The Book of Galatians -- Episode Eight: "Do You Really Want to Go Back to Slavery?" (Galatians 4:1-20)

Paul’s question to those listening to the agitators in Galatia is simple but profound.  “What has happened to all of your joy?”  Paul is referring to that joy the Galatians had experienced together with Paul when he first preached the gospel to them.  These people were Paul’s spiritual children.  He loved them, and he thought they loved him.  They took him in when he had been felled by illness.  The Galatians received the gospel with great joy.  There was Christian liberty.  But then the Judaizers came.

The spoiled fruit of such legalism is not only a loss of Christian liberty, but also the loss of the assurance of salvation.  The agitators turn the church into a court–a contentious place of charges, complaints and accusations.  How can I eat with so and so?  They still eat pork.  They do this, and they don’t do that.  They don’t care about Moses or his law.  Paul describes the Judaizing legalism as a return to the elementary principles of the world, in effect, a return to the slavery of sin–putting back on the shackles of works of law after they were removed by the cross of Christ.

Paul reminds the Galatians that God sent his Son and his Spirit, so that the Galatians can call God their father.  Why would anyone wish to give up such wonderful freedom and liberty?  Why replace freedom with works of law and go back to the basic principles of this world?  This is our subject for this edition of the Blessed Hope podcast.

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