In the last section of the third chapter it was pointed out that the law was not against the promises of God. If a law had been given that was to impart life, then indeed righteousness would have been on the principle of law, but the Scripture has shut up all under sin in order that the promise, by faith in Jesus Christ, should be accomplished in favor of those who believe. But before faith in Christ came, the Jews were kept under the law, shut up to the faith which was about to be revealed.
The law was then the tutor or teacher of the Jews until Christ came, that they might be justified on the principle of faith. Faith having come, says the Apostle, we are no longer under a tutor, for ye are all God’s sons by faith in Christ Jesus. Believers are no longer viewed as Jews or Gentiles; all natural and man-made distinctions are gone, and “ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” But, it is added, if ye are of Christ, then ye are Abraham’s seed, heirs according to promise.
“Now I say, as long as the heir is a child, he differs nothing from a bondman, though he be lord of all; but he is under guardians and stewards until the period fixed by the father. So we, also, when we were children, were held in bondage under the principles of the world; but when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, come of woman, come under law, that He might redeem those under law, that we might receive sonship. But because ye are sons, God has sent out the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying Abba, Father. So thou art no longer bondman, but son; but if son, heir also through God” (verses 1-7 JND).
All this is surely plain, and as we read it over, we see that all is of God; His eternal purposes are revealed. And in marvelous grace He has acted, after waiting until the “fullness of the time” had been reached, when man’s history had shown him not only without strength to act toward God, but also a sinner. God’s Son came into the world, taking a relationship with men in lowly grace. Sin and death came in by the woman, and Christ came into the world by woman, though Himself without sin and not subject to death. Through law, man is under condemnation, and Christ in grace put Himself under law also, and thus He came to redeem, that believers might receive sonship, and because they are sons, God has sent the Spirit, whereby they cry Abba, Father. Precious, indeed, this working of divine grace in our souls! What an exchange from the bondage of the Gentiles in nature’s darkness, and the bondage of the Jews under law, for the place of God’s sons and heirs!
“But then indeed, not knowing God, ye were in bondage to those who by nature are not gods; but now, knowing God, but rather being known by God, how do ye turn again to the weak and beggarly principles to which ye desire to be again anew in bondage? Ye observe days and months and times and years. I am afraid of you, lest indeed I have labored in vain as to you” (verses 8-11, JND).
It is those who had been Gentiles to whom the Apostle addresses himself as not knowing God in their former state, because the Jews had a certain knowledge of God under the law. How they must have been shocked at the words, “How do ye turn again to the weak and beggarly principles to which ye desire to be again anew in bondage?” What they had turned to, was the observance of days and seasons, which was a practice of their former human religion, and had a considerable part in it. The Jew, too, had his days and months of religious observance, originally provided by God as part of a religious system whose purpose was done away at the cross of Christ.
The Galatians, as another has said, “desired to be again in bondage to these wretched elements, worldly and carnal, to which they had formerly been in subjection; these things of which the carnal man could form his religion, without one moral or spiritual thought, and which placed the glory due to God in outward observances which an unbeliever and a heathen ignorant of God could call his religion, and glory in it” (J. N. Darby, Synopsis, Galatians, Chapter 4).
The same writer continues, “Judaism was a human religion ordained of God, but by going back to it, when the ordinance of God was no longer in force, they did but go back to the paganism out of which they had been called to have part with Christ in heavenly things.
“Nothing can be more striking than this statement of what ritualism is after the cross. It is simply heathenism, going back to man’s religion when God is fully revealed.”
Another writer’s remarks in the same connection must find a place here: “How turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? Weigh that expression well. There can not be a more solemn statement as regards the present state of Christendom. What does he mean by saying that these Galatian saints were returning again to the weak and beggarly elements, to which they desired again to be in bondage? They must have been perfectly shocked. Turning again to idolatry! How could this be? They might say, we are only taking up the principle of the law: do you call this the weak and beggarly elements? Why, says the Apostle, when you were unconverted you worshipped false gods—idols; but if you, Christians, go and take up Jewish principles, even these feast-days or other principles of the law, you are in principle idolaters, turning back again to that idolatry out of which God delivered you.
How is this? The reason is plain. It was not that the law in itself could be idolatrous, or that God did not forbear toward the prejudice of those that were Jews. But here were the Gentile believers resorting to these legal elements. Who told them? These things had lost all their meaning, and a Gentile had nothing to do with them; they had their value as a shadow of Christ, before Christ came; but to turn back from Christ risen from the dead to these mere shadows was in God’s sight going back to idolatry. Whenever professing Christendom takes up the law, with its external ceremonials and shadows (quite right as all this was under the law) and adopts them as Christian worship, it has unconsciously, but really, fallen into idolatry.
“...The Holy Ghost presses this upon these Galatian believers, for the evil was only in the germ. If this be true, what a sin to take part in, to countenance or sanction in any way that which is idolatry in God’s judgment! The evil is increasing most rapidly. It is not confined now to popery... The essence of our blessing lies in the soul’s enjoying Christ by the Word of God—the Holy Ghost giving this enjoyment of Christ apart from everything that acts upon the natural eye or mind” (Wm. Kelly, Lectures on Galatians, published in 1864).