Galatians 4:8

Danger of going back to the observance of the legal ceremonial. 8–11

8. Notwithstanding, is it so that you who once were idolaters and ignorant of God, yet after having been brought to the knowledge of the true God, are turning back to a system of ceremonial observances? If this be so, I fear the labour I have bestowed on you is thrown away.

The emphatic words in Gal_4:8-9 are ‘did service’, ‘to be in bondage’. The verb is the same in the original. The tense is different. ‘Before your conversion you were in slavery—will you go back to a state of slavery? Then you served demons—will you now submit to the bondage of weak and beggarly elements?’

knew not God] Comp. 1Th_4:5 ‘The Gentiles, which know not God’. They might have known something of Him from the universe or from tradition or intuitively, but ‘they did not like to retain God in their knowledge’, Rom_1:28.

them which by nature are no gods] The order of these words, so far as the position of the negative particle is concerned, is uncertain in the original. Adopting the A.V. we explain, ‘which by nature (in reality) are not gods, but demons’. If however the negative stand earlier in the sentence, the rendering will be, ‘which are not by nature, (not really, but only by repute) gods’. If the former be retained, comp. 1Co_10:20, “The things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God.” If the latter order be adopted, we may compare 1Co_8:5, “there be that are called gods.”

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.

Gal_4:8

Howbeit then, when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods.

The three estates of the Galatian Church

I. Before their conversion.

1. Ignorance of God. There is a twofold knowledge of God.

(1) Natural (Act_14:17; Rom_1:20), but this is

(a) imperfect,

(b) weak.

(2) Revealed: of the Father in Christ; neither of which did the Galatians possess.

2. Idolatry.

(1) False gods are set up in two ways,

(a) when that which is not God is worshipped as God,

(b) when men acknowledge the true God but do not conceive of Him as He will be conceived.

(2) There is a spiritual idolatry. What a man loves most is His god--wealth, pleasure, sin.

(3) That the sin of idolatry be rooted out there must be

(a) an illumination of the mind,

(b) a renovation of the heart.

II. In their conversion.

1. They knew God.

(1) The foundation of this knowledge: the revelation of God in Christ (Heb_1:2; 2Co_4:6).

(2) Its properties

(a) special: whereby we acknowledge Him to be our God in Christ through faith;

(b) distinct, not confused: His presence with us, providence over us, will concerning us; life is as

(c) effectual (1Jn_2:4; 1Jn_3:6).

2. God knew them.

1. This knowledge is the root of ours. We know Him because He first knew us.

2. The ground of all our hope and comfort (Isa_49:15).

III. In their apostasy, which was--

1. An intolerable sin.

2. A voluntary sin.

3. A senseless sin.

4. A common sin. (W. Perkins.)

Idolatry: its commonness

Many people have their own god; and he is much what the French mean when they talk of le bon Dieu,--very indulgent, rather weak, near at hand when we want anything, but far away out of sight when we have a mind to do wrong. Such-a god is as much an idol as if he were an image of wood or stone. (Archdeacon Hare.)

Idolatry: misrepresentation of God

It is, as it were, putting a mask on the face of God. Now if we do not make idols, still we may misrepresent God. We often speak as though God did not rejoice to see us enjoying ourselves. (T. T. Lynch.)

Idolatry: its power

Idolatry is one of the most unconquerable of all the corrupt propensities of the human soul. Miracles under the new dispensation had scarcely ceased, the apostolic fathers were scarcely cold in their graves, before idolatrous forms were superinduced upon the pure spirituality of the holy gospel. (J. B. Walker, M. A.)

Idolatry: its folly

How senseless it is! We should think that artist beside himself who would undertake to draw a likeness of something which he had never seen, nor ever could see; to paint a portrait of the air, the wind, the fragrance of flowers. And God is a Spirit. To what shall we liken Him? (D. Thomas, D.D)

The testimony of idolatry

It is a very important truth that the prevalence of idolatry is in itself a strong testimony for the existence of one supreme God. For we find idolatry in some form amongst all but the most degraded and debased of nations, such as are some of the African tribes, and it is not certain that its remnants are not traceable there. As Luther puts it: All idolatry in the world arises from this, that people by nature have had the common knowledge that there is a God, without which idolatry would remain unpractised. With this knowledge engrafted in mankind, they have (without Gods Word) fancied all manner of ungodly opinions about God. (Biblical Treasury.)

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Gal 4:8-11. Howbeit — Αλλα, but, or however, that ye Gentiles may not foolishly reject, neglect, or forfeit your privileges, as the sons of God, you ought to remember what your condition was while under the elements of the world, and compare it with your present happy state: that then, when ye knew not the one living and true God, ye did service — Performed many degrading, burdensome, irrational, and abominable acts of worship and service, unto them which by nature are no gods — “This is a true description of the idols worshipped by the heathen, for either they had no existence, being mere creatures of the imagination; or, if any of them existed, they were dead men, or evil spirits, or the luminaries of the heavens, [or other creatures of God, as most of the idols of Egypt were,] deified by human folly: and being destitute of divine perfections, they were utterly incapable of bestowing any blessing whatever on their worshippers.” But now, after ye have known the only true God — And his mind and will; or rather are known of God — Are acknowledged, approved, and accepted, as his children; how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements — Weak, utterly unable to purge your conscience from guilt, and to inspire you with filial confidence in God, or to change your nature, transform you into his likeness, and to enable you to do and suffer his will: beggarly, or poor; that is, incapable of enriching your souls with such wisdom, holiness, and happiness, as ye are heirs to, or to give you a hope of a blessed immortality after death; whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage — Though of another kind: now to these elements, as before to those idols; changing indeed the form and object of your ceremonies, but retaining many of the same low, perplexing, and unprofitable observances. Ye observe days — Jewish sabbaths; and months — New moons; and times — As that of the passover, pentecost, and the feast of tabernacles; and years — Annual solemnities. The word does not here mean sabbatic years: these were not to be observed out of the land of Canaan. This was addressed to such of the Galatians as had embraced Judaism. Some think this verse should be read interrogatively, Do ye observe? &c, because it seems to intimate a hope that it might be otherwise. As a question, it likewise expresses the apostle’s surprise that the Galatians observed these days. I am afraid of you — See on 2Co 11:2-3; lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain — As will be the case if you continue the use of these ceremonies and think to be justified by them together with Christ, Gal 5:2.

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

CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES

Gal_4:9. How turn ye again [anew]?—Making a new beginning in religion, lapsing from Christianity just in as far as they embrace legalism. To the weak and beggarly elements.—Weak is contrasted with power as to effects, and beggarly with affluence in respect of gifts. The disparaging expression is applied; not to the ritualistic externalism of heathen religions, but rather to that God-given system of ritualistic ordinances which had served the Church in her infancy. That which was appropriate food for a babe or sick man is feeble and poor for a grown man in full health.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Gal_4:8-11

Legalism a Relapse.

I. Legalism is no advance on heathenism—“When ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods” (Gal_4:8). Paganism was an elaborate system of formalism. The instinct of worship led men to sacrifice to imaginary deities—gods which were no gods. Ignorant of the true God, they multiplied deities of their own. The Galatian pagans created a strange Pantheon. There were their old, weird Celtic deities before whom our British forefathers trembled. On this ancestral faith had been superimposed the frantic rites of the Phrygian mother Cebele, with her mutilated priests, and the more genial and humanistic cultus of the Greek Olympian gods. The oppressive rites of legalism were little better than the heathen ritual. Religion degenerated into a meaningless formality. Dickens describes how in Genoa he once witnessed a great festa on the hill behind the house, when the people alternately danced under tents in the open air and rushed to say a prayer or two in an adjoining church bright with red and gold and blue and silver—so many minutes of dancing and of praying in regular turns of each.

II. Legalism, to converted heathen, is a disastrous relapse.—“After ye have known God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements?… Ye observe days and months and times and years” (Gal_4:9-10). The heathen in their blindness and ignorance might be excused, and ritualism, even to the Jews before the coming of the Messiah, might be well enough; but for Christians, who had received ampler knowledge and been illumined by the Holy Spirit, to return to the weak and beggarly elements, was irrational, monstrous! Having tasted the sweets of liberty, what folly to submit again to slavery! having reached spiritual manhood, how childish to degenerate! Legalism destroys the life of religion, and leaves only a mass of petrified forms. In his Stones of Venice, Ruskin says: “There is no religion in any work of Titian’s; there is not even the smallest evidence of religious temper or sympathies either in himself or those for whom he painted. His larger sacred themes are merely for the exhibition of pictorial rhetoric—composition and colour. His minor works are generally made subordinate to purposes of portraiture. The Madonna in the Frari church is a mere lay figure, introduced to form a link of connection between the portraits of various members of the Pesaro family who surround her. Bellini was brought up in faith; Titian in formalism. Between the years of their births the vital religion of Venice had expired.”

III. A relapse to legalism is an occasion of alarm to the earnest Christian teacher.—“I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain” (Gal_4:11). The apostle knew something of the fickleness of the Galatians and of the weakness of human nature, but was hardly prepared for such a collapse of the work which he had built up with so much anxiety and care. He saw, more clearly than they, the peril of his converts, and the prospect of their further defection filled him with alarm and grief. It meant the loss of advantages gained, of precious blessings enjoyed, of peace, of character, of influence for good. It is a painful moment when the anxious Christian worker has to mourn over failure in any degree.

Lessons.—

1. Legalism suppresses all religious growth.

2. Is a constant danger to the holiest.

3. Shows the necessity for earnest vigilance and prayer.

GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES

Gal_4:8-11. The Dilemma of Turn-coats.

I. Their first condition was one of ignorance.—

1. Ignorance of God.

(1) The light of nature is imperfect, because we know by it only some few and general things of God.

(2) It is weak, because it serves only to cut off excuse, and is not sufficient to direct us in the worship of God.

(3) It is a great and grievous sin.

2. Idolatry.—

(1) When that which is not God is placed and worshipped in the room of the true God.

(2) When men acknowledge the true God, but do not conceive Him as He will be conceived, and as He has revealed Himself.

(3) What a man loves most, cares for most, and delights in most, that is his God. Where the heart is, there is thy God.

II. Their changed condition is the knowledge of God in Christ.—

1. This is a special knowledge whereby we must acknowledge God to be our God in Christ.

2. This knowledge must be not confused, but distinct.

(1) We must acknowledge God in respect of His presence in all places.

(2) In respect of His particular providence over us.

(3) In respect of His will in all things to be done and suffered.

3. This knowledge must be an effectual and lively knowledge, working in us new affections, and inclinations.

III. Their revolt is an abandonment of salvation.—It is an exchange of knowledge for ignorance, of the substance for the shadow, of reality for emptiness—a return to weak and beggarly elements. It is the substitution of ceremonies for genuine worship.

IV. The conduct of turn-coats is an occasion of ministerial disappointment and alarm (Gal_4:11).—Work that is in vain in respect of men is not so before God.—Perkins.

Gal_4:8-9. Ignorance of God a Spiritual Bondage.—

1. However nature’s light may serve to make known there is a God and that He ought to be served, it is nothing else but ignorance, as it leaves us destitute of the knowledge of God in Christ, without which there is no salvation.

2. Men are naturally inclined to feign some representation of the Godhead by things which incur in the outward senses, from which they easily advance to give divine worship unto those images and representations.

3. Though the Levitical ceremonies were once to be religiously observed as a part of divine worship leading to Christ, yet when the false teachers did urge them as a part of necessary commanded worship, or as a part of their righteousness before God, the apostle is bold to give them the name of “weak and beggarly elements.”

4. People may advance very far in the way of Christianity, and yet make a foul retreat afterwards in the course of defection and apostasy.—Fergusson.

Gal_4:9-10. God’s Sabbatic Law antedated the Mosaic Law.—And whatever of legal bondage had been linked with the observance of the Jewish Sabbath was eliminated together with the change to the first day of the week. This at once removes the Lord’s Day from the category of days, and also of weak and beggarly elements. The mode of observance is learned from the Lord’s words, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath,” which at the same time imply, when rightly understood, the perpetual necessity for a Sabbath.—Lange.

Gal_4:11. Ministerial Anxiety—

1. Prompts to earnest efforts in imparting the highest spiritual truths.

2. Looks for corresponding results in consistency of character and conduct.

3. Is grieved with the least indications of religious failure.

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. Rebuke, passing over into Sorrowful Complaint

Gal_4:8-18

1. Interrupting the doctrinal exposition, Paul rebukes the incomprehensible backsliding into which they are falling.

(Gal_4:8-11)

8Howbeit then, when ye knew not God, ye did service [were in bondage]10 unto them which by nature are no [not] gods.11 9But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known [have been known]12 of God, how turn ye again [how is it that ye are turning again]13 to the weak and beggarly elements [rudiments], whereunto 10ye desire again [again anew] to be in bondage? Ye observe [carefully] days, and months, and times [seasons],14 and years. 11I am afraid of [respecting] you, lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain.

2. In language agitated by sorrow, he complains of the equally ungrounded estrangement, they had suffered to grow up between him and them through the selfish intrigues of the false teachers

(Gal_4:12-18.)

12Brethren, I beseech you, be [become]5as I am; for I am [also have become] as 13ye are: [.] ye have not injured me at all [ye injured me in nothing]: [yea] Ye know how through [that on account of]15infirmity of the flesh I preached the 14gospel unto you at the first [the first time]. And my [your]16temptation which was in my flesh ye despised not, nor rejected; [,] but received me as an angel of God,even as Christ Jesus. 15Where is then [or What then was]17 the blessedness ye spake of? for I bear you record, that, if it had been possible, ye would have plucked out your own [omit own]18 eyes, and have given them to me. 16Am I therefore [So then, am I] become your enemy, because I tell you the truth [or by speaking to you the truth]? 17They zealously affect you, but not well [They pay you court in no good way];19 yea, they would exclude [desire to exclude] you,20 that ye might affect 18them [may pay them court]. But it is good to be zealously affected always in a good thing [to be courted in a good way at all times], and not only when21 I am present with you.

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

Gal_4:8. Howbeit then, when ye knew not God.—This sounds as if it continued the doctrinal development, but it takes a practical turn in the very next verse. “Now no longer a servant,” Paul had said,—but, he now continues, reverting to the former time, then were ye servants—when ye did not know God. Yet this is doubtless not merely a note of time, but a statement of the ground of the then existing bondage=as certainly as ye are now no longer servants, just so certainly was there a valid ground for your being formerly servants, when ye knew not God, namely, servants of idols. But comprehensible on this account as your earlier bondage was, equally incomprehensible is your present surrendering of yourselves into bondage again. For the “not knowing God” has ceased, hence with the cause, the effect also; they are, as already said, no longer δοῦλοι, and therefore a δουλεύειν in their case has no longer any justification whatever; their new bondage to the law is now as much without warrant as was their former bondage to idols.—Ye were in bondage to them which by nature are not gods.—This indicates more precisely the kind of bondage, in which the readers, as being Gentiles, formerly found themselves. From the fact that he so distinctly states of what kind their bondage was, it appears to be beyond doubt that he could not place them, as respected their pre-Christian state, in one category with the Jewish Christians as respected the pre-Christian state of these (Gal_4:3), nor comprehend them together under “those in bondage under the rudiments of the world.” Their bondage was, it is true, also bondage, but nevertheless an essentially different, more wretched one: they were not “kept in bondage” sc. by God Himself for a while, from pedagogic reasons, under a law, but it was a bondage resulting from their not knowing God, and being servants, moreover, τοῖς φύσει μὴ οὖσι θεοῖς= to those gods, which yet are in their real nature not gods, but are only so called; they are in fact according to Paul’s teaching elsewhere, demons. [Undoubtedly there is a “bondage” here referred to somewhat different from that of Gal_4:3, but the distinction seems to be, that in addition to the pedagogic bondage, in which all were held, these Galatians, or heathen, were in even a worse condition. The sense of the two readings must be noticed; that of Rec., τοῖς μὴ φύσει οὖσι θεοῖς joins the negative μὴ with φύσει; not gods in reality, only thought to be so; but the better sustained order, τοῖς φύσει μὴ οὖσι θεοῖς joins the negative with οὖσι, asserting that they were not gods at all, did not exist; whether 1Co_10:20 justifies us in supposing that the implied antithesis is demons, is very doubtful. Meyer and Ellicott remark that this is a subjective negation.—R.]

Gal_4:9. Rather have been known of God.—A corrective climax, in order to give the following “how” still more emphasis. “This knowing on the part of God is of course not used of a theoretical knowing—for in that sense every one is an object of Divine knowledge—but of an affectionate, loving, interested knowledge; comp. 1Co_8:3; 1Co_13:12, and in the Hebrew יָדַע as frequently used. The aorist points to an act of God in the past, which was the act of adoption.” Wieseler.—How is it that ye are turning again?—Πάλιν does not belong to “the rudiments” but to “turn” therefore not as if they had already before served the στοιχεῖα but πάλιν only affirms that a second, new turning [Umwandlung] was asking place with them first from idols to God, now from God to “the rudiments of the world”=how turn you again—namely, to the στοιχεῖα?—In ἐπιστρέφετε, moreover, there is not of necessity implied the idea of turning back, but simply that of turning away; although in the expression: “Conversion from idols to God” the thought of an original apostasy from God lies at the foundation, yet it lay being rather in the background; and as ἐπιστρέφετε has in itself an entirely general signification, it could very well be applied, even in a case where there was no reference to a turning back; indeed there was scarcely another word to express this turning away, this striking into a particular course. [Schmoller, having adopted Wieseler’s view of Gal_4:3, is of course, consistent in following out that interpretation here, but it is very evident that this interpretation is difficult to defend. Here, and especially in the final clause of the verse, there must be a departure from the more obvious meanining of the words, to admit the idea that they had not relapsed as well as lapsed by their apostasy, Πάλιν does not necessarily imply a turning back to the same things but to similar things, not retro but iterum, i.e., not again to heathenism indeed, but to Judaism, both of which are included in “the rudiments of the world.” So Meyer, Alford, Ellicott, Lightfoot and others. The present tense (ἐπιοτρέφετε) is used, for the change was Still going on. Comp. Gal_1:6 (Lightfoot).—R.]—The rudiments are called weak, because they have not the power to atone for sinful man, and by communication of the Spirit to transform him inwardly, agreeably to what Paul says of the law, e.g. Gal_3:21; Rom_8:3; comp. also Heb_7:18. They are called beggarly on account of their relatively imperfect matter in comparison with the perfection and the riches of the gospel. Wieseler.—Whereunto ye desire again anew to be in bondage.—“Again” belongs to “serve,” not as if they had already once served “the rudiments” but they have already served, they have been δοῦλοι; and now they wish to be so again, although servants of another lord, and thus they wish to begin the δουλεύειν again ἄνωθεν, from the beginning, after it has scarcely as yet come to an end. [Ellicott’s statement is preferable: “They had been slaves to the rudiments in the form of heathenism; now they were desiring to enslave themselves again to the rudiments, and to commence them anew in the form of Judaism.”—R.]

Gal_4:10. Ye carefully observe.—Proof of the declaration first made: “Ye desire to be in bondage.” [The punctuation is a matter of dispute. An interrogation mark is placed at the close of the verse by Tischendorf, Lightfoot, and others, but Ellicott, Wieseler, and more lately Meyer and Alford (both of whom formerly made the verse interrogative) adopt a simple period. This suits the transition to Gal_4:11 much better.—R.] “Παρατηρεῖσθε: to observe carefully, not to celebrate, or else the objects would have been σάθθατα, νεομηνίας, ἑορτάς. The Apostle means to say, that they were not only given to the celebration, but, precisely like the Jews, were already scrupulous also as to the correct reckoning of time for their holy days. Days, with reference to the Sabbath; months, probably with reference to the new moons, not, because certain months, the seventh especially, were regarded as peculiarly holy months; seasons, within the year, with reference to the feasts; years with reference to the Sabbatical year, not the year of jubilee, which was no longer celebrated.” Wieseler.—This passage shows how far and how far not, the Galatians had as yet been led astray. [Comp. Col_2:16. Alford is scarcely warranted in saying that this verse is at variance with any and every theory of the Christian Sabbath, since the reference is evidently to Jewish observances, Jewish days, etc. Wieseler supposes that they were then celebrating a Sabbatical year, because the present tense is used, but this is pressing it too far.—R.]

Gal_4:11. I am afraid respecting you.—Not superfluously has Paul added the ὑμᾶς, but in the consciousness that it is not his own interest (as for instance his having labored fruitlessly, in itself regarded), but the readers’ that his anxiety respects. Meyer.—Luther aptly says: Lacrimas Pauli hæc verba spirant [These words breathe the tears of Paul].

Gal_4:12. Become as I.—The Apostle’s reprehension of their conduct naturally prepares the way for the admonition to a change of this. Yet he does little more than briefly indicate the exhortation, without continuing it, but goes on rather to make mention, with painful emotion, of his personal relation to the readers, as it had been and as it had now become.—The sense of the briefly expressed admonition is not quite evident: but probably=become like me in freedom from Judaistic observance; the motive to this is then added: For I also have become as ye are, like you Gentiles, through my ἐθνικῶσ ζῇν, comp. Gal_2:14, and moreover the Apostle means, doubtless: when I brought you the gospel.—[Schmoller joins Brethren, I beseech you, with what follows, but the punctuation of the E. V. is better. The meaning of the first clause seems plain. In regard to the second, “two interpretations deserve to be considered: 1. ‘For I was once in bondage as ye now are.’ I once was a Jew, as ye now Judaize. 2. ‘For I abandoned my legal ground of righteousness, I became a Gentile like you.’ The latter sense is simpler grammatically, as it understands the same verb which occurs in the former clause, ‘because,’ not ‘was.’ It is also more in character with the intense personal feeling which pervades the passage. ‘I gave up all those time-honored customs, all those dear associations of race, to become like you. I have lived as a Gentile that I might preach to you Gentiles. Will you then abandon me, when I have abandoned all for you?’ This sense is well adapted both to the tender appeal ‘Brethren, I beseech you,’ and to the eager explanation which follows: ‘Ye did me no wrong’ ” (Lightfoot).—Ye injured me in nothing.—The emphasis does not rest, on me, a mere enclitic in the Greek, as if implying that they had injured God and Christ. As the verb is aorist like those which follow, it seems best to refer this to that time of his first preaching. In that case the meaning “I have no personal grounds of complaint” (adopted by many from Chrysostom to Lightfoot) is untenable. He begins with this clause to adduce their former treatment of him, as a reason for “becoming as he is.” The next clause is not strictly adversative.—R.]

Gal_4:13. Yea ye know that on account of infirmity of the flesh.—“The only correct, because the only grammatical explanation, is: On account of weakness of the flesh, so it appears from this, that Paul was necessitated, on his first journey through Galatia, to linger there, although properly it had not lain in his plan, and that he had during this compulsory sojourn preached the gospel to the Galatians. How and from what cause he was suffering, whether from natural sickness, or from injuries undergone for the gospel’s sake, we do not know. Paul does not, by the mention of a previously unintended activity among the Galatians, work against his purpose, but rather right in the line of his purpose, since the love which received him so heartily and joyfully, must have been so much the greater, the less it was founded on the duty of a thankfulness owing for a benefit previously intended for the receivers, and for efforts made strictly on their account” (Meyer);—or rather, perhaps; “the less he, considering the impediment of his bodily condition, could expect such a reception” (Wieseler). That is, we suppose, because, through his infirmity he was in many ways impeded in his public labors, because his preaching of the gospel was a variously marred, imperfect one. He means to say then, that he preached in a state of bodily weakness. But the words themselves are not to be so translated. [Wordsworth: “On account of the infirmity in his flesh and the consequent temptation to his hearers, he was naturally led—perhaps he was guided by the Holy Spirit—to shun in the first instance the more civilized population, of Asia and Europe, as to go rather to the despised Galilees of the world and then when his reputation was established, to proceed through Macedonia to Athens, and thence to Corinth and to Ephesus, and so finally to Rome.” But this learned author can scarcely be warranted in making this the implication in πρότερον, as he does, in order to deny a second visit to Galatia.—R.] Πρότερον apparently not=formerly, referring generally to time past viewed from the present; for the addition would then be entirely superfluous; but special=the first of two definite occasions. The second time of “preaching” is, however, not the present writing of the Epistle, for εὐαγγελίζω is invariably used of oral preaching; but there is a twofold presence of the Apostle among the Galatians presupposed, to the first of which the πρότερον refers. In fact, the book of Acts also mentions two visits of Paul in Galatia, Act_16:6; Act_18:23. “Paul therefore adds τὸ πρότερον in order to designate with full distinctness the first visit, during which he founded the churches. At his second visit, also, the joyful experiences which he had had τὸ πρότερον were not repeated; the churches were already infected with Judaism” (Meyer).

Gal_4:14. With the reading πειρασμὸν ὑμῶν it appears best to set a period after ἐν τῇ σαρκί μου, and to connect the words with οἴδατε Gal_4:13=you know how you, through my bodily infirmity, and the hampering of my evangelical activity in consequence of it, were put on proof=experienced the temptation to think unfavorably of me. Unquestionably the connection is somewhat difficult. But plainly the connection with what follows is wholly inadmissible, although Meyer accepts it=you have not despised your trial in my flesh. But what is meant by despising the trial, &c.? Who could understand it at all? Meyer himself has to alter the expression somewhat, so as to mean : contemptuously repel. And besides what would be signified by the climatic expression with two words: ἐξουθενήσατε and ἐξεπτύσατε. This, however, manifestly constitutes the antithesis to the strong affirmative expression ἀλλ̓ ὡς ἅγγελον κ. τ. λ. The one as well as the other therefore refers to himself. He praises this in them, that they did not reject and even spit out him, as there was room to apprehend, but—the exact opposite—received him as an angel, nay, as Christ. [The reading ὑμῶν must be adopted, but this by no means compels us to follow the punctuation and connection just indicated. Meyer, Alford, Ellicott, Wordsworth, Lightfoot and most editors reject Lachmann’s punctuation, which makes the latter part of the verse intolerably harsh and abrupt, and does little to remove the difficulty of the former part. As Wordsworth intimates “the teacher’s infirmity is the people’s trial.” Paul’s infirmity, whatever it was, put them on trial, was the thing which tried them (πειρασμὸν ὑμῶν), and yet they did not despise and loathe him on account of this infirmity, but received him, etc.—R.]

Gal_4:15. What was then [or where then is] the blessedness ye spake of? [The E. V. gives a sufficiently correct paraphrase, if ποῦ be read.—R.] Weiseler:= How highly blessed you pronounced yourselves, sc. that you were able to hear me? --Τίς=how great. Οὖν comes in somewhat abruptly, but is explained by the emotional character of the style. Paul transfers himself vividly into the time when they received him with such veneration, and exclaims: How was it then, what a boasting of blessedness then arose?—With that agrees, as a proof, what follows: For I bear you record.—Meyer: Of what character then was you boasting of blessedness?=how inconstant? More farfetched is the explanation: On what was your boasting of blessedness founded? Others supply ἐστί: What then is your boasting of blessedness?=it is nothing any longer; it is at an end, therefore somewhat in the sense of ποῦ But the following γάρ does not agree with this.

That, if it had been possible, etc.—A proverbial mode of speech, derived from the high value and indispensableness of the eyes. Puerile is the explanation: Paul had an opthalmia, and says here, that the Gailatians, if it had been possible would have given him their sound eyes. [The E. V. “your own eyes,” giving an emphasis, unwarranted by the Greek, favors this theory of “opthalmia.” It is well defended by Dr. Brown, Horæ Subscecivæ, yet scarcely sustained by this passage.—R.]

Gal_4:16. So then, am I become your enemy.—A sharp antithesis. The simplest sense: Since you were so minded towards me, can I be afterwards regarded as your enemy only because I tell you the truth (instead of speaking according to your fancy). The sentence is introduced somewhat abruptly, or the inference implied in ἕστε is not so very obvious. It may be explained, however, from the emotional character of the language. The emphasis lies on “tell the truth;” but in the first instance “enemy” (ἐχθρός), as. constituting a contrast, must be made prominent; it therefore stands first, and by placing ἀληθεύων ὑμῖν at the end, this also is emphasized. The Apostle had already told the Galatians the truth, rebuking their errors and short-comings, before the writing of his Epistle (for this they had not seen as yet), at a second visit in person among them. [The present form of the E. V. seems against this, but the participle means “by telling the truth,” which of course admits of a part reference. Wordsworth renders “being true,” to avoid the admission of a second visit.—R. ]

Gal_4:17. They pay you court in no honest way.—[So Ellicott. Lightfoot: “As ζηλοῦν would seem to have one and the same sense throughout this passage, its more ordinary meanings with the accusative, as ‘to admire, emulate,’ must be discarded. It signifies rather ‘to busy one’s self about, take interest in,’ a sense which lies close to the original meaning of ζῆλος if correctly derived from ζέω.” So Schmoller liebeifern.—R.] “They also, it is true [sc. the false teachers; for we usually abstain from naming; those whose very names produce in us dislike and aversion (Calvin)] will fain have an affectionate zeal towards you, and contend for the possession of you: but in view of the truth, that, while they will bring you out of affectionate zeal, is worse than what you already have, we must say; they are zealous for you to no good.” Ewald.—They desire to exclude you,—first from me, and thus from the pure gospel to them and their teaching.—“Iva, (that) with the indicative present is certainly harsh; but Meyer’s interpretation is altogether too forced. He feels himself obliged on account of this harshness to take” iva=ubi, in quo statu; whereby, by which exclusion, when it has taken place, you, with your zeal are directed to them as objects of your interest. [The final sense of ἵνα, i.e., they do it for this purpose, is preferable; the indicative being regarded by Alford and Ellicott as a solecism, though Lightfoot remarks that this usage, while quite unclassical, is often found in later writers. Meyer, insists very strongly however upon the local sense.—R.]

Gal_4:18. But it is good to be courted in a good way at all times.—The “courting” of which they are the objects, he has been obliged to censure, and accordingly he adds (turning to the readers themselves): It is indeed good (καλόν) to be an object of the affectionate zeal of others, good to be zealously loved—but only in a good thing. It, is only good to be zealously loved in a good laudable cause, and for the sake of it, but not as now, on account of an evil cause, namely, apostacy from the truth. This thought Paul completes by the addition: At all times it is good to be loved for the sake of a good cause. But (he says) more accurately considered, it is only good, when one is zealously loved at all times, for the sake of a good cause, and not merely for a while, or at certain times, i. e., when one is always worthy of zealous love (for the sake of a good cause). This thought however, Paul does not leave thus general, but suddenly—disturbing the concinuity of the discourse, though quite in congruity with the emotion expressed in the language of this section—gives it a definite application—not only when I am present with you.—Then you showed yourselves worthy of love, but, alas, not now, when I am not with you.—Meyer and Wieseler understand the beginning of the sentence thus: good it is, that zeal is shown, etc.; and not so that the Galatians are understood as the objects of the zed, but so that the zeal ἐν καλῷ is opposed to the zeal of the false teachers, which was ἐν κακῷ, But justice is not thus done to the passive infinitive. [This verse has caused much discussion. The following results seem clear: 1. That the verb ζηλοῦν is to retain the same meaning throughout. 2. That the last infinitive is passive, and the Galatians the object. But 3. the force of ἐν καλῷ is doubtful. It may be (a) merely adverbial (Ellicott). “It is a good thing to be the object of courting in an honest way (as you are by me, though not by them) at all times, and not merely when I happen to be with you.” (b) It may indicate the sphere, in contrast with that of the false teachers (Alford). It is a good thing (for you) to be the objects of this zeal, in a good cause, at all times and by every body, not only when I am present with you. I do not grudge the court that is paid you. Only let them do it in an honorable cause, (c) Or the phrase may be pressed, as is done by Schmoller, to imply a contrast between their present and their former state. Lightfoot prefers a view similar to this, but, as he admits, it supplies too much. As (b) is entirely consistent with the requirements of 1, and 2, it seems preferable.—R.]

[Many commentators (including Bengel, Wordsworth, Lightfoot) put a comma at the close of Gal_4:18, thus joining the next verse most closely with this section. There is a sufficient change of tone and thought to justify a full stop, but it seems doubtful whether a new section or paragraph should begin with Gal_4:19. Most commentators, even those who separate Gal_4:18-19, begin the new paragraph with Gal_4:21; with more propriety apparently. Schmoller, however, joins Gal_4:19 with Gal_4:21, and divides the sections accordingly. While the matter is not of sufficient moment to warrant an alteration of his arrangement, the usual division presents the Apostle’s thought more satisfactorily. See Exeg. Notes on Gal_4:19-20 in the next section.—R.]

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL.

1. The characteristic of heathenism is, lack of the knowledge of God. A heathen was before his conversion an atheist (Eph_2:12). True they had a certain religiosity, but “Knowledge of God” is for Paul at least, a very definite positive idea, essentially distinct from that religiosity. What the heathen worship are by nature not gods.—A hint not to overvalue in an unscriptural manner the religious feeling of the heathen world, which manifested itself in idolatrous worship; also not to see in it too readily anything positive, a prophecy of the true knowledge of God, something only different from it in degree. Rather, it is something negative, a having lost the truth, or at most an echo of that truth which in its main substance is lost. For, according to Romans 1, the heathen also had indeed originally a knowledge of God, but this before they became heathen by their being servants to them which are by nature not gods; with the coming in of this servitude they lost the knowledge of God. Very different then was the standing of the Israelite from that of the heathen, i. e., although he was “in bondage under the rudiments of the world,” yes, “shut up under sin,” he was yet one “knowing God,” not “without God” (ἅθεος) in the world.

2. Confidence between teachers and hearers.—“There must be more depending on hearty confidence between teachers and hearers, than is commonly thought, because the Apostle so solicitously strives for it, and assures them he has not lost his affection for them, but is still mindful of their first love.” Rieger.—The preacher, it is true, is in the first place only the bearer and bringer of the divine word, and it is primarily this itself, which opens and wins hearts. The man, compared with the word which he brings, falls entirely into the background, as appears from the very declarations of Paul in this section. Had not the word which he brought, in itself won hearts, had not these conceived confidence in the word as such, for the sake of its contents, Paul himself would have found no access among them; for in his personal appearance, in view of the weakness of the flesh, with which he came, there was at least nothing captivating to the hearts of men.—But on the other hand, simultaneously with the receiving of the word, there is also formed a personal relation to the bringer of it; he is not a mere instrument, but a personality, and in his bringing of the word comes into consideration as such. A bond of confidence and love is knit between the hearer and the teacher; to him who brings what searches the heart in its inmost recesses, who proclaims to us the word of salvation and eternal life, our heart must also necessarily turn in love, if it has suffered the word to gain any hold of it whatever. And on the other hand the personal bond which is formed, will then in its turn have an essential influence in promoting the reception of the word and steadfastness in faith. The preacher may also, as Paul shows, expressly appeal to this personal relation, may and should value highly the love which he experiences, may—not indeed affect an injured tone when it is withdrawn from him, but may well, when the Church has in any way gone astray, use the personal relation that has been formed, as a motive in his admonitions.

[3. Observance of days, etc. The scrupulous observance of “days and months and seasons and years,” is to the Apostle a token that his labor in the gospel has not resulted in appropriate effects. These things belong to “the weak and beggarly elements,” to which the Galatians were returning. That there is no allusion to the observance of the Lord’s Day is evident, for this cannot be classed among these “rudiments,” to which they desire to be again anew in bondage. It could not be classed among “heathen rudiments,” for they knew nothing of it; nor with “the bondage of the law,” for God’s Sabbatic law ante-dated the Mosaic law (comp. the fourth commandment, “Remember”). And whatever of legal bondage had been linked with the observance of the Jewish Sabbath was eliminated together with the change to the first day of the week. This at once removes the Lord’s Day from the category of “days” (Gal_4:10), and also of “weak and beggarly elements” (Gal_4:9). The mode of observance is learned from the Lord’s words: “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath,” which at the same time imply, when rightly understood, the perpetual necessity for a Sabbath.—R.]

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

Gal_4:8. Cramer:—“To reflect often on our former miserable condition of heathenism, serves to move us to thanksgiving for the benefit received.” Luther:—There is a twofold knowledge of God, a common and a special. The common all men have by nature, in that they know that there is a God, who has made heaven and earth, &c. But how our Lord God is minded towards us, what He will give us and do for us, that we may be redeemed from sin and be saved, of that men know nothing. They know not what pleases or displeases God, and so adore, instead of the actual God, something that their own heart has dreamed out and feigningly devised, but which, in very truth, is naught.—[Brown:—In false religion in all its forms, nothing is more remarkable than its enslaving, degrading influence on the minds of its votaries.—R.]

Gal_4:9. Luther:—We are known of God, rather than we know Him. For what we do towards such knowledge is nothing else than to hold still, and let God occupy Himself with us, namely, by giving us His word, which we lay hold of through the faith which He also works in us, and thus to become God’s children.—We shall not fare better than the dear Apostles themselves fared, who in their lifetime had to see the congregations that had been built up through their office with much pains and labor, so sadly torn down, that for very pity their heart was ready to break.—It may easily and quickly happen, that one apostatize from the truth. For even Christians, who are in earnest as to sound doctrine, consider not sufficiently, how precious and most needful a treasure is the right and true knowledge of Christ. Besides there are exceeding few among those (hat hear the preaching of faith, that are tried by the holy cross and spiritual conflict, and that sometimes have with sin, death and devil a skirmish, but the greater part live on in all security, without all combat and strife. So long as they have sound teachers with them, they speak according to them; but when these their true teachers are away, and the wolves in sheeps’ clothing come creeping in, at once that takes place with them, which happened to the Galatians, namely, that they are soon and easily seduced and perverted.—When the foundation is destroyed, it is then all one, whether men turn themselves to the law, or to idols. Whoever falls from grace upon the law, has as hard a fall as he that falls from grace into heathenism, for out of Christ there, is nothing else than idolatry and a vain image of God.—“To the weak and beggarly rudiments.” When the law accomplishes its right and fitting work or office, it accuses and condemns men; then it is not a weak and beggarly element, but strong and rich, yea, it is an immeasurable, inviucible power and wealth, against which the conscience is indeed weak and poor.—It is most admirable that St. Paul speaks so contemptuously of the law. For he does it to this end, that they who will through the law be made righteous, may from day to day become still weaker and more beggarly. For they are of themselves weak and beggarly, i. e., by nature children of wrath and guilty of perdition, and lay hold then on that which also is nothing else than merely infirmity and beggary, whereby they will fain become strong and rich.

Gal_4:10. “Ye carefully observe days.” Here might some one say: If the good Galatians did so great a sin, in that they observed days, months, seasons, &c, how comes it then, that ye do not also sin, who yet do the like? Answer: in that we keep Sunday, Christmas, Easter, and the like days of solemnity or festivals, we do it with all freedom, we burden with such ceremonies no one’s conscience, nor teach, that men must needs keep them, in order to be thereby justified and saved, or to make satisfaction for sin. But on this account we keep them, that matters may go on in the church in good discipline and order, and that outward unity may not be sundered (for inwardly we have another unity). But the principal cause is this, that the ministry may remain in its full exercise, and that the people may have their certain appointed time, when they may come together, hear God’s word, and therefrom know God. Item, that they may take the sacrament, pray in common for all necessities of all Christendom, and may thank our dear Lord God for all His benefits. Berlenb. Bible:—In such things that is even against Christianity which is urged upon men over and above Christianity. He that can comprehend what mischief the evangelical spirit sufers from such patch work, has made great progress.

Gal_4:11. Heubner:—The teacher labors upon an uncertainty, knows not what he accomplishes, he sows upon hope.

Gal_4:12-20. Rieger:—As much depends on such earnest remonstrances for opening the hearers’ hearts, as on the most convincing arguments.

Gal_4:12. Spener:—A true pastor is sensitive in no particular, save in what is contrary to the honor of God, and the salvation of His flock.—Luther:—That he gives the Galatians so good words, is as much as to mix and temper the bitter wormwood drink so with honey and sugar that it may become sweet and pleasant. Even so do parents, when they have well flogged their children, give them good words, give them gingerbread, apples, pears, nuts and the like, that the children may take note and understand that their parents have at heart their good.

Gal_4:13-14. It may well be that human reason stumbles and starts back, when it beholds the slight, contemptible and weak nature of the dear Christians, wherein there is so much of suffering, yea, the world has ever counted all God’s servants for great fools, who will fain comfort, help and counsel others, item, inasmuch as they boast of so great heavenly possessions and treasures, of righteousness, power, strength, victory over sin, death and all evil, of everlasting joy, &c., and are yet the poorest beggars, and moreover weak, troubled and despised.—Starke:—True servants of the gospel are angels of God, as having the name of messengers and heralds of the divine will, even as also the invisible and heavenly spirits bear the name of angels from a like office.—Lange:—If teachers wish to be looked on as angels of God, and in a certain sense as Christ Himself, they must also approve themselves as good angels, and not as Satan’s angels and servants, and discharge their office with such purity, as they have Paul for an example.—[Burkitt:—It is an high commendation to a people, when neither poverty nor deformity, nor any deficiency, which may render a minister of the gospel base and contemptible in the estimation of the world, can possibly diminish any thing of that respect which they know to be due and payable unto him.—R.]

Gal_4:15. Heubner:—Let the apostate reflect, when the was happiest, how blessed he was before he fell.—Berlenb. Bib.:—As indeed we are owing more than the eyes of the body, to those that have opened to us the eyes of the soul.—Hedinger:—A beautiful proof of faith, to love those from the heart, that plant faith within us! O the horror, that some would gladly tear out tongue and eyes from those that teach us the word of the kingdom of heaven!—Cramer:—It is everywhere the same, that new preachers are welcome, and soon get followers and a great concourse. While the sign is new, it is hung against the wall; but when it is old, it is thrown under the bench.—[Brown:—When the gospel is remarkably successful, the danger is not of converts not being sufficiently attached, but of their being inordinately attached, to the minister who has been the instrument of conveying to them so great a benefit. The being greatly applauded, is scarcely any proof that a minister has been successful; the being highly esteemed and cordially loved, is a considerably strong presumption that he has; the being regarded with indifference and dislike, is a clear proof that he has not.—R.]

Gal_4:16. Heubner:—Him who tells us the truth, we ought to count for our true and best friend.—Luther:—In the world matters go altogether strangely and against reason, namely, he that speaks truth becomes an unwelcome guest, yea, is counted for an enemy; but this is not so among good friends, and still less among Christians.—Starke:—He that bates any one, because he tells him the truth, such an one betrays himself very clearly as no child of God.

Gal_4:17. Luther:—This is the way of all false spirits, to put on a friendly behavior, and give people the best words, so as to get a hold. When they first come creeping in, they swear most fervently, that they seek nothing else than alone how they may further God’s honor and men’s salvation; they promise to those that receive their teaching, that they shall certainly be saved. And with such assumed appearance of godliness and sheep’s clothing, the ravening wolves do immensely great harm to the Christian church, where pastors are not active and vigilant and earnest to withstand them.—Rieger:—Great pains given to any thing, great certainty assumed concerning it, is indeed something very taking to men’s minds; but zeal alone gives no certain proof of truth. The doctrine is not to be judged according to the zeal, but the zeal according to the doctrine. The zeal does not make the cause good, but the cause must make the zeal good.—[Bunyan:—Zeal without knowledge is like a mettled horse without eyes or like a sword in a madman’s hands.—Riccaltoun:—In reading the history of the church it is hard to say whether what has gone, and still goes under the name of zeal, has done more good or hurt to religion.—Burkitt:—The old practice has ever been amongst seducers, first to alienate the people’s minds from their own teachers, and next get themselves looked upon as alone, and only worthy to have room in the people’s hearts.—R.]

Gal_4:18. Starke:—Zeal for good must be enduring.—This is a human feeling, which exists in many, even pious souls. They are zealous in good, when faithful teachers are present, but when they are absent, or it may be dead, they : slacken in their zeal.

Footnotes:

[10]1 Gal_4:8.—[The idea of servitude rather than service is more accordant with the connection of thought.—R.]

[11]Gal_4:8.—Lachmann, Tischendorf read τοῖς φύσει μὴοὖσι θεοῖς, instead of τοῖς μὴ φύσει οὖσι θεοῖς. Rec. [The former reading is that of א. A, B, C, and modern editors generally.—R.]

[12]Gal_4:9.—[The tense here is the same as in the preceding clause, and the translation must conform.—R.]

[13]Gal_4:9.—[The construction is like Gal_2:14.—The rendering above given retains the force of the present: ye are in process of turning.—R.]

[14]Gal_4:12.—[Τἰνεσθε—“become.” In the next clause the same verb is to be supplied. The better division of verses would join the last clause with Gal_4:13, as the better pointing transposes the period and colon.—R.]

[15]Gal_4:13.—[This rendering of διʼ ἀσθένειαν may now be considered as established.—R.]

[16]Gal_4:14.—The reading τὸν πειρ.ὑμῶν ἐν τῆ σαρκί μου is followed. So א [1A. B. D.1 F., Lachmann, Tischendorf, Meyer, Bagge, Ellicott, Alford, Wordsworth, Lightfoot.—R.] Rec. reads τὸν πειρ. μου τὸν έν τῆ σαρκί μου; its, sense is: You have not despised my bodily temptation=me on account of my sickness, by which I was tempted of God. But M.S. authority is strongest for ὑ μῶν. Evidently this was not understood, and the Recepta is a conjectural emendation, based on a false interpretation. Πειρασμόν was understood as calamitas, as an infirmity in the body of Paul himself, because in Gal_4:13 this is spoken of; and so ὑμῶν had either to be entirely erased, or replaced by μου; and τόυ added to connect ἐν σαρκί μου with πειρασμόν. On the sense of the approved reading, see Exeg. Notes. [Schmoller follows Lachmann’s punctuation, which puts a full stop after σαρκί μου, but this is objectionable, and not adopted by later editors. It is better to put a comma only after “rejected.”—R.]

[17]Gal_4:15.—There are three readings: 1) The Recepta, τίς οὖν ἧν ὁ μακαρισμὸς ὑμῶν. 2) The same, only without ἧν. 3) Ποῦ οὗν ὁ μακαρ.ὑμῶν without ἦν which gives no sense with ποῦ. The last reading is well supported, and found in א., but seems to be a very old gloss; for a change of ποῦ into the more difficult τίς cannot readily be explained. Of the two others, 2) seems preferable, though we cannot definitely decide, [Ποῦ is adopted by Tischendorf. Alford, Wordsworth, Lightfoot; τίς, without ἧν by Ellicott. If we adopt 1) or 2), the E. V. must be altered: “What then was”—i. e. of what kind was, etc.—R.]

[18]Gal_4:15.—[“Own” is not warranted by the simple τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς ύμῶν.—R.]

[19]Gal_4:17.—[On the alterations, Gal_4:17-18, see Exeg. Notes. Ellicott’s translation has been adopted only in part.—R.]

[20]Gal_4:17.—Ἡμᾶς [instead of ὑμᾶς.—R.] is an unnecessary conjecture [of Beza’s].

[21]Gal_4:18.—The reading ζηλοῦσθε is an unnecessary conjecture in all probability, though found in א. B. [Rejected by all editors of importance. Meyer, Ellicott, Wordsworth, read τὸ ζηλοῦσθαι; Lachmann, Alford, Lightfoot omit the article. It probably disappeared with the incorrect reading of the verb in some MSS.—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 17

THE RETURN TO BONDAGE.

Gal_4:8-11

"Sons of God, whom He made His heirs in Christ, how are you turning back to legal bondage!" Such is the appeal with which the Apostle follows up his argument. "Foolish Galatians," we seem to hear him say again, "who has bewitched you into this?" They forget the call of the Divine grace; they turn away from the sight of Christ crucified; nay, they are renouncing their adoption into the family of God. Paul knew something of the fickleness of human nature; but he was not prepared for this. How can men who have tasted liberty prefer slavery, or full-grown sons desire to return to the "rudiments" of childhood? After knowing God as He is in Christ, is it possible that these Galatians have begun to dote on ceremonial, to make a religion of "times and seasons"; that they are becoming devotees of Jewish ritual? What can be more frivolous, more irrational than this? On such people Pauls labours seem to be thrown away. "You make me fear," he says, "that I have toiled for you in vain."

In this expostulation two principles emerge with especial prominence.

1. First, that knowledge of God, bringing spiritual freedom, lays upon us higher responsibilities. "Then indeed," he says, "not knowing God, you were in bondage to false gods. Your heathen life was in a sense excusable. But now something very different is expected from you, since you have come to know God."

We are reminded of the Apostles memorable words spoken at Athens: "The times of ignorance God overlooked". {Acts 17} "Ye say, We see," said Jesus; "your sin remaineth". {Joh_9:41} Increased light brings stricter judgment. If this was true of men who had merely heard the message of Christ, how much more of those who had proved its saving power. Ritualism was well enough for Pagans, or even for Jews before Christs coming and the outpouring of His Spirit-but for Christians! For those into whose hearts God had breathed the Spirit of His Son, who had learned to "worship God in the Spirit and to have no confidence in the flesh"-for Pauls Galatians to yield to the legalist "persuasion" was a fatal relapse. In principle, and in its probable issue, this course was a reverting toward their old heathenism.

The Apostle again recalls them, as he does so often his children in Christ, to the time of their conversion. They had been, he reminds them, idolaters; ignorant of the true God, they were "enslaved to things that by nature are no gods." Two definitions Paul has given of idolatry: "There is no idol in the world"; and again, "The things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God". {1Co_8:4; 1Co_10:20} Half lies, half devilry: such was the popular heathenism of the day. "Gods many and lords many" the Galatian Pagans worshipped-a strange Pantheon. There were their old, weird Celtic deities, before whom our British forefathers trembled. On this ancestral faith had been superimposed the frantic rites of the Phrygian Mother, Cybele, with her mutilated priests; and the more genial and humanistic cultus of the Greek Olympian gods. But they were gone, the whole "damned crew," as Milton calls them; for those whose eyes had seen the glory in the face of Jesus Christ, their spell was broken; heaven was swept clear and earth pure of their foul presence. The old gods are dead. No renaissance of humanism, no witchcraft of poetry can reanimate them, To us after these eighteen centuries, as to the Galatian believers, "there is one God the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through Him." A man who knew the Old Testament, to say nothing of the teaching of Christ, could never sacrifice to Jupiter and Mercurius any more, nor shout "Great is Diana of the Ephesians." They were painted idols, shams; he had seen through them. They might frighten children in the dark; but the sun was up. Christianity destroyed Paganism as light kills darkness. Paul did not fear that his readers would slide back into actual heathenism. That was intellectually impossible. There are warnings in his Epistles against the spirit of idolatry, and against conformity with its customs; but none against return to its beliefs.

The old heathen life was indeed a slavery, full of fear and degradation. The religious Pagan could never be sure that he had propitiated his gods sufficiently, or given to all their due. They were jealous and revengeful, envious of human prosperity, capable of infinite wrong-doing. In the worship of many of them acts were enjoined revolting to the conscience. And this is true of Polytheism all over the world. It is the most shameful bondage ever endured by the soul of man.

But Pauls readers had "come to know God." They had touched the great Reality. The phantoms had vanished; the Living One stood before them. His glory shone into their hearts "in the face of Jesus Christ." This, whenever it takes place, is for any man the crisis of his life-when he comes to know God, when the God-consciousness is born in him. Like the dawn of self-consciousness, it may be gradual. There are those, the happy few, who were "born again" so soon as they were born to thought and choice; they cannot remember a time when they did not love God, when they were not sensible of being "known of Him." But with others, as with Paul, the revelation was made at an instant, coming like a lightning-flash at midnight. But unlike the lightning it remained. Let the manifestation of God come how or when it may, it is decisive. The man into whose soul the Almighty has spoken His I Am, can never be the same afterwards. He may forget; he may deny it: but he has known God; he has seen the light of life. If he returns to darkness, his darkness is blacker and guiltier than before. On his brow there rests in all its sadness "Sorrows crown of sorrow, remembering happier things."

Offences venial, excusable hitherto, from this time assume a graver hue. Things that in a lower stage of life were innocent, and even possessed religious value, may now be unlawful, and the practice of them a declension, the first step in apostasy. What is delightful in a child becomes folly in a grown man. The knowledge of God in Christ has raised us in the things of the spirit to mans estate, and it requires that we should "put away childish things," and amongst them ritual display and sacerdotal officiations, Pagan, Jewish, or Romish. These things form no part of the knowledge of God, or of the "true worship of the Father."

The Jewish "rudiments" were designed for men who had not known God as Christ declares Him, who had never seen the Saviours cross. Jewish saints could not worship God in the Spirit of adoption. They remained under the spirit of servitude and fear; their conceptions were so far "weak and poor" that they supposed the Divine favour to depend on such matters as the "washing of cups and pots," and the precise number of feet that one walked on the Sabbath. These ideas belonged to a childish stage of the religious life. Pharisaism had developed to the utmost this lower element of the Mosaic system, at the expense of everything that was spiritual in it. Men who had been brought up in Judaism might indeed, after conversion to Christ, retain their old customs as matters of social usage or pious habit, without regarding them as vital to religion. With Gentiles it was otherwise. Adopting Jewish rites de novo, they must do so on grounds of distinct religious necessity. For this very reason the duty of circumcision was pressed upon them. It was a means, they were told, essential to their spiritual perfection, to the attainment of full Christian privileges. But to know God by the witness of the Holy Spirit of Christ, as the Galatians had done, was an experience sufficient to show that this "persuasion" was false. It did not "come of Him that called them." It introduced them to a path the opposite of that they had entered at their conversion, a way that led downwards and not upwards, from the spiritual to the sensuous, from the salvation of faith to that of self-wrought work of law.

"Known God," Paul says, -"or rather were known of God." He hastens to correct himself. He will not let an expression pass that seems to ascribe anything simply to human acquisition. "Ye have not chosen Me," said Jesus; "I have chosen you." So the Apostle John: "Not that we loved God, but that He loved us." This is true through the entire range of the Christian life. "We apprehend that for which we were apprehended by Christ Jesus." Our love, our knowledge-what are they but the sense of the Divine love and knowledge in us? Religion is a bestowment, not an achievement. It is "God working in us to will and work for the sake of His good pleasure." In this light the gospel presented itself at first to the Galatians. The preaching of the Apostle, the vision of the cross of Christ, made them sensible of Gods living presence. They. felt the gaze of an infinite purity and compassion, of an All-wise, All-pitiful Father, fixed upon them. He was calling them, slaves of idolatry and sin, "into the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ." The illuminating glance of God pierced to their inmost being. In that light God and the soul met, and knew each other.

And now, after this profound, transforming revelation, this sublime communion with God, will they turn back to a life of puerile formalities, of slavish dependence and fear? Is the strength of their devotion to be spent, its fragrance exhaled in the drudgery of legal service? Surely they know God better than to think that He requires this. And He who knew them, as they have proved, and knows what was right and needful for them, has imposed no such burden. He granted them the rich gifts of His grace-the Divine sonship, the heavenly heirship-on terms of mere faith in Christ, and without legal stipulation of any kind. Is it not enough that God knows them, and counts them for His children!

So knowing, and so known, let them be content. Let them seek only to keep themselves in the love of God, and in the comfort of His Spirit. Raised to this high level, they must not decline to a lower. Their heathen "rudiments" were excusable before; but now even Jewish "rudiments" are things to be left behind.

2. It further appears that the Apostle saw an element existing in Judaism common to it with the ethnic religions. For he says that his readers, formerly "enslaved to idols," are "now turning back to the weak and beggarly rudiments, to which they would fain be in bondage over again."

"The rudiments" of Gal_4:9 cannot, without exegetical violence, be detached from "the rudiments of the world" of Gal_4:3. And these latter plainly signify the Judaic rites (see chapter 16.). The Judaistic practices of the Galatians were, Paul declares, a backsliding toward their old idolatries. We can only escape this construction of the passage at the cost of making the Apostles remonstrance inconsequent and pointless. The argument of the letter hitherto has been directed with concentrated purpose against Judaic conformity. To suppose that just at this point, in making its application, he turns aside without notice or explanation to an entirely different matter, is to stultify his reasoning. The only ground for referring the "days and seasons" of Gal_4:10 to any other than a Jewish origin, lies in the apprehension that such reference disparages the Christian Sabbath.

But how, we ask, was it possible for Paul to use language which identifies the revered law of God with rites of heathenism, which he accounted a "fellowship with demons"? Bishop Lightfoot has answered this question in words: "we cannot do better than quote." The Apostle regards the higher element in heathen religion as corresponding, however imperfectly, to the lower in the Mosaic law. For we may consider both the one and the other as made up of two component parts, the spiritual and the ritualistic. Now viewed in their spiritual aspect, there is no comparison between the one and the other. In this respect the heathen religions, so far as they added anything of their own to that sense of dependence on God which is innate in man and which they could not entirely crush, were wholly bad. On the contrary, in the Mosaic law the spiritual element was most truly divine. But this does not enter into our reckoning here. For Christianity has appropriated all that was spiritual in its predecessor…The ritualistic element alone remains to be considered, and here is the meeting-point of Judaism and Heathenism. In Judaism this was as much lower than its spiritual element, as in Heathenism it was higher. Hence the two systems approach within such a distance that they can, under certain limitations, be classed together. They have at least so much in common that a lapse into Judaism can be regarded as a relapse into the position of unconverted Heathenism. Judaism was a system of bondage like Heathenism. Heathenism had been a disciplinary training like Judaism" (Commentary in loc.).

This line of explanation may perhaps be carried a step further. Judaism was rudimentary throughout. A religion so largely ritualistic could not but be spiritually and morally defective. In its partial apprehension of the Divine attributes, its limitation of Gods grace to a single people, its dim perception of immortality, there were great deficiencies in the Jewish creed. Its ethical code, moreover, was faulty; it contained "precepts given for the hardness of mens hearts"-touching, for example, the laws of marriage, and the right, of revenge. There was not a little in Judaism, especially in its Pharisaic form, that belonged to a half-awakened conscience, to a rude and sensuous religious faculty. Christ came to "fulfil the law"; but in that fulfilment He did not shrink from correcting it. He emended the letter of its teaching, that its true spirit might be elicited. For an enlightened Christian who had learned of Jesus the "royal law, the law of liberty," to conform to Judaism was unmistakably to "turn back." Moreover, it was just the weakest and least spiritual part of the system of Moses that the legalist teachers inculcated on Gentile Christians; while their own lives fell short of its moral requirements. {Gal_6:12}

Mosaism had been in the days of its inspiration and creative vigour the great opponent of idolatry. It was the Lords witness throughout long centuries of heathen darkness and oppression, and by its testimony has rendered splendid service to God and man. But from the standpoint of Christianity a certain degree of resemblance begins to be seen underlying this antagonism. The faith of the Israelitish people combated idolatry with weapons too much like its own. A worldly and servile element remained in it. To one who has advanced in front, positions at an earlier stage of his progress lying apart and paths widely divergent now assume the same general direction. To resort either to Jewish or heathen rites meant to turn back from Christ. It was to adopt principles of religion obsolete and unfit for those who had known God through Him. What in its time and for its purpose was excellent-nay, indispensable-in doctrine and in worship in time also had "decayed and waxed old." To tie the living spirit of Christianity to dead forms is to tie it to corruption.

"Weak and beggarly rudiments"-it is a hard sentence; and yet what else were Jewish ceremonies and rules of diet, in comparison with "righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost"? What was circumcision, "now that there was no longer Jew and Greek"? What was there in Saturday more than in any other day of the week, if it ceased to be a sign between the Lord of the Sabbath and His people? These things were, as Paul saw them, the cast-clothes of religion. For Gentile Christians the history of the Jewish ordinances had much instruction; but their observance was no where more binding than that of heathen ceremonies. Even in the ancient times God valued them only as they were the expression of a devout, believing spirit. "Your new moons and your appointed feasts," He had said to an ungodly generation, "My soul hateth". {Isa_1:14} And was He likely to accept them now, when they were enforced by ambition and party-spirit, at the expense of His Churchs peace; when their observance turned mens thoughts away from faith in His Son, and in the power of His life-giving Spirit? There is nothing too severe, too scornful for Paul to say of these venerable rites of Israel, now that they stand in the way of a living faith and trammel the freedom of the sons of God. He tosses them aside as the swaddling-bands of the Churchs infancy-childish fetters too weak to hold the limbs of grown men. "He brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made; for the children of Israel did burn incense to it; and he called it Nehushtan-a piece of brass." {2Ki_18:4} Brave Hezekiah! Paul does the same with the whole ceremonial of Moses. "Beggarly rudiments," he says. What divine refreshment there is in a blast of wholesome scorn! It was their traditions, their ritual that the Judaists worshipped, not the Holy One of Israel. "They would compass sea and land to make one proselyte," and then "make him twofold more the child of hell than themselves." This was the only result that the success of the Judaistic agitation could have achieved.

In thus decrying Jewish ordinances, the Apostle by implication allows a certain value to the rites of Paganism. The Galatians were formerly in bondage to "them that are no gods." Now, he says, they are turning again to the like servitude by conforming to Mosaic legalism. They wish to come again under subjection to "the weak and poor rudiments." In Galatian heathenism Paul appears to recognise "rudiments" of truth and a certain preparation for Christianity. While Judaic rites amounted to no more than rudiments of a spiritual faith, there were influences at work in Paganism that come under the same category. Paul believed that "God had not left Himself without witness to any." He never treated heathen creeds with indiscriminate contempt, as though they were utterly corrupt and worthless. Witness his address to the "religious" Athenians, and to the wild people of Lycaonia. {Act_14:15-17; Act_17:22-31} He finds his text in "certain of your own (heathen) poets." He appeals to the sense of a Divine presence "not far from any one of us"; and declares that though God was "unknown" to the nations, they were under His guidance and were "feeling after Him." To this extent Paul admits a Preparatio evangelica in the Gentile world; he would have been prepared, with Clement of Alexandria and Origen, and with modern students of comparative religion, to trace in the poets and wise men of Greece, in the lawgivers of Rome, in the mystics of the East, presentiments of Christianity, ideas and aspirations that pointed to it as their fulfilment. The human race was not left in total darkness beyond the range of the light shining on Zions hill. The old Pagans, "suckled in a creed outworn," were not altogether God-forsaken. They too, amid darkness like the shadow of death, had "glimpses that might make them less forlorn." And so have the heathen still. We must not suppose either that revealed religion was perfect from the beginning; or that the natural religions were altogether without fragments and rudiments of saving truth.

"Days you are scrupulously keeping, and months, and seasons, and years,"-the weekly sabbath, the new moon, the annual festivals, the sacred seventh year, the round of the Jewish Calendar. On these matters the Galatians had, as it seems, already fallen in with the directions of the Jewish teachers. The word by which the Apostle describes their practice, παρατηρεισθε, denotes, besides the fact, the manner and spirit of the observance-an assiduous, anxious attention, such as the spirit of legal exaction dictated. These prescriptions the Galatians would the more readily adopt, because in their heathen life they were accustomed to stated celebrations. The Pagan Calendar was crowded with days sacred to gods and divine heroes. This resemblance justified Paul all the more in taxing them with relapsing towards heathenism.

The Church of later centuries, both in its Eastern and Western branch, went far in the same direction. It made the keeping of holy days a prominent and obligatory part of Christianity; it has multiplied them superstitiously and beyond all reason. Amongst the rest it incorporated heathen festivals, too little changed by their consecration.

Pauls remonstrance condemns in principle the enforcement of sacred seasons as things essential to salvation, in the sense in which the Jewish Sabbath was the bond of the ancient covenant. We may not place even the Lords Day upon this footing. Far different from this is the unforced and grateful celebration of the First Day of the week, which sprang up in the Apostolic Church, and is assumed by the Apostles Paul and John. {1Co_16:2; Rev_1:10} The rule of the seventh days rest has so much intrinsic fitness, and has brought with it so many benefits, that after it had been enforced by strict law in the Jewish Church for so long, its maintenance could now be left, without express re-enactment, as a matter of freedom to the good sense and right feeling of Christian believers, "sons of the resurrection." Its legislative sanction rests on grounds of public propriety and national well-being, which need not to be asserted here. Wherever the "Lord of the Sabbath" rules, His Day will be gladly kept for His sake.

The Apostle in protecting Gentile liberties is no enemy to order in worship and outward life. No one can justly quote his authority in opposition to such appointments as a Christian community may make, for reasons of expediency and decorum, in the regulation of its affairs. But he teaches that the essence of Christianity does not lie in things of this kind, not in questions of meat and drink, nor of time and place. To put these details, however important in their own order, on a level with righteousness, mercy, and faith, is to bring a snare upon the conscience; it is to introduce once more into the Church the leaven of justification by works of law.

"Weak and poor" the best forms of piety become, without inward knowledge of God. Liturgies, creeds and confessions, church music and architecture, Sundays, fasts, festivals, are beautiful things when they are the transcript of a living faith. When that is gone, their charm, their spiritual worth is gone. They no longer belong to religion; they have ceased to be a bond between the souls of men and God. "According to our faith"-our actual, not professional or "confessional" faith-"it shall be done unto us": such is the rule of Christ. To cling to formularies which have lost their meaning and to which the Spirit of truth gives no present witness, is a demoralising bondage.

But this is not the only, nor the commonest way in which the sons of God are tempted to return to bondage. "Whosoever committeth sin, " Christ said, "is the servant of sin." And the Apostle will have to warn his readers that by their abuse of liberty, by their readiness to make it "an occasion to the flesh," they were likely to forfeit it. "They that are Christs have crucified the flesh". {Gal_5:24} This warning must be balanced against the other. Our liberty from outward constraint should be still more a liberty from the dominion of self, from pride and desire and anger; or it is not the liberty of Gods children. Inward servitude is, after all, the vilest and worst.

"You make me afraid," at last the Apostle is compelled to say, "that I have laboured in vain." His enemies had caused him no such fear. While his children in the faith were true to him, he was afraid of nothing. "Now we live," he says in one of his Epistles, "if ye stand fast in the Lord! "But if they should fall away? He trembles for his own work, for these wayward children who had already caused him so many pangs. It is in a tone of the deepest solicitude that he continues his exposulation in the following paragraph.

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.

4:8-11 Paul reminds the Galatians of their former paganism; he argues that practicing circumcision (and the law in general) would be a return to the same kind of slavery that they experienced before they knew God.

4:8 The Gentile Galatians had previously practiced pagan idolatry; they worshiped the elements and the seasons (cp. Rom 1:25) and were slaves to the fear of offending these so-called gods (1 Cor 8:5-6).

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

Gal 4:8. Τότε, then) when we were children [Gal 4:1].—οὐκ εἰδότες Θεὸν, not knowing God) The very wretched state of the Gentiles.—ἐδουλεύσατε, ye did service) being under a different bondage from that of the Jews, Gal 4:3. You worshipped gods not true with a worship not true. You had not been accustomed to the Mosaic worship; and therefore it is more a matter of wonder, that you now desire [affect] it. You attained to the truth without those elements, and now at length [for the first time] you follow them.—τοῖς μὴ φύσει οὖσι θεοῖς) So the LXX., τῷ μὴ ὄντι θεῷ, 2Ch 13:9.

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

Gal_4:8. Ἀλλά] Nevertheless, how fearfully at variance is your present retrograde attitude with the fact of this divine deliverance from your previous lost condition! This topic is dealt with down to Gal_4:11. Observe that ἀλλά introduces the two corresponding relations τότε μέν and νῦν δέ in conjunction.[187]

τότε] then; reminds the readers of the past time, in which they were still δοῦλοι (Gal_4:7).

οὐκ εἰδότες Θεόν] Cause of the ἐδουλεύσατε which follows. In the non-knowledge of God (for οὐκ εἰδότ. forms one idea) lies the fundamental essence of the heathenism, to which the apostles readers had mostly belonged. Comp. 1Th_4:5; Act_17:23; Act_17:30, et al. As to the relation of the thought to Rom_1:20 f., see on that passage.

ἐδουλεύσατε] The aorist simply designates the state of bondage then existing as now at an end, without looking at its duration or development. See Kühner, II. p. 73 f.

τοῖς φύσει μὴ οὖσι θεοῖς] to the gods, who by nature however are not so! For, in the apostles view, the realities which were worshipped by the heathen as gods, were not gods, but demons. See on 1Co_10:20. In his view, therefore, their nature was not divine, but at the same time not of mere mundane matter (Ewald) (comp. Wis_13:1 ff.); it was demoniac,a point which must have been well known to the Galatians from his oral instruction.

The negation denies subjectively, from the apostles view. Comp. 2Ch_13:9 : ἐγένετο εἰς ἱερέα τῷ μὴ ὄντι Θεῷ.

[187] But so, that the thought introduced by δέ (ver. 9) is the main thought. Comp. Baeumlein, Partikell. p. 168.

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 4:8-10 . BUT THOUGH IN TIME PAST WHEN YOU KNEW NOT GOD YOU WERE SLAVES TO FALSE GODS, HOW CAN YOU, NOW THAT YOU HAVE LEARNT TO KNOW HIM, OR RATHER HAVE BEEN RECOGNISED BY HIM, TURN BACK TO THE LESSONS OF CHILDHOOD AND CRAVE A BONDAGE TO TIMES AND SEASONS? The guilt of past idolatry is palliated on the score of ignorance, in the same spirit as in Act 17:30 , in order to press home the responsibility of those who have learnt to know God ( γνόντες Θεόν ) in Christ. There was some excuse for their former bondage to imaginary gods who had no real existence: but how can they now turn back in heart to the weak and beggarly lessons of their spiritual childhood after they have received the spirit of sonship? Instead of ruling their own lives by reason and conscience under the guidance of the Spirit like men in Christ, they are bent on subjecting themselves like children to elementary rules of formal service.

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

8–11. Appeal; after so great a change how can you go back!

(Gal 4:8) But—before your conversion, when you knew not God, ye were slaves to them which by origin are not gods; (Gal 4:9) and now when you have come to know God, or rather were known by God!—how are ye turning again to the powerless and poverty-stricken rudiments, to which ye are wishing to become slaves again from the very beginning of the alphabet? (Gal 4:10) Ye are scrupulously marking days, and new moons, and the exact times of feasts, and years! (Gal 4:11) (Transition.) You cause me dread lest I have laboured for you for nothing.

8. τοῖς φύσει μὴ οὖσι θεοῖς אABCD*cP vulg. τοῖς μὴ φύσει οὖσι θεοῖς Text. Rec. with DbGKL etc. syrHarcl; omitting φύσει K d aeth. Irenint.

8. This and the following verses are a “sad and startling contrast to Gal 4:7” (Beet), seen in their turning back to the weak and beggarly elements.

ἀλλὰ. To be joined with πῶς ἐπιστρέφετε, which expresses the principal thought of the passage, the intervening words serving as a preparation for πάλιν.

τότε μὲν, Rom 6:21. Before their conversion, which was implied in οὐκέτι εἶ δοῦλος (Gal 4:7), St Paul here directly applying to Gentiles the language of Gal 4:1-7, which had referred primarily to the Jews.

οὐκ εἰδότες θεὸν. For εἰδέναι θεόν see 1Th 4:5; 2Th 1:8; Tit 1:16[121]. They lacked any natural or intuitive knowledge of God.

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

ἐδουλεύσατε. This suggests more willingness and personal action than ἤμεθα δεδουλ. in Gal 4:3.

τοῖς φύσει (Gal 2:15) μὴ οὖσι θεοῖς, “to them which by nature are not gods.” See notes on Textual Criticism, i.e. Whatever may be attributed to them by their worshippers; if they are gods they are not so by origin, but by man’s deification of them; cf. 1Co 8:4-5. Observe that this would include both the worship of Caesar (though so expressed that no offence could be taken) and that of demons (1Co 10:19-20), as well as all other forms of heathen worship. In Alford’s translation “to gods, which by nature exist not,” φύσει is really tautological.

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.

8. Description of the former condition of the Galatians as one of bondage to gods not really such, and exhortation to them not to return to that state (4:8-11)

Again directly addressing the Galatians as in 3:1, and as in v. 1 characterising their former condition as one of enslavement, the apostle describes them as in bondage to gods that were not in reality such, and appeals to them, now that they have come into fellowship with God, not, as they threaten to do by their adoption of the Jewish cycle of feasts and fasts, to return to those weak and beggarly rudimentary teachings under which they formerly were, and expresses his fear that he has laboured over them to no purpose.

8But at that time, not knowing God, ye were in bondage to the gods that are not such by nature. 9But now having come to know God, or rather having become known by God, how is it that ye are turning back again to the weak and beggarly rudiments, to which ye wish to be in bondage again? 10Ye are observing days and months and seasons and years. 11I fear that in vain have I spent my labour on you.

8. Ἀλλὰ τότε μὲν οὐκ εἰδότες θεὸν ἐδουλεύσατε τοῖς φύσει μὴ οὖσι θεοῖς· “But at that time, not knowing God, ye were in bondage to the gods that are not such by nature.” Doubling, so to speak, upon his course, the apostle reverts to the condition of the Galatians before they received his message, and in antithesis (ἀλλά) to the description of them in v. 7 as heirs through God, describes them as having been in that former time ignorant of God who is in reality such, and in bondage to the gods that by nature are not gods. The purpose of this v. appears in v. 9, where he again dissuades them from returning to the state of bondage. That Paul conceived of the deities whom the Galatians formerly worshipped as real existences, is neither proved nor disproved by this sentence, in which he denies to them deity, θειότης, but neither affirms nor denies existence; nor by the phrase ἐπιτρόποις καὶ οἰκονόμοις in v. 2, since that may be used only by way of rhetorical personification of the law and have no reference to the gods of the Gentiles (cf. on τὰ στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου, v. 3); but that he did so conceive of them is rendered probable by the evidence of 1Co 8:5, 1Co 8:6, 1Co 8:10:19, 20, Col 2:15. Cf. also Deu 4:19 and see literature cited in special note on Τὰ στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου, p. 510.

Τότε refers to the past time implied in οὐκέτι (v. 7), when the Galatian Christians were still δοῦλοι; note the ἐδουλεύσατε of this sentence.

Εἰδότες is a perfect participle of existing state, μὴ εἰδότες meaning “not possessing knowledge.” How this state of ignorance came about is not here discussed, or whether it was partial or absolute. Cf. Rom 1:18ff.

The omission of the article with θεόν makes the word not indefinite (as in Act 12:22, 1Co 8:4), but, as in v. 7 and very often, qualitative, referring definitely to the one God, but with an emphasis on his attributes as God, which is lacking when he is called ὁ θεός. For a similar use of θεός, with strong emphasis on the qualities of deity, see Joh 1:18, θεὸν οὐδεὶς ἐώρακεν πώποτε, where the contrast, however, is not between one in reality God, as compared with those not really such, but between God in the absolute sense, incapable of being directly known, and God as revealed in the person of the Son. For other examples of this indubitable, though often overlooked, qualitative use of personal appellations without the article, see Rom 1:21: γνόντες τὸν θεὸν οὐχ ὡς θεὸν ἐδόδοξαν. Rom 8:33, Gal 3:26, Gal 4:14, Gal 5:21, Php 2:13, 1Th 1:9: ἐπεστρέψατε πρὸς τὸν θεὸν ἀπὸ τῶν εἰδώλων δουλεύειν θεῷ ζῶντι καὶ ἀληθινῷ. 2Th 2:4. Other examples more or less clear, but together clearly establishing the usage, are very numerous. See note on chap. 2:6, pp. 88 ff., detached note on Πατήρ as applied to God, p. 384, and Slaten, Qualitative Nouns in the Pauline Epistles, pp. 64-68.

Ἐδουλεύσατε is a simple historical aorist, not inceptive, referring not to a point of time but to a period, BMT 38, 39, 41 Rem.

Φύσις, from φύω, is properly that which belongs to a person or thing by virtue of its origin; then its essential character; used thus even of the divine nature, which is without origin, 2Pe 1:4. φύσει μὴ οὖσι may be an adjective element limiting θεοῖς, or οὖσι may be an adjective participle used substantively, with θεοῖς as a predicate after it. In the former case the beings referred to are characterised as gods, but with the qualification that they are not so by nature, i. e., in reality; in the latter case they are not called θεοί at all, but are characterised negatively only, as beings that by nature are not gods. Grammatically and contextually there is no ground of decisive choice between these, but 1Co 8:5, showing that Paul could apply the term θεοί to the gods of the Gentiles, though denying that it really belonged to them, favours the first interpretation. The comparison of Plato, Legg. X 904 A, οἱ κατὰ νόμον ὄντες θεοί, perhaps suggests what the positive element of the apostle’s thought was. He was speaking of “the gods of popular opinion,” as Jowett translates Plato’s phrase, Cf. 1Co 8:5, λεγόμενοι θεοί.

On οὐ with εἱδότες and μή with οὖσι, see BMT 485; the choice of negatives, though doubtless unconscious, probably reflects the feeling that οὐκ εἰδότες expressed a fact, τοῖς φύσει μὴ οὖσιν θεοῖς a conception, a description of a class, but without implication of its existence or non-existence. The few instances in which Paul uses οὐ with an attributive participle are quotations from the Lxx, his otherwise regular habit being to use μή with such participles and with adverbial participles not involving a direct assertion (Rom 1:28, Rom 2:14, Rom 4:17, Gal 6:9). οὐ, with the possible exception of Col 2:19, in effect negatives an assertion (1Co 4:14, 1Co 4:9:26, 2Co 4:8, 2Co 12:4).

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

He applieth the former doctrine to the Galatians, with a peculiar reprehension: for in comparison of them, the Jews might have pretended some excuse as men that were born and brought up in that service of the Law. But seeing the Galatians were taken and called out of idolatry to Christian liberty: what pretence might they have to go back to those impotent and beggarly rudiments?

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

In these verses the apostle puts them in mind of what they were before their conversion to the faith of Christ, and what a blessed change their conversion had made upon them; and thence endeavours to convince them of their great weakness in hearkening to those who would bring them under the bondage of the law of Moses.

I. He reminds them of their past state and behaviour, and what they were before the gospel was preached to them. Then they knew not God; they were grossly ignorant of the true God, and the way wherein he is to be worshipped: and at that time they were under the worst of slaveries, for they did service to those which by nature were no gods, they were employed in a great number of superstitious and idolatrous services to those who, though they were accounted gods, were yet really no gods, but mere creatures, and perhaps of their own making, and therefore were utterly unable to hear and help them. Note, 1. Those who are ignorant of the true God cannot but be inclined to false gods. Those who forsook the God who made the world, rather than be without gods, worshipped such as they themselves made. 2. Religious worship is due to none but to him who is by nature God; for, when the apostle blames the doing service to such as by nature were no gods, he plainly shows that he only who is by nature God is the proper object of our religious worship.

II. He calls upon them to consider the happy change that was made in them by the preaching of the gospel among them. Now they had known God (they were brought to the knowledge of the true God and of his Son Jesus Christ, whereby they were recovered out of the ignorance and bondage under which they before lay) or rather were known of God; this happy change in their state, whereby they were turned from idols to the living God, and through Christ had received the adoption of sons, was not owing to themselves, but to him; it was the effect of his free and rich grace towards them, and as such they ought to account it; and therefore hereby they were laid under the greater obligation to adhere to the liberty wherewith he had made them free. Note, All our acquaintance with God begins with him; we know him, because we are known of him.

III. Hence he infers the unreasonableness and madness of their suffering themselves to be brought again into a state of bondage. He speaks of it with surprise and deep concern of mind that such as they should do so: How turn you again, etc., says he, Gal 4:9. "How is it that you, who have been taught to worship God in the gospel way, should not be persuaded to comply with the ceremonial way of worship? that you, who have been acquainted with a dispensation of light, liberty, and love, as that of the gospel is, should now submit to a dispensation of darkness, and bondage, and terror, as that of the law is?" This they had the less reason for, since they had never been under the law of Moses, as the Jews had been; and therefore on this account they were more inexcusable than the Jews themselves, who might be supposed to have some fondness for that which had been of such long standing among them. Besides, what they suffered themselves to be brought into bondage to were but weak and beggarly elements, such things as had no power in them to cleanse the soul, nor to afford any solid satisfaction to the mind, and which were only designed for that state of pupillage under which the church had been, but which had now come to a period; and therefore their weakness and folly were the more aggravated, in submitting to them, and in symbolizing with the Jews in observing their various festivals, here signified by days, and months, and times, and years. Here note, 1. It is possible for those who have made great professions of religion to be afterwards drawn into very great defections from the purity and simplicity of it, for this was the case of these Christians. And, 2. The more mercy God has shown to any, in bringing them into an acquaintance with the gospel, and the liberties and privileges of it, the greater are their sin and folly in suffering themselves to be deprived of them; for this the apostle lays a special stress upon, that after they had known God, or rather were known of him, they desired to be in bondage under the weak and beggarly elements of the law.

IV. Hereupon he expresses his fears concerning them, lest he had bestowed on them labour in vain. He had been at a great deal of pains about them, in preaching the gospel to them, and endeavouring to confirm them in the faith and liberty of it; but now they were giving up these, and thereby rendering his labour among them fruitless and ineffectual, and with the thoughts of this he could not but be deeply affected. Note, 1. A great deal of the labour of faithful ministers is labour in vain; and, when it is so, it cannot but be a great grief to those who desire the salvation of souls. Note, 2. The labour of ministers is in vain upon those who begin in the Spirit and end in the flesh, who, though they seem to set out well, yet afterwards turn aside from the way of the gospel. Note, 3. Those will have a great deal to answer for upon whom the faithful ministers of Jesus Christ bestow labour in vain.

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

Appeal to them not to turn back from their privileges as free sons, to legal bondage again.

then--when ye were "servants" (Gal 4:7).

ye knew not God--not opposed to Rom 1:21. The heathen originally knew God, as Rom 1:21 states, but did not choose to retain God in their knowledge, and so corrupted the original truth. They might still have known Him, in a measure, from His works, but as a matter of fact they knew Him not, so far as His eternity, His power as the Creator, and His holiness, are concerned.

are no gods--that is, have no existence, such as their worshippers attribute to them, in the nature of things, but only in the corrupt imaginations of their worshippers (see on Co1 8:4; Co1 10:19-20; Ch2 13:9). Your "service" was a different bondage from that of the Jews, which was a true service. Yet theirs, like yours, was a burdensome yoke; how then is it ye wish to resume the yoke after that God has transferred both Jews and Gentiles to a free service?

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 8. When ye knew not God] Though it is evident, from the complexion of the whole of this epistle, that the great body of the Christians in the Churches of Galatia were converts from among the Jews or proselytes to Judaism; yet from this verse it appears that there were some who had been converted from heathenism; unless we suppose that the apostle here particularly addresses those who had been proselytes to Judaism and thence converted to Christianity; which appears to be most likely from the following verses.

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

8. But when ye as yet knew not God. This is not intended as an additional argument; and indeed he had already proved his point so fully, that no doubt remained, and the rebuke which was now to be administered could not be evaded. His object is to make their fall appear more criminal, by comparing it with past events. It is not wonderful, he says, that formerly ye did service to them which by nature are no gods; for, wherever ignorance of God exists, there must be dreadful blindness. You were then wandering in darkness, but how disgraceful is it that in the midst of light you should fall into such gross errors! The main inference is, that the Galatians were less excusable for corrupting the gospel than they had formerly been for idolatry. But here it ought to be observed, that, till we have been enlightened in the true knowledge of one God, we always serve idols, whatever pretext we may throw over the false religion. The lawful worship of God, therefore, must be preceded by just views of his character. By nature, that is, in reality, they are no gods. Every object of worship which men contrive is a creature of their own imagination. In the opinion of men idols may be gods, but in reality they are nothing.

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.

(8) Them which by nature are no gods.—The gods of the heathen are called by St. Paul “devils.” (See 1Co_10:20 : “The things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to devils, and not to God.”)

(8-11) The results of the foregoing argument are now turned against the Galatians. In their old heathen state they had been in bondage to gods that were no gods. From this bondage they had been delivered. They had been raised to a true knowledge of God, and received a Father’s recognition from Him. How then could they possibly think of returning to a system of mere ceremonialism. All this painful observance of times and seasons could only make the Apostle think that his labours on their behalf had been thrown away.

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

Howbeit then, when ye know not God,.... Whilst in Gentilism, and in a state of unregeneracy, they had no true knowledge of God; though they might know by the light of nature, and works of creation, that there was a God, yet they did not know who he was, but called either mortal men, or some one or other of the creatures, or stocks, and stones, and images of men's device, by this name; they knew not the God of Israel; they did not know God in Christ, and are therefore said to be without him; and a common description of them it is, that they knew not God: and whilst this was their case, what follows was true of them,

ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods; only by name, and in the opinion of men, but have no divinity in them, are only called gods, mere nominal, fictitious deities, who have nothing of the nature and essence of God in them; for there is but one God by nature and essence, the Father, Son, and Spirit; all others have only the name and appearance, but not the truth of deity; and these the Gentiles in their times of ignorance did "service" to, which is what the Jews call , "strange service"; that is, idolatry, concerning which there is a whole treatise in the Talmud, and which bears that name (o). This service lay in paying homage to them, worshipping of them, and performing various rites and ceremonies in a way of adoration, and which they reckoned religious service; and which, comparatively speaking, whilst in this state of blindness, was excusable in them; though it is a wonderful instance of grace that such idolaters should be the sons of God.

(o) Aveda Zara.

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

8 Howbeit then, when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods.

Ver. 8. Ye did service] Here all religious service done to any but God is manifestly condemned as impious, whether in pagans or papagans (papists).

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.

Howbeit - But, ἀλλὰ alla. The address in this verse and the following is evidently to the portion of the Galatians who had been pagan. This is probably indicated by the particle ἀλλὰ alla, but denoting a transition. In the previous verses Paul had evidently had the Jewish converts more particularly in his eye, and had described their former condition as one of servitude to the Mosaic rites and customs, and had shown the inconveniences of that condition, compared with the freedom imparted by the gospel. To complete the description, he refers also to the Gentiles, as a condition of worse servitude still, and shows Gal 4:9 the absurdity of their turning back to a state of bondage of any kind, after the glorious deliverance which they had obtained from the degrading servitude of pagan rites. The sense is, “If the Jews were in such a state of servitude, how much more galling and severe was that of those who had been pagans. Yet fron that servitude the gospel had delivered them, and made them freemen. How absurd now to go back to a state of vassalage, and to become servants under the oppressive rites of the Jewish law!”

When ye knew not God - In your state of paganism, when you had no knowledge of the true God and of his service. The object is not to apologize for what they did, because they did not know God; it is to state the fact that they were in a state of gross and galling servitude.

Ye did service - This does not express the force of the original. The meaning is, “Ye were “slaves” to (ἐδουλεύσατε edouleusate); you were in a condition of servitude, as opposed to the freedom of the gospel;” compare Gal 4:3, where the same word is used to describe the state of the Jews. The drift of the apostle is, to show that the Jews and Gentiles, before their conversion to Christianity, were in a state of vassalage or servitude, and that it was absurd in the highest degree to return to that condition again.

Unto them which by nature are no gods - Idols, or false gods. The expression “by nature,” φύσει phusei, according to Grotius, means, “in fact, re ipsa.” The sense is, that they really had no pretensions to divinity. Many of them were imaginary beings; many were the objects of creation, as the sun, and winds, and streams; and many were departed heroes that had been exalted to be objects of worship. Yet the servitude was real. It fettered their faculties; controlled their powers; bound their imagination, and commanded their time and property, and made them slaves. Idolatry is always slavery; and the servitude of sinners to their passions and appetites, to lust and gold, and ambition, is not less galling and severe than was the servitude to the pagan gods or the Jewish rites, or than is the servitude of the African now to a harsh and cruel master. Of all Christians it may be said that before their conversion they “did service,” or were slaves to harsh and cruel masters; and nothing but the gospel has made them free. It may be added, that the chains of idolatry all over the world are as fast riveted and as galling as they were in Galatia, and that nothing but the same gospel which Paul preached there can break those chains and restore man to freedom.

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

You served them, who by nature are no gods. These words are to be understood of the converts, who had been Gentiles. --- Known of God. That is, approved and loved by him. (Witham) --- The language of the apostle in this verse is not perhaps strictly precise. The Galatians, whom he addresses, had been converted from paganism, and of course were never subject to the law of Moses. But the apostle, by these words, entreats them not to begin now to serve these weak and useless elements, (as he calls the Jewish rites) or by this expression he may mean (as St. John Chrysostom and Theophylactus explain it) the tyranny of error and wickedness. (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).

When ye knew not God, as he is, or as ye ought to have known him, or as, since, you have known him; for even the heathen have some knowledge of God, Rom 1:21.

Ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods; you paid religious homages unto idols; which are gods, not by nature and essence, but only in the opinion of idolaters. Which was a more miserable bondage and servitude than the Jews were under, who knew the true God; though in the time when the church was like the heir under age, it was subject to the law contained in ordinances, and under the yoke of the law.

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

8. Ye knew not God—Alluding to the fact that the main body of the Galatian Church had been pagans.

Did service—You were not merely like the slave of Gal_4:1, but were actual slaves and worshippers of false tutors and governors, namely, them which are no gods.

By nature—But only in the fancy of their worshippers.

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

Howbeit (ajlla); a strongly adversative conjunction, belonging to the whole sentence comprised in this and the next verse, which are closely welded together by the particles men and de. In contravention of God"s work of grace just described, they were renouncing their sonship and making themselves slaves afresh. Then (tote men). The men, with its balancing de, here, as often is the case, unites together sentences not in their main substance strictly adverse to each other, but only in subordinate details contrasted, of which we have an exemplary instance inmouv Rom_8:17, Klhrono memouv de Cristou. In such cases we have often no resource in English but to leave the men untranslated, as our Authorized Version commonly does; "indeed" or "truly," for example, would be more or less misleading. The truth is, the apostle in these two verses is heaping reproach upon the Galatian Judaizers; first, in this verse, for their former (guilty) ignorance of God and their idolatries, and then, in the next verse, for their slighting that blessed friendship with God which they owed only to his preventing grace. In dealing with Gentile Christians the apostle repeatedly is found referring to their former heathenism, for the purpose of enforcing humility or abashing presumption, as for example in Rom_11:17-25 Rom_15:8, Rom_15:9; 1Co_12:2; Eph_2:11-13, Eph_2:17. In the case of the Galatians his indignation prompts him to use a degree of outspoken severity which he was generally disposed to forbear employing. The "then" is not defined, as English readers might perhaps misconstrue the Authorized Version as intending, by the following clause, "not knowing God," which in that version is "when ye knew not God a construction of the words which the use of the participle would hardly warrant; rather the time referred to by the adverb is the time of which he has before been speaking, when God"s people were under the pedagogy of the Law. This, though when compared with Christ"s liberty a state of bondage, was, however (the apostle feels) a position of high advancement as compared with that of heathen idolaters. These last were far off," while the Israelites were nigh" (compare the passages just now referred to). During that time of legal pedagogy the Galatians and their forefathers, all in the apostle"s view forming one class, were wallowing in the mire of heathenism. When ye knew not God (oujk eijdotev Qeon); ye knew not God and, etc.

"Knowing not God" describes the condition of heathens also in 1Th_4:5," Not in the passion of lust, even as the Gentiles which know not (ta mhta) God;" 2Th_1:8, "Rendering vengeance to them that know not (toiv mhsin) God." Both of these passages favour the view that the apostle does not in the least intend in the present clause to excuse the idolatries which he goes on to speak of, but rather to describe a condition of godlessness which, as being positive rather than merely negative, inferred utter pravity and guiltiness. He uses oujk with the participle here, in place of the mh in the two passages c ited from the Thessalonians, as intending to state a historical fact viewed absolutely a sense which is made clear in English by substituting an indicative verbfor the participle. Ye did service unto (ejdouleusate); served; devoted yourselves to. The verb is, perhaps, used here in that milder sense in which it frequently occurs; as in Mat_6:24; Luk_15:29 Luk_16:13; Act_20:19; Rom_7:6, 25 14:18; 1Th_1:9. The Revised Version, however, gives "were in bondage to" in the present instance, but "serve" in the passages now cited. The aorist, instead of an imperfect, describes the form of religious life which they then led as a whole. Them which by nature are no gods (toiv fusei mh ousi qeoiv). The Textus Receptus has toiv mhsei ousi qeoiv, which would apparently mean "which arc not gods by nature, but only in your imagination;" like "There be that are called gods," in 1Co_8:5 Zeus, Apollo, Here, etc., mere figments of imagination. (comp. 1Co_8:4) The more approved reading suggests rather the idea that the objects they worshipped might not be non-existent, but were certainly not of a Divine nature; "by nature," that is, in the kind of being to which they belong (taioi Eph_2:3 RAPC Wis 13:1, ma fusei). The question may be asked If they were not gods, what then were they? The apostle would probably have answered, "Demons;" for thus he writes to the Corinthians: (1Co_10:20) "The things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to devils (daimonioiv), and not to God." Alford renders, "to gods which by nature exist not," etc.; but the more obvious sense of ousin is that of a copula merely. (comp. nti 2Ch_13:9, Septuagint, "He became a priest (tw mh o qew)

An appeal to the Gentile Galatians.

then, when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods." The apostle here seems to turn to the Gentile portion of the Church, and impresses upon them the folly of placing themselves under the yoke of Mosaic Law.

1. CONSIDER THEIR FORMER IGNORANCE OF GOD. "When ye knew not God." The apostle gives no hint here of that self-satisfied agnosticism of our day, which says either we cannot or we do not know anything of God, but simply asserts the fact that they did not as Gentiles know God. God is not unknowable. The apostle explains, in the first chapter of Romans, how the knowledge of God died out of the minds of men. It occurred through a deliberate perversion of the moral powers of man. They knew not God, and were thus in a terrible sense "without God in the world." Yet they were not without religion. Religion is a necessity of man"s nature, and hence its universality. It may be dimmed by superstition and ignorance and sin; it may be left to rust by disuse, till it has all but disappeared; yet it is never wholly lost.

II CONSIDER THE SUPERSTITION THAT WAS BUILT UPON THIS IGNORANCE. "Ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods.

1. The objects of their superstitious worship were no gods. He says elsewhere they were demons: the gods had no real existence. They were either evil spirits or dead men, or the lights of heaven deified by human ignorance and folly. It is fearful to think of the widespread delusions of the heathen.

2. Their worship was a degrading bondage. It was full of labour and fear and suffering. "The bondage of the Jews was pedagogic; the bondage of the Gentiles was more wretched, for they did not know God at all." The Gentile bondage was terrible with its sacrifices, its mutilations, its orgies, its cruelties. It degraded the mind, fettered the imagination, cramped the heart, of its votaries.

Vers. 8-11.

The return of the legal spirit.

Having spoken of the majority which it is intended we should realize through the gospel, Paul proceeds next to speak about the return to legalism which had characterized the Gauls. Before Paul"s advent to Galatia and his gospel message, they had been idolaters, but his preaching had brought them face to face, so to speak, with God. Into this Divine knowledge they had dipped, but, alas it had only been a swallow-flight, for, after tasting the liberty of the gospel, they had flown back to bondage. They had skimmed the surface of salvation, and had winged their way back to the old legalism which had characterized their idolatrous days. Here, then, we have suggested

I THE LEGALISM WHICH NECESSARILY CHARACTERIZES IDOLATRY. (Ver. 8.) The philosophy of idolatry is a most interesting inquiry. Nowhere is it more succinctly set before us than in Psalm 115. The idols are there shown to be after the image of their makers (ver. 8), and, conversely, their worshippers become assimilated to them. The stolid idols which the poor artists make are simply copies of the stolid life around them; and the worship of the idol makes the stolidity perpetual. It is the apotheosis of inaction and of death. Hence it will be found that idolatry can secure nothing higher than ritualism, that is, the performance of rites and ceremonies for the sake of achieving a religious reputation, and not for the rake of communion with the object of worship. For in the case of the idol there can be no communion of mind with mind or of heart with heart. The form consequently is everything and the fellowship is nothing. If there be no self-righteousness promoted by the ceremony, it promotes absolutely no interest at all. Hence the whole genius of idolatry is legalism. If men are not achieving some religious reputation, they are achieving nothing at all. Paul consequently was looking back to the idolatrous life of the Galatians, and carefully analyzed it when he recognized in it the expression of a purely legal spirit.

II THE GOSPEL PROMOTES ACQUAINTANCESHIP WITH GOD. (Ver. 9.) It seeks to bring about an interview with God. Paul"s experience on the way to Damascus is typical. lie there became acquainted for the first time with Jesus Christ as his Divine Saviour. He there felt that it was nearer the truth to say that Jesus had found him than that he had found Jesus. It was true that he had come to know God in Christ, but this was the consequence of God in Christ in the first instance knowing him. Now, Paul"s missionary life was to promote the same acquaintanceship among men. He wanted these Galatians to know God through realizing that God previously knew them. And he had hopes that they had entered the charmed circle of the Divine acquaintanceship. He hoped that they had experienced the truth, "Acquaint now thyself with God, and be at peace." This is the essence of the gospel. "This is life eternal, to know i.e. to be acquainted with thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.

III THE RETURN TO LEGALISM. (Vers. 9, 10.) The false teachers had come from Jerusalem to preach up the virtue of Jewish rites and ceremonies. Hence the fickle mountaineers of Galatia fell into their superstitious observances, and fancied that, if they kept carefully the Jewish calendar, with its weekly, monthly, annual, and septennial feasts and fasts, they must hereby propitiate the Supreme. Accustomed as idolaters to the making of religious reputations, they could enter the more easily into the legal spirit for which the false teachers called. And indeed there is nothing so insidious, because there is nothing so palatable to the natural heart. To be in a position to achieve a religions reputation, to win by our own hands certain characters and certain rights, is wonderfully flattering and grateful to human pride. We need to be constantly on our guard against the temptation.

1. One way is by remembering how "weak," as Paul here puts it, theelements out of which we would manufacture our reputation are. They do not bear analysis. Once we touch them with honest thought they stand in felt helplessness before us. Ceremonies which do not lead to communion with God, ceremonies which are simply to add to human pride and foster self-righteousness, are weak as water, and can only harm us.

2. We should remember also how "beggarly" they are. They can ministerno wealth of thought or feeling to the superstitious soul. They are merely the instruments of bondage.

IV THE DANGER OF THE LEGAL SPIRIT. (Ver. 11.) If Paul"s preaching only resulted in such an outbreak of legalism, then he would regard his mission among them as "love"s labour lost." There is no difference between the legalism of Judaism and the legalism of idolatry. Both are mere phases of self-righteousness. The gospel has missed its aim altogether if it leave people in legal bondage. The gospel is the great scheme for overthrowing self-righteousness. It emancipates the soul from the delusive hope of establishing any claim before God. It shuts us up to the acceptance of salvation as God"s free gift. It deposes self and makes free grace supreme. Hence Paul"s anxiety to see the Galatians brought back from legal bondage to gospel liberty. Unless they gave up their helm from ceremony, and betook themselves to hope in the Saviour alone, then they must be lost. It is most important that the exceeding danger of the legal spirit should be constantly kept in view, that we may maintain our standing on the footing of free grace. R.M.E.

Vers. 8, 9.

Beggarly rudiments.

I THE OLD HEATHENDOM. St. Paul needs to remind the Galatians of the evils of the condition from which they have been liberated. We are all inclined to gild the past with false glories, looking back with fond regret to its lost delights, while we forget the things that troubled it. Note three characteristics of this evil past.

1. Ignorance of God. The heathen were without the light, the joy, the guidance, and the help that come with the true knowledge of God. All men who are spiritually dead to God are thus heathen at heart. The heathenism that was congenital was some excuse for moral failure; for men cannot serve the God they do not know. Conduct which is pardonable in the ignorant, however, is inexcusable in those who know God.

2. The worship of those who are so gods. Man must worship. The monstrosities of heathenism are a pathetic witness to our religious nature, which, if it has not light for its healthy development, will exercise itself in the most distorted manner rather than be suppressed. But such religion is based on a delusion. The worshipper prays to what does not exist. So do all who erect their own notions of divinity and do homage to them instead of learning to serve the God of revelation.

3. Spiritual bondage. The Galatians seem to have been entangled in the toils of a mongrel religion, which combined the terrible superstitions of their Celtic forefathers with the immoral mysticism of their Phrygian neighbours. The result was a bondage at once of fear and of lust. But all heathen religions keep their devotees in subjection. Religious liberty is a fruit of Christianity.

II THE NEW CHRISTIANITY. This was in all respects a deliverance, an advance, and an elevation. It involved great spiritual acquisitions.

1. The knowledge of God; always the first essential. We cannot trust, love, or serve a God of whose character and will we are ignorant. Any faith that precedes this knowledge is faith in the priest, not faith in God.

2. Being known of God. The apostle corrects himself. It was not enough to speak of knowing God. Though that was the first essential step towards the new life, it is not now the most characteristic feature of that life. We must not rest in the knowledge of God alone. Knowledge is not redemption. The further step is to receive the grace of sonship from God and the inspiration of the Spirit of Christ wherewith we breathe the aspiration to God as to our Father (ver. 6). Such an experience shows that we are acknowledged by God of God.

III THE RELAPSE. Is it possible that any should consciously and wilfully choose to fall from such privileges as those of the new Christianity to such bondage as that of the old heathendom? It was important that the Galatians should see that their perversion to Judaism was essentially such a relapse. The startling point of the apostle"s argument lay just in this that, with the insight of inspired genius, he saw the identity of the religion of Law which his converts regarded as a more progressive stage of Christianity with their old discarded heathenism. At first sight it might appear that austere Mosaism could have nothing in common with corrupt Phrygian orgies and gloomy Celtic sacrifices. Yet the bondage was essentially the same. They had three points in common.

1. Their rudimentary character. Both were mere beginnings. Christianity had left both behind. The advanced scholar should not waste time over the alphabet; the graduate need not matriculate afresh.

2. Their weakness. For the purpose of creating righteousness and regenerating character the Levitical Law with all its lofty morality was as impotent as the impure and horrible rites of the old Galatian cult.

3. Their poverty. Both were "beggarly." After holding the pearl of great price, it was strange that any should turn from such riches of Divine love to any other religion which, lacking the wondrous grace of the gospel, was by comparison as a beggar to a prince. Yet all make this mistake who forsake the grace and liberty of the gospel for the bondage of rites and holy days and priestly authority. W.F.A.

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

Indeed then when ye knew not God, ye served them that by nature - That is, in reality. Are no gods - And so were under a far worse bondage than even that of the Jews. For they did serve the true God, though in a low, slavish manner.

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

VERSES 8, 9. Howbeit then, when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods. But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage?

This concludes Paul’s discourse on justification. From now to the end of the Epistle the Apostle writes mostly of Christian conduct. But before he follows up his doctrinal discourse with practical precepts he once more reproves the Galatians. He is deeply displeased with them for relinquishing their divine doctrine. He tells them: "You have taken on teachers who intend to recommit you to the Law. By my doctrine I called you out of the darkness of ignorance into the wonderful light of the knowledge of God. I led you out of bondage into the freedom of the sons of God, not by the prescription of laws, but by the gift of heavenly and eternal blessings through Christ Jesus. How could you so soon forsake the light and return to darkness? How could you so quickly stray from grace into the Law, from freedom into bondage?"

The example of the Galatians, of Anabaptists, and other sectarians in our day bears testimony to the ease with which faith may be lost. We take great pains in setting forth the doctrine of faith by preaching and by writing. We are careful to apply the Gospel and the Law in their proper turn. Yet we make little headway because the devil seduces people into misbelief by taking Christ out of their sight and focusing their eyes upon the Law.

But why does Paul accuse the Galatians of reverting to the weak and beggarly elements of the Law when they never had the Law? Why does he not say to them: "At one time you Galatians did not know God. You then served idols that were no gods. But now that you have come to know the true God, why do you go back to the worship of idols?" Paul seems to identify their defection from the Gospel to the Law with their former idolatry. Indeed he does. Whoever gives up the article of justification does not know the true God. It is one and the same thing whether a person reverts to the Law or to the worship of idols. When the article of justification is lost, nothing remains except error, hypocrisy, godlessness, and idolatry.

God will and can be known in no other way than in and through Christ according to the statement of Joh 1:18, "The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." Christ is the only means whereby we can know God and His will. In Christ we perceive that God is not a cruel judge, but a most loving and merciful Father who to bless and to save us "spared not his own Son, but gave him up for us all." This is truly to know God.

Those who do not know God in Christ arrive at this erroneous conclusion: "I will serve God in such and such a way. I will join this or that order. I will be active in this or that charitable endeavor. God will sanction my good intentions and reward me with everlasting life. For is He not a merciful and generous Father who gives good things even to the unworthy and ungrateful? How much more will He grant unto me everlasting life as a due payment in return for my many good deeds and merits." This is the religion of reason. This is the natural religion of the world. "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God. (1Co 2:14.) "There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God." (Rom 3:11.) Hence, there is really no difference between a Jew, a Mohammedan, and any other old or new heretic. There may be a difference of persons, places, rites, religions, ceremonies, but as far as their fundamental beliefs are concerned they are all alike.

Is it therefore not extreme folly for Rome and the Mohammedans to fight each other about religion? How about the monks? Why should one monk want to be accounted more holy than another monk because of some silly ceremony, when all the time their basic beliefs are as much alike as one egg is like the other? They all imagine, if we do this or that work, God will have mercy on us; if not, God will be angry.

God never promised to save anybody for his religious observance of ceremonies and ordinances. Those who rely upon such things do serve a god, but it is their own invention of a god, and not the true God. The true God has this to say: No religion pleases Me whereby the Father is not glorified through His Son Jesus. All who give their faith to this Son of Mine, to them I am God and Father. I accept, justify, and save them. All others abide under My curse because they worship creatures instead of Me.

Without the doctrine of justification there can be only ignorance of God. Those who refuse to be justified by Christ are idolaters. They remain under the Law, sin, death, and the power of the devil. Everything they do is wrong.

Nowadays there are many such idolaters who want to be counted among the true confessors of the Gospel. They may even teach that men are delivered from their sins by the death of Christ. But because they attach more importance to charity than to faith in Christ they dishonor Him and pervert His Word. They do not serve the true God, but an idol of their own invention. The true God has never yet smiled upon a person for his charity or virtues, but only for the sake of Christ’s merits.

The objection is frequently raised that the Bible commands that we should love God with all our heart. True enough. But because God commands it, it does not follow that we do it. If we could love God with all our heart we should undoubtedly be justified by our obedience, for it is written, "Which if a man do, he shall live in them." (Lev 18:5.) But now comes the Gospel and says: "Because you do not do these things, you cannot live in them." The words, "Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God," require perfect obedience, perfect fear, perfect trust, and perfect love. But where are the people who can render perfection? Hence, this commandment, instead of justifying men, only accuses and condemns them. "Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth" (Rom 10:4.)

How may these two contradictory statements of the Apostle, "Ye knew not God," and "Ye worshipped God," be reconciled? I answer: By nature all men know that there is a God, "because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God hath showed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen." (Rom 1:19-20.) Furthermore, the different religions to be found among all nations at all times bear witness to the fact that all men have a certain intuitive knowledge of God.

If all men know God how can Paul say that the Galatians did not know God prior to the hearing of the Gospel? I answer: There is a twofold knowledge of God, general and particular. All men have the general and instinctive recognition that there is a God who created heaven and earth, who is just and holy, and who punishes the wicked. How God feels about us, what His intentions are, what He will do for us, or how He will save us, that men cannot know instinctively. It must be revealed to them. I may know a person by sight, and still not know him, because I do not know how he feels about me. Men know instinctively that there is a God. But what His will is toward them, they do not know. It is written: "There is none that understandeth God." (Rom 3:11.) Again, "No man hath seen God." (Joh 1:18.) Now, what good does it do you if you know that there is a God, if you do not know how He feels about you, or what He wants of you? People have done a good deal of guessing. The Jew imagines he is doing the will of God if he concentrates on the Law of Moses. The Mohammedan thinks his Koran is the will of God. The monk fancies he is doing the will of God if he performs his vows. But they deceive themselves and become "vain in their imaginations," as Paul says, Rom 1:21. Instead of worshipping the true God, they worship the vain imaginations of their foolish hearts.

What Paul means by saying to the Galatians, "When ye knew not God," is simply this: "There was a time when you did not know the will of God in Christ, but you worshipped gods of your own invention, thinking that you had to perform this or that labor."

Whether you understand the "elements of the world" to mean the Law of Moses, or the religions of the heathen nations, it makes no difference. Those who lapse from the Gospel to the Law are no better off than those who lapse from grace into idolatry. Without Christ all religion is idolatry. Without Christ men will entertain false ideas about God, call their ideas what you like, the laws of Moses, the ordinances of the Pope, the Koran of the Mohammedans, or what have you.

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 foolishness of backsliding from this truth:

v. 8. Howbeit, then, when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods.

v. 9. But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage?

v. 10. Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years.

v. 11. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain.

The apostle here interrupts his doctrinal exposition to rebuke the Galatians for their strange conduct in turning back to a slavery of legal observance from which he had rescued them long ago: But at that time indeed, when you did not know God, you were in bondage to such as really are no gods. The Galatian Christians, Gentiles for the most part, had in the time before their conversion, before they had come to the knowledge of the true God, been in servitude to what they thought were gods, but which, as they now knew, were mere figments of their imagination. The thought implied in the apostle’s rebuke is: In the days of your ignorance there was some excuse for bondage to imaginary gods, to such as had no real existence. Now, however, the case is different: But now, having known God, having come to the knowledge of the true God by the grace of God in bringing them to such knowledge, how was it possible for them to turn back again to the weak and beggarly rudiments, with the deliberate intention of serving them again, from the beginning, all over again? By being brought to the knowledge of God, by being converted, the Galatians had turned from their futile bondage, from their attempt to keep the Law, as they understood it, Rom 2:14-15. That was a work of God’s mercy alone; the knowledge of God which is by faith comes without a man’s merit and desire. Having been saved on the one hand, however, they were backsliding on the other; they were turning their attention and themselves to the rudiments of which Paul had spoken in v. 3, to the demands and statutes of the Law. Under the influence of the Judaizing teachers they were going so far as to believe that they could-merit something in the sight of God by observing the weak and beggarly statutes of the ceremonial law. Weak they were, because the Law cannot work righteousness and cannot even assist in obtaining it; and beggarly, empty, poor they were, because, instead of bringing true spiritual riches, they continually render a person poorer in true worth. The Galatians were thus beginning their heathenish life, with its futile efforts of appeasing a righteous and holy God, all over again. For in listening to the admonitions of the false teachers, "they were not only given to the celebration, but, precisely like the Jews, were already scrupulous also as to the correct reckoning of time for their holydays. Days, with reference to the Sabbath; months, probably with reference to the new moons; seasons, within the year, with reference to the feasts; years, with reference to the Sabbatical year."

This situation filled the apostle with consternation and sorrow, for he cries out: I fear concerning you, lest I have done all my hard work for you in vain. Disappointment, bitterness, loving appeal: they all are expressed in these words. As Luther says: "These words breathe the tears of Paul. " It is not only their sin, their ingratitude, to which he has reference, but also the great danger in which they had placed themselves. And all the hard, assiduous labor of the apostle was coming to naught.

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

Our apostle having proved sufficiently the believing Christians freedom from the yoke of the ceremonial law; next endeavours to convince the Galatians how absurd and unreasonable it was for them voluntarily to put themselves under the obligation and obedience of it, and to look upon it as necessary to their justification and salvation: Now in the verses before us he tells them, that when they were Gentiles they were the worst of slaves, serving them that were no gods at all; whereas the Jews served the true God, though in a servile manner: These Galatians, being Heathens before conversion, served false Gods, and so were in a bondage much worse than that of the Jews. The apostle therefore justly blames them, that they being naturally Gentiles, and never under the ceremonial law, should now desire and choose to enter into that bondage: which was apparently to go backward in religion, or to return to those principles which they had already over-past.

Thence learn, that it is possible for a professing people to advance very far in the way of Christianity, and yet make a foul retreat afterwards in a course of defection and apostacy: After we have known God, that is acknowledged the living and true God, and been acknowledged by him, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements?

Here note, how contemptuously, or at least disesteemingly, our apostle speaks of the legal rites of the ceremonial law: He calls them elements or rudiments, because they were God’s first instructions given to his church for his worship, to which he intended afterwards a more perfect way of worship: Next he calls them weak elements, because the law made nothing perfect, and the observance of it was impotent and unavailable to a sinner’s justification before God: And lastly, he calls them beggarly elements, in comparison with that more rational and spiritual way of worship under the gospel.

Whence we may learn, that holy zeal will teach a saint to speak with a sort of contempt of any thing that encroaches upon the honour due to Christ, or any of his offices. True, the Levitical ceremonies were appointed by God himself as a part of divine worship leading to Christ, and as such to be religiously observed; but when the false apostles did urge the observation of them under the gospel, as a part of necessary commanded worship, and as a part of the Galatians righteousness before God, St. Paul is bold then to give them the name of weak and beggarly elements.

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

Howbeit at that time, not knowing God, ye were in bondage to them that by nature are no gods

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.

8. Howbeit, then. These Galatian brethren had been idolaters, and had worshiped idols which were not gods at all. At that time they knew not God, the true God, at all.

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 reminds the Galatian believers that they are again trying to live under God's laws rather than living by faith.

General Information:

He continues to rebuke the Galatians by asking rhetorical questions.

those who are

"those things that are" or "those spirits who are"

you are known by God

This can be stated in active form. AT: "God knows you" (See: Active or Passive)

how is it that you are turning back to ... principles?

Here "turning back to" is a metaphor for starting to pay attention to something again. This is the first of two rhetorical questions. AT: "you should not start paying attention to ... principles." or "you should not be concerned with ... principles." (See: Metaphor and Rhetorical Question)

elemental principles

See how you translated this phrase in Galatians 4:3.

Do you want to be enslaved all over again?

Paul uses this question to rebuke the people for behaving in a way that would make them like slaves. AT: "It seems that you want to be slaves again." or "You behave as though you wanted to be like slaves again."(See: Rhetorical Question)

Do you want to be enslaved all over again?

Here being "enslaved" is a metaphor for being obligated to obey certain rules or customs. AT: "Do you want to have to obey rules again like a slave has to obey his master?" or "It seems that you want to be controlled all over again!" (See: Metaphor)

translationWords

God

servant

false god

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

8-11.] Appeal to them, as the result of the conclusion just arrived at, why, having passed out of slavery into freedom, they were now going back again.

8.] τότε refers back for its time, not to ver. 3, as Windischmann, but to οὐκέτι εἶ δοῦλος, ver. 7.

In οὐκ εἰδότ. θ., there is no inconsistency with Rom 1:21: there it is the knowledge which the Gentile world might have had: here, the matter of fact is alleged, that they had it not.

τοῖς φύσει μὴ οὖσιν θ.] to gods, which by nature exist not: see 1Co 8:4; 1Co 10:19, 1Co 10:20 and note. The rec. would be, “to those which are not by nature gods,” i.e. only made into gods by human fancy: but this is not the Apostle’s way of conceiving of the heathen deities. Meyer compares 2Ch 13:9, ἐγένετο εἰς ἱερέα τῷ μὴ ὄντι θεῷ. Notice μή—giving the Apostle’s judgment of their non-existence—and see 2Co 5:21 note, where however I cannot hold with Ellic., that μὴ γνόντα expresses ‘God’s judgment’ (?).

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

Over against their filial freedom in Christ, Paul sets their lapse into subjection to the elements of the world (verse 3).

Knew not God. See on 2Th 1:8.

Ye did service [εδουλευσατε] . Better, were in bondage or were slaves. By nature [φυσει] . Not denying their existence (comp. 1Co 8:5) but their deity. Emphasis on by nature. Comp. 1Co 10:20.

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