Learning Our Lessons (Galatians 4:8-9)

“Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more?” (Galatians 4:8-9, English Standard Version)

Some lessons in life we thankfully only have to learn once. Something disastrous happens due to our ignorance, we learn the hard lesson, and that issue never comes up again. On the other hand, some lessons in life we never seem to learn. Isn’t that true? Something bad happens, we learn the hard lesson, time goes by, and the same thing happens again. Some people will finally learn the lesson the second or third time through a situation. Sadly, however, some people never learn the lesson; they seem to endlessly repeat the same error over and over again.

In this section of Galatians, Paul shows his heart for his readers. He pleads for them to learn the lesson that God cannot be served by means of the flesh; that there are no amount of good works or religious ceremony that will earn us God’s favor. Paul contrasts the Galatians’ lives before they came to Christ with their lives now that they are Christians to prove the folly of their error.

1. Their Lives Before They Knew God (“Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods). Paul points out to his readers that before they knew God (i.e., before they became Christians) they were enslaved. This is strong imagery, and it runs counter to the typical unbeliever’s experience. Many unbelievers (formerly myself included) think that Christianity makes people into automatons—little Christian robots with little or no freedom. I personally saw Christianity as incredibly strict, and Christians as trying to suck the fun out of life.

Yet the truth of the matter is that the life without Christ is slavery—slavery to my fleshly desires and appetites. Many of the things unbelievers, rightly or wrongly, think Christianity forbids are the very same things these people are enslaved to. Sex, drugs, gambling, alcohol, even religious activity are some of the many things people are enslaved to. Paul says these things are not gods (i.e., worthy to be worshipped). No, in fact, they’re idols, and we worship them at the expense of our souls.

2. The Folly of Going Back to These Things After Knowing God (“But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more?). Paul introduces the contrast with those very familiar words, “But now.” Now that we have come to know God, how can we go back to the worthless things that used to enslave us? How can a Christian, who was freed from the bondage of alcoholism, go back on a drinking binge? How can a Christian, who was freed from the sin of gambling, go back to the casinos? That is the point Paul is making—we were freed from our bondage to various sins, why would we go back to them?

Now the context of Paul’s argument was religious legalism. We know this from verse 10: “You observe days and months and seasons and years.” The reference here is to the Jewish holy days. The Jews celebrated (and still celebrate) the feast days as outlined in the Old Testament, and they wanted the Gentile Christians to do the same. Paul calls these things “weak and worthless elementary principles.” “Weak and worthless” denotes their complete inability to bring a person into a right relationship with God. The phrase “elementary principles” is meant to denote that these rituals and whatnot are like baby steps toward a relationship with God. Just as we would not say a person knows all there is to know about the English language because they can recite the A-B-C’s, likewise we would not say a person has a saving relationship with God because they observe religious holy days. As believers, we must grow beyond these “elementary principles” and into a genuine relationship with our Creator. Lastly, notice that the Galatians were willingly returning to these “weak and worthless elementary principles” (“whose slaves you want to be once more”). It’s one thing to be duped into legalism, but quite another to embrace it willingly.

Before we close. there is a phrase I want to look at that was overlooked earlier—“or rather to be known by God.” First of all, this phrase is not meant to suggest that before we came to Christ, God didn’t know us. There are two things being said by this phrase: 1) It speaks of salvation as a God initiated work; and 2) it also speaks of the intimacy shared between God and his children—an intimacy that is not shared with unbelievers.

Application Time. If you’re a follower of Christ, then you were saved out of a life of bondage to sin (cf. Colossians 1:13). The book of James says that we all fall in many ways (cf. James 3:2). Some people were saved out of bondage to certain sins, and some of us were saved out of bondage to other sins. The point being, we were all saved from some sort of sin (or sins). Let us learn our lessons! Let us not continue to fall captive to the things that we were saved out of. Let us embrace the freedom that life in Christ brings! Christ did not suffer and die so we can continue in our life of sin! As Paul says in Romans, “How can we who died to sin still live in it?” (Romans 6:2).

Bottom Line. The writer of Proverbs had this to say, let this not be the story of our lives: “Like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool who repeats his folly” (Proverbs 26:11).

Have a blessed day!

Back to “Galatians” page.