Him. He and His revelation have on them the clear mark of eternity. He can bring all whose hearts are not closed against His advances by wilful sin into their right relation towards God and towards each other.

H. P. Liddon, Penny Pulpit, No. 703.

References: Gal 4:4.—H. Batchelor, The Incarnation of God, p. 1; H. P. Liddon, Christmastide Sermons, p. 74; Ibid., Advent Sermons, vol. i., p. 157; G. Bainton, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xvii., p. 150. Gal 4:4, Gal 4:5.—W. Cunningham, Sermons, p. 393; J. Monro Gibson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxv., p. 56; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. v., p. 331; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. iv., p. 321.

Gal 4:4, Gal 4:6

Let us consider wherein consisted the preparation of the fulness of the time preceding the birth of Christ for a new turn in the history of the world and wherein consisted the special peculiarity of the coming of Christ which made it the germ of what there was to be in the ages following, and further see how this is really true of ourselves and of our own age.

I. There was a general sickness, so to speak, in the condition of the civilised world at that time. Look at the Roman empire. The most tremendous civil wars that ever were fought had just ended, leaving all their scars and sores behind. "If ever we were to judge of God’s moral judgment," says a great Roman historian, "exclusively from the varying fortunes of good and bad men, there are few instances of successful wickedness which would more disturb our faith than that of the long and peaceful reign of Augustus Caesar, whose word rules the earth." Look, again, at the dying and worn-out condition of the old pagan religion. Or look at the Jewish nation, with its sects of Pharisees and Sadducees, the religion of Moses and Isaiah falling away into a discussion of the most minute ceremonial of dress and food and posture, a fierce fanaticism taking possession of the whole people. It was in some respects the darkest period of the Gentile-Jewish world, the dullness before the dawn. "God sent forth His Son." He was a Teacher unlike the generation from which He sprang, yet specially suited to the needs of the generation. "I dreamt a dream," says one of the most gifted writers of the last century, the famous Rousseau. "I saw the temples and altars of the ancient world in all their splendour. I looked, and they had vanished, and in their place I saw standing a young Teacher, full of grace and truth. He had not attacked them; He had not destroyed them; but by His own intrinsic excellence and majesty He had superseded them, and there was no one to dispute His right." This is the true description of the aspect of Jesus Christ towards the darker side of the old world. And what was His aspect towards the brighter side? Almost everything there was of good in it took courage, was revived and assimilated and strengthened by Him. The long-unexampled peace under Augustus Caesar, the organic unity of the civilised world under his sceptre, gave a framework into which the Gospel could fit and spread without hindrance or violence.

II. Such a fulness of time, such a craving of the empty human heart, such a providential preparation, as occurred on the first birthday of Christianity cannot be re-enacted, but in each successive age and in each individual there is in a certain sense a return of the fulness and a reproduction of the coming. In each successive age, even in this age of our own, there is something like it. In every age the glad tidings of great joy is but the moral element of human nature as the true representative and vehicle of Divinity. Where this is to be found in any degree, there in some degree is the manifestation of the Godhead and a child of God. Where it is not found, whatever else there may be, there the supreme Divinity is not. Where it is found in the highest degree, there is God incarnate; there is the true Son of the universal Father.

A. P. Stanley, Penny Pulpit, New Series, No. 851.

Reference: Gal 4:4-6.—G. Hester, Christian World Pulpit, vol. viii., p. 11.

Gal 4:6

Trinity Sunday.

I. God is our Father. Our Lord and His Apostles are constantly impressing this truth upon us. By doing so they bring the conception of God home to the very humblest and most ignorant of His creatures. They plant it firmly in the heart, in the seat of those affections of which no child of man is destitute. As the Creator and Sustainer and Ruler of the world, God would claim our allegiance and reverence; but allegiance and reverence, if paid to mere power and wisdom, are sure to degenerate into superstitious terror. But let us be once assured of the love no less than of the power and wisdom of our God, and then we are privileged and drawn to love also, and love casts out slavish fear.

II. And then, with affections and instincts thus prepared, we are fitted to apprehend the goodness of the Father in sending His Son to teach us more about Him and to enable us to come nearer to Him. Christ came to draw away the thick veil which the inborn corruption of the human heart and the accumulated sins and falsehoods of centuries had interposed between man and God. That we might understand God, it was necessary that we should see Him as one of ourselves, tried by temptations; victorious over temptations; suffering for us and suffering with us; bowed down, though not overcome, by the load of sin under which the whole world staggers. So, and so only, could our thoughts of God be at once adequate and clear, and permanently operative on our conduct.

III. It is the action of the Spirit of God’s Son on our hearts that encourages us to approach the throne of God and fling our cry before the Invisible One, "Abba, Father." We cannot enter into the Fatherly character of God without being animated by the same Spirit that animated His well-beloved Son, Jesus. We must be like Christ, we must be very brothers of Christ, if we would claim His Father as our Father.

H. M. Butler, Harrow Sermons, p. 298.

References: Gal 4:6.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiv., No. 1435; Church of England Pulpit, vol. xviii., p. 64; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. vii., p. 339.

Gal 4:7

God’s Offspring.

I. Men were children before Christ came, ignorant and unable to take care of themselves. St. Paul told the heathen Athenians that they were God’s children. He put them in mind that one of their own heathen poets had told them so, and had said, "We are also God’s offspring." And so in this chapter he says, You were God’s children all along, though you did not know it. You were God’s heirs all along, though you differed in nothing from slaves, for as long as you were in your heathen ignorance and foolishness God had to treat you as His slaves, not as His children; and so you were in bondage under the elements of the world till the fulness of time was come.

II. Therefore is every child that comes into the world baptised freely into the name of God. Baptism is a sign and warrant that God loves that child, that God looks on it as His child, not for itself or its own sake, but because it belongs to Jesus Christ, who by becoming a man redeemed all mankind, and made them His property and His brothers. Therefore every child, when it is brought to be baptized, promises repentance and faith when it comes to years of understanding. It is not God’s slave, as the beasts are; it is God’s child. No slavish, terrified, superstitious coaxing and flattering will help us with God. He has told us to call Him our Father, and if we speak to Him in any other way we insult Him, and trample under foot the riches of His grace.

III. This thought and the peace which it brings, St. Paul tells us, is none of our own; we did not put it into our own hearts, from God it comes, that blessed thought that He is our Father. We could never have found it out for ourselves. It is the Spirit of the Son of God, the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ, which gives us courage to say, "Our Father which art in heaven," which makes us feel that these words are true, and must be true, and are worth all other words in the world put together: that God is our Father, and we are His sons.

C. Kingsley, Sermons for the Times, p. 213.

References: Gal 4:7.—S. Pearson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. iv., p. 90; T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. ii., p. 230. Gal 4:9.—Wilkinson, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. viii., p. 120. Gal 4:15.—Homilist, vol. v., p. 128; S. Pearson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. iv., p. 115; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ii., p. 248.

Gal 4:16

The Right Mode of Giving and Receiving Reproof.

I. Men will profess, and perhaps unthinkingly believe, that they derive the most essential benefits derivable from a true friend; but if he shall offer to impart them he becomes an enemy. The great cause of this perversity and repugnance is that it cannot be but the plain truth (by whatever voice) must say many things that are unpleasing. All censure is so, as it hurts the most quick, and delicate, and constant of all feelings, self-love. And censure! who dares to say in how many points the full unmitigated application of truth to him would not be censure? And who dares to say how many of these points might not be struck upon by a clear-sighted friend, that should unreservedly express the truth? Hence the disposition to regard him as an enemy. Other things contributing to this feeling towards him are (1) a want of the real, earnest desire to be in all things set right; (2) pride, reacting against a fellow-mortal and fellow-sinner; (3) a difference of judgment on the matters in question; (4) an unfavourable opinion or surmise as to the motives of the teller of this truth.

II. (1) Those who have to tell unpleasant truth should well exercise themselves to understand what they speak of. (2) It should be the instructor’s aim that the authority may be conveyed in the truth itself, and not seem to be assumed by him as the speaker of it, that he may be the mere conveyer of the force of the subject. (3) The teller of unpleasing truths should watch to select favourable times and occasions (mollia tempora fandi) when an inquisitive or docile disposition is most apparent, when some circumstance or topic naturally leads without formality or abruptness to the point, when there appears to be in the way the least to put the person reproved in the attitude of pride and hostile self-defence.

J. Foster, Lectures, 1st series, p. 43.

Reference: Gal 4:16.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ii., p. 96.

Gal 4:18

Christian Zeal Commended.

I. Zeal may be defined as the heat or fervour of the mind, prompting its vehemence of indignation against anything which it conceives to be evil-prompting, its vehemence of desire towards anything which it imagines to be good. In itself it has no moral character at all. It is the simple instinct of energetic nature, never wholly divested of a certain rude nobility and never destitute of influence upon the lives and upon the characters of others. Zeal in itself is neither morally excellent nor morally blameworthy, and it becomes Christian zeal only when it springs from Christian motive, when it is displayed in a Christian manner, when it is used for Christian ends. The great constraining motive of Christian zeal, as of every other grace or energy that is hallowed, is the love of God shed abroad in the heart, and kindling a pure, disinterested, brotherly love to the fellow-man. All true Christian zeal bears this mark. The chief object of Christian zeal will be the spread of the religion of Jesus, that which is the great cementing bond of all social relations here, and which links them in a higher fellowship with the brotherhood of heaven.

II. The pith of the Apostle’s warning lies in this: "It is good to be zealously affected always in a good thing." The Galatians in the presence of the Apostle were warm and extravagant in their professions of attachment both to himself and to the cause to which he had given his life; but they needed his presence. They needed his presence to prevent the relapse of their affections into indifference, nay, not only into indifference, but into opposition, inveterate in proportion to their former enthusiasm. He therefore reminds them that zeal, to be valuable, should be permanent; that it should not be based upon the shifting sand of favourable circumstances, but rooted in a well-principled conviction which, like a rock, will be granite to the storm as well as granite to the sunshine.

III. Note the profitableness of Christian zeal: "It is good." No higher praise can be given to it. Where the heart preserves the ardour of devotion, it will preserve the ardour of enterprise, and will always be at work for the best interests of men.

W. M. Punshon, Penny Pulpit, New Series, No. 14.

References: Gal 4:19.—R. F. Horton, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxxv., p. 71; H. W. Beecher, Plymouth Pulpit Sermons, 5th series, p. 7. Gal 4:20.—G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 379. Gal 4:22-31.—Homilist, vol. i., p. 405. Gal 4:23.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. xii., p. 143. Gal 4:24.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ii., No. 69; J. Edmunds, Sixty Sermons, p. 130. Gal 4:25, Gal 4:26.—B. Jowett, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxiii., p. 385.

Gal 4:28

The Promise Fulfilled for Time and Eternity.

I. The promise of God to Abraham did more than give civilisation to men: it opened to them the doors of heaven. Great as have been the temporal gifts bestowed by it, greater and better are its spiritual blessings. The best commentary that has ever been written on the promise made to Abraham is to be found in Heb. xi. St. Paul is never weary of pointing to the glorious character of this spiritual promise. "God," says St. Augustine, "is patient, for God is eternal," and so also the faith that trusts the promise of God partakes of the unchangeable calm of Him on whom it rests, the same yesterday, today, and for ever. Canaan, the heavenly Canaan, was ever before the ancient saints, though they knew that to reach it they must cross the dark valley. Clear before their eyes shone the reward of their labours, but they saw that it was set on the top of a cross.

II. We too are children of promise; but often we forget this, and flatter ourselves that some special object on which our desires are set will one day disclose to us the secret of abiding happiness. If we set our hearts on some earthly Canaan, we shall find that the only rest it will give us is the rest of the grave. Consistently with the splendour of the goal that is set before us and the feebleness of all human effort to reach it, God has decreed that our happiness on earth should consist rather in working than in enjoying, rather in using the means than in gaining the end. If from the last sleep there were no awakening, if the night of death were followed by no dawn, then, indeed, the outlook before us would be sad and gloomy. But to us it has been given to know Christ and the power of His resurrection. His risen body sheds the true light upon life and its work; it fulfils to us all the promise of good fortune, and adds to its fulfilment the glories of eternity.

D. Haig-Brown, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxvi., p. 257.

References: Gal 4:28.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iv., p. 89; C. J. Vaughan, Words of Hope, p. 149. Gal 4:31.—A. Barry, Cheltenham College Sermons, p. 190; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. vi., p. 144; Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 263; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ii., p. 96. Gal 5:1.—H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 90; J. B. Brown, Ibid., vol. xvi., p. 337; J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 4th series, p. 22. Gal 5:1-13.—H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxiii., p. 330; F. W. Farrar, Ibid., vol. xxix., p. 145. Gal 5:3, Gal 5:4.—H. W. Beecher, Ibid., vol. v., p. 75. Gal 5:4.—J. Irons, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. vii., p. 349. Gal 5:5.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxi., No. 1228.

The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The apostle, in these words, compares the church of God, under the Old Testament, to an infant or child in its minority and nonage; partly with respect to their weakness in understanding, and want of the means of knowledge, comparatively to what we enjoy; and partly, with respect to the discipline they were under from their rigid schoolmaster, the ceremonial law. "Now, says the apostle, as a child, though he be heir to, and owner of all his father’s inheritance in hope, yet so long as he is a minor, and under age, he differeth nothing from a servant in point of subjection, but is under the management of tutors and directors. In like manner the church, when in its infant state, under the Old Testament, was kept in bondage and subjection under the rigid administration, and rigorous exaction of the law, and tied to almost a numberless number of ceremonial observances, by which it pleased Almighty God to instruct the former ages of his church."

Learn hence, that the Jewish church, in its infant state, was obliged to learn and practice the elements of a religion chiefly consisting in visible and bodily performances of the ceremonial law, which were but rudiments, in respect of that heavenly doctrine concerning spiritual life which the gospel now reveals, and clearly makes known unto us: When we were children, we were in bondage under the elements of the world.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

But I say that so long as the heir is a child, he differeth nothing from a bondservant though he is lord of all

J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Galatians Chapter 4

The relative position therefore of the Jew (even though he were godly) before the coming of Christ, and of the believing Jew or Gentile when Christ had been revealed, is clearly set forth; and in the commencement of chapter 4 the apostle sums up that which he had said. He compares the believer before the coming of Christ to a child under age, who has no direct relation with his father as to his thoughts, but who receives his father’s orders, without his accounting for them to him, as a servant would receive them. He is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father. Thus the Jews, although they were heirs of the promises, were not in connection with the Father and His counsels in Jesus, but were in tutelage to principles that appertained to the system of the present world, which is but a corrupt and fallen creation. Their walk was ordained of God in this system, but did not go beyond it. We speak of the system by which they were guided, whatever divine light they might receive from time to time to reveal heaven to them, to encourage them in hope, while making the system under the rule of which they were placed yet darker. Under the law then, heirs as they were, they were still in bondage. But when the time was fulfilled and ripe for it, God sent forth His Son-an act flowing from His sovereign goodness for the accomplishment of His eternal counsels, and for the manifestation of all His character. It was God who did it. It was He who acted. The law required man to act, and it manifested man to be just the contrary of that which he ought to have been according to the law. But the Son of God comes from God. He requires nothing. He is manifested in the world in relation with men under the double aspect of a man born of woman, and a man under law.

If sin and death came in by the woman, Christ came into this world by the woman also. If through law man is under condemnation, Christ puts Himself under law also. Under this double aspect He takes the place in which man was found; He takes it in grace without sin, but with the responsibility that belonged to it-a responsibility which He alone has met. But still the object of His mission went much farther than the manifestation in His Person of man without sin, in the midst of evil, and having the knowledge of good and evil. He came to redeem those that were under the law, in order that believers (be they who they may) should receive the adoption. Now that the Gentile believers had been admitted to share the adoption was proved by the sending of the Spirit who made them cry, “Abba, Father.” For it is because they are sons, that God sent the Spirit of His Son into their heart, as well as into that of the Jews without distinction. The Gentile, a stranger to the house, and the Jew, who under age differed in nothing from a servant, had each taken the position of a son in direct relation with the Father-a relation of which the Holy Ghost was the power and the witness-in consequence of the redemption wrought in their behalf by the Son; the Jew under the law needing it as much as the Gentile in his sins. But its efficacy was such that the believer was not a bondman but a son, and if a son, an heir also of God by Christ. Previously the Gentiles had been in bondage, not indeed to the law, but to that which, in its nature, was not God. They knew not God, and were the slaves of everything that boasted of the name of God, in order to blind the heart of man alienated from Him who is the true God and from His knowledge.

But what were these Gentiles, become Christians, now doing? They desired to be again in bondage to these wretched elements, worldly and carnal, to which they had formerly been in subjection; these things of which the carnal man could form his religion, without one moral or spiritual thought, and which placed the glory due to God, in outward observances which an unbeliever and a heathen ignorant of God could call his religion and glory in it.

As figures, which God used to bear testimony beforehand to the realities that are in Christ, they had their true value. God knew how to reconcile the employment of these figures, which are profitable to faith, with a religious system that tested man in the flesh, and that served to answer the question, whether, with every kind of help, man was able to stand before God and to serve Him. But to go back to these ordinances made for man in the flesh, now that God hadshewn man’s incapability of becoming righteous before Him-now that the substance of these shadows was come, was to go back to the position of men in the flesh, and to take that standing without any command of God that sanctioned it. It was to go back to the ground of idolatry, that is to say, to a carnal religion, arranged by man without any authority from God, and which in no way brought man into connection with Him. For things done in the flesh had certainly not that effect. “Ye observe days and months and seasons and years.” This the heathen did in their human religion. Judaism was a human religion ordained of God, but, by going back to it when the ordinance of God was no longer in force, they did but go back to the paganism out of which they had been called to have part with Christ in heavenly things.

Nothing can be more striking than this statement of what ritualism is after the cross. It is simply heathenism, going back to man’s religion, when God is fully revealed: “I fear concerning you,” said the apostle, “that I have laboured in vain.” But they reproached the apostle with not being a faithful Jew according to the law, with freeing himself from its authority. “Be ye then,” says he, “as I am; for I am as ye are” (namely, free from the law). Ye have done me no wrong in saying so. Would to God ye were as much so! He then reminds them of his thorn in the flesh. It was some circumstance adapted to make him contemptible in his ministry. Nevertheless they had received him as an angel of God, as Jesus Christ. What was become of that blessedness? Had he become their enemy because he had told them the truth? Zeal was good; but if it had a right thing for its object, they should have persevered in their zeal, and not merely have maintained it while he was with them. These new teachers were very zealous to have the Galatians for their partisans, and to exclude them from the apostle, that they might be attached to themselves. He laboured again, as though travailing in birth, in order that Christ should be formed as if anew in their hearts-a touching testimony of the strength of his Christian love. This love was divine in its character; it was not weakened by the disappointment of ingratitude, because its source was outside the attraction of its objects. Moses said, “Have I conceived all this people, that I should carry them in my bosom?” Paul is ready to travail in birth with them a second time.

He does not know what to say. He would like to be present with them, that he might, on seeing them adapt his words to their condition, for they had really forsaken Christian ground. Would they then, since they desired to be under the law, hear the law? In it they might see the two systems, in the type of Hagar and Sarah: that of law, gendering to bondage; and that of grace, to liberty; not that only, but the positive exclusion of the child of bondage from the inheritance. The two could not be united; the one shut out the other. The bond-child was born according to the flesh, the free-child according to promise. For the law and the covenant of Sinai were in connection with man in the flesh. The principle of man’s relationship with God, according to the law (if such relations had been possible), was that of a relationship formed between man in the flesh and the righteous God. As to man, the law and the ordinances were only bondage. They aimed at bridling the will without its being changed. It is all-important to understand, that man under the law is man in the flesh. When born again, dead and risen again, he is no longer under law, which has only dominion over man in that he is alive here below. Read “Jerusalem which is above is our mother”-not “the mother of us all.” It is in contrast with Jerusalem on earth, which in its principle answered to Sinai. And observe that the apostle is not here speaking of the violation of the law, but of its principle. The law itself puts man in a state of bondage. It is imposed on man in the flesh, who is opposed to it. By the very fact that he has self-will, the law and that will are in conflict. Self-will is not obedience.

Verse 27 presents some difficulty to many minds, because it is generally confounded with Hagar and Sarah. But it is a separate consideration, suggested by the idea of Jerusalem above. The verse is a quotation from Isa 54:1-17, which celebrates the joy and glory of the earthly Jerusalem at the beginning of the millennium. The apostle quotes it to shew that Jerusalem had more children during the time of her desolation than when she had a husband. In the millennium Jehovah, the Lord, will be her husband. He had been so before. At present she is desolate, she bears not. Nevertheless there are more children than previously when she was married. Such were the marvellous ways of God. All Christians are reckoned, when earth takes its course again, as the children of Jerusalem, but of Jerusalem with no husband and desolate, so that the Galatians were not to own it as if God did still. Sarah was not without a husband. Here is a different order of thought. Without a husband and desolate (so that, properly speaking, she has none) Jerusalem has more children now than in the best days of her career, when Jehovah was a husband to her. For, as regards the promise, the gospel came forth from her. The assembly is not of promise. It was a counsel hid in God, of which the promises had never spoken. Its position is a yet higher one; but in this place the apostle’s instruction does not rise to that height. But we are also the children of promise, and not of the flesh. Israel after the flesh had no other pretension than to be the children of Abraham after the flesh; we are so only by promise. Now the word of God cast out the child of the bondwoman, born after the flesh, that he might not be heir with the child of promise. As to us, we are the children of promise.

John Nelson Darby — Synopsis of the Books of the Bible: the New Testament (c. 1857–1862) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1–3. That the heir, as long as he is a child. In the last verse of chapter 3, Paul speaks of heirs He now shows why the bondage of the Jewish law preceded the gospel. Even an heir is not free when a child. It is needful that he be controlled, even as though he were a servant. He is kept

(verse 2) under tutors and governors. The tutors had charge of his person; the governors were stewards who managed his estate. These had control until the time appointed by his father in his will, that he should be free and have full charge.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

Connecting Statement:

Paul continues to remind the Galatian believers that Christ came to redeem those who were under the law, and that he made them no more slaves but sons.

no different from

"the same as"

guardians

people with legal responsibility for children

trustees

people whom others trust to keep valuable items safe

translationWords

heir

servant

ancestor

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

Now I say [λεγω δε] . Introducing a continued, explanatory discussion. Comp. chapter Gal 3:17; Gal 5:16; 1Co 1:12.

The heir [ο κληρονομος] . See on inheritance, 1Pe 1:4. The article is generic as in the mediator, chapter Gal 3:20.

A child [νηπιος] . A minor. See on 1Co 3:1. Used by Paul in contrast with teleiov full grown. See Eph 4:13; 1Co 14:20; Phi 3:15. The Jews called proselytes or novices babes. See Rom 2:20.

Lord of all. Legally, by right of birth, though not actually.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.