We, therefore, most image God whenever we love, enjoy, and glorify Him, in the same way that He loves, enjoys, and glorifies Himself. We least image God whenever we turn our love, enjoyment, and glory inward upon ourselves. As Christ is formed in us, we are being remade into the image of Christ, who is the only person to ever fully and perfectly image God (see Colossians 1:15 and Hebrews 1:3). Indeed, we are being born again into new and everlasting life in Him, for the purpose of sharing in His eternal love by enjoying and glorifying Him forever.

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? You observe days and months and seasons and years! I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain.

Brothers, I entreat you, become as I am, for I also have become as you are. You did me no wrong. You know it was because of a bodily ailment that I preached the gospel to you at first, and though my condition was a trial to you, you did not scorn or despise me, but received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus. What then has become of your blessedness? For I testify to you that, if possible, you would have gouged out your eyes and given them to me. Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth? They make much of you, but for no good purpose. They want to shut you out, that you may make much of them. It is always good to be made much of for a good purpose, and not only when I am present with you, my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you! I wish I could be present with you now and change my tone, for I am perplexed about you.

Galatians 4:8-20 ESV

When God first called Jeremiah to be His prophet, the LORD touched his lips and said, “Behold, I have put my words in your mouth. See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck and to break down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant” (Jeremiah 1:9-10). But as with the early church, those words did not always come to pass exactly as Jeremiah may have originally hoped. You see, as a prophet of Yahweh, the kings of Judah did not submit to his words and follow his counsel; rather, they treated him as Israel tended to treat Yahweh Himself: with scorn and contempt. As God commanded, Jeremiah warned them of God’s coming judgment against their sin, but the people refused to listen. Instead, they gave their ears to false prophets who promised them peace and security, accumulating “for themselves teachers to suit their passions” (2 Timothy 4:3).

Sadly, that is the natural default setting of the human heart. Proverbs 27:6 says, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy.” Intellectually, we know that is true, but resetting a bone still hurts however good and necessary it might be. Throughout his letter to the Galatians, the Apostle Paul has been logically dismantling the false teaching that his readers were being swayed into, which has included some painful rebukes. Now in our present passage, Paul very much resembles Jeremiah as he laments over the error that the Galatians were accepting and over their rejection of him for speaking the truth of the gospel.

How Can You Turn Back? // Verses 8-11

Paul’s logical flow reached its climax in our previous passage. After highlighting the purpose and limitations of the law throughout chapter 3, the Apostle concluded that section by emphasizing that the law was like a guardian over God’s people until the time of receiving the inheritance has come through Christ. Indeed, our text ended with the supreme wonder of our adoption through Christ under God the Father. With this greatest of all blessings before own eyes, Paul continues:

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 to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, who slaves you want to be once more?

Before knowing Christ, the Galatians were pagans who worshiped as gods things that are not gods. They worshiped a multitude of gods, most of whom embodied particular elements, such as Neptune being god of the sea and Pluto being god of the underworld. On one hand, these deities were nothing, which Isaiah 44 displays poignantly. But on the other hand, the false gods were demonic. Thus, whenever Paul says that they were enslaved to these things that are not gods, that enslavement was often quite blatant. Augustine tells the story of a man who was stricken sick by the gods to have the Roman Senate reinstate a festival of games in their honor and then comments:

Any man in his senses could see that men who were under the sway of malignant demons–a domination from which only the grace of God, through Jesus Christ our Lord, could free them–were constrained by force to offer to such gods exhibitions which to a right judgement could only appear disgusting. (City of God, 168)

But while overt demonic enslavement is sometimes the case, many of us before salvation were enslaved to our own desires. Although our wrestling is against forces of evil in heavenly places, our greatest and most treacherous enemy is most often ourselves. F. F. Bruce writes that “from the context it may be gathered that the στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου [elementary principles of the world] ‘cover all the things in which man places his trust apart from the living God; they become his gods, and he becomes their slave.’” And because our hearts are idol factories, that can be anything. Money, power, comfort, convenience, entertainment, the list of possibilities is endless. Even good gifts like food and sex enslave us whenever they become our gods.

But that was before we knew God, the giver of “every good and perfect gift” (James 1:17). How can demons or simply our own desires still enslave us whenever we know God or, as Paul rhetorically corrects himself, whenever God knows. Of course, the knowledge that Paul means is not simply intellectual but experiential. Being omniscient, God knows everything about us, and it quite possible to learn much about Him. However, in Christ, God now knows us relationally. We are now His children. And we know Him as our Father. Now learning about a loved one is necessary to continue fostering our love for them, but love is fundamentally experiential. For example, I think I can do well on a quiz about my wife’s likes and dislikes, but more importantly, I know the feel of her hand in mine. Likewise, there will be some who wrote articulate treatises on who God is that will hear from Him, “Depart from me, I never knew you.”

But even though they were known by God Himself, the Galatians were turning back to their enslavement. Ryken gives a great illustration for how ridiculous this was:

Imagine a tiny baby girl living in an orphanage. A man comes for a visit. As he sees the baby lying in her crib, he loves her so much that he adopts her into his family. She grows up to call the man “Father” because he is the only father she has ever known. But she knows him as her father only because he first knew her as his daughter. This is the love that God has for all his sons and daughters in Christ. Anyone who receives such grace, such undeserved favor, could never go back to the orphanage. Yet this is exactly what the Galatians were trying to do! (171)

In verse 10, Paul notes how the Galatians were turning back to their enslavement: You observe days and months and seasons and years! More than simply being circumcised, the Galatians were keeping the whole Jewish calendar. They observed Sabbaths, new moons, and feasts and festivals. As with circumcision, Paul did not much care about whether a Christian chose to celebrate or not. In Romans 14:5-6, Paul writes:

One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God.

A Christian can celebrate Passover just as much as he can celebrate Advent or Easter. But with any holidays or special seasons, he must do so in honor of Christ and not in an effort to be justified or in judgment of other Christians.

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