Galatians: Chapter 4:1-20

Hello, I'm Michael Barber and this is my dear friend Jim

Prothrow and we're both professors here at the Augustan

Institute and you're joining us for a Bible study on

Galatians that shouldn't be a surprise to you.

That should be a big title above the video or something

before you click on it.

So hopefully I'm not sharing anything new or giving you

a spoiler.

But what we're going to do now is continue our track

through this amazing letter of St. Paul.

And we're going to pick up in chapter four, all right.

And here in chapter four, Paul builds on what he'd been

talking about in the previous chapter where he identified

the way through Christ, we become heirs of the promises

made to Abraham.

And he says, I mean that the heir as long as he is a child

is no different from a slave, though he is the owner

of everything, but he is under guardians and managers

until the date set by his father.

And we talked about this, how people in the ancient world

would have servants, a pedagogue, and then the children

would be under that servant for some period of time.

And while the children are young, they

don't have all the rights of the owner of the estate, right.

They are under these other servants.

They have to obey.

And so that's what Paul's talking about here.

And he says, in the same way, we also, when we were children,

we're enslaved to now there's an issue with how

to translate this expression here.

But the ESP has a perfectly fine rendering.

The elementary principles, it says, of the world.

So we were confined to the basic elements of this world.

Now in Greek, the word stoichiia can also

have the connotation of spirits or powers.

And some people see here the idea that you're under angels.

And elsewhere in Paul's letters, we

read about how in the New Covenant, the righteous,

the saints will judge the angels.

And there are even over the angels.

But we don't really want to spend too much time

getting into the weeds of this passage here, but no.

But only this is something that you

point out in your book, which is really helpful, I think.

So if you're reading the ESVCE in this verse,

you'll see elementary principles of the world.

And then there's a little footnote at the bottom that says,

or maybe elemental spirits.

But sometimes, like you said, people thought pagans

thought about these as like stars to control fates.

And other people could talk about angels this way.

And in terms of what Paul is getting at here,

we're thinking about, he's talking about being

a child and then growing up to receive the full inheritance

of your parents.

So we'll talk more about that in a second.

But remember what he said in Galatians 3 and 19,

he said, the law was given through angels.

It doesn't mean that it's not from God.

But it means that if we're thinking about being

a child under the world as it is, what Paul calls

the present evil age in chapter 1 verse 4 of Galatians.

And God bringing us into context, not just with mediators,

like Moses or an angel or somebody else,

somebody who comes from God because we

can't handle being in close contact with God,

but actually being put into contact with God himself.

Well, that's something new that happens in Jesus,

because God and God's whole Godness, right?

This collusion says, the fullness of divinity, right?

All of God's Godness is in Jesus in bodily form,

walking around, and then is given by the Holy Spirit to us.

And that means that there's something different,

just like he said earlier in chapter 3, that we were under,

he says, the Israel was under this pedagogue,

this guardian of the law, until Christ should come,

and they can be sons of God.

Well, here, we're under, nannies and guardians

and these elemental spirits, even like angels, right?

But kept and sort of held there by them,

but now that Christ has come, we get to actually participate

directly in God, right?

And the French side of this is that for those Galatians

who are insisting that they have to go back and keep all

of the law and keep all of these observances

in order to be justified, what Paul saying is,

no, you're kind of going backwards, right?

I mean, what God has done in Christ

is something that is in continuity with his plan of salvation,

but it also transcends in ways what was available

in the old covenant.

And so you don't want to go backwards,

you want to go forwards, yes?

Yeah, it's a little bit like only a little bit,

like in Exodus chapter 21,

God gives the 10 commandments from Mount Sinai,

and there's this sort of divine void, I mean, it's an angel,

because this sort of divine voice coming from the mountain

that tells the 10 commandments,

and then all of the people of Israel look at Moses

and say, hey, don't let him talk to us anymore, right?

They've heard the voice of God for goodness sake,

but they're like, that's scary, I don't want that.

Moses, you do the talking from now on, right?

And now God wants that.

God says, yes, this was a test.

Moses says, God's testing you, right?

This is good, you fear him.

But with Christ, right, it's like, God is like,

no, I have come to you to draw you into my own head.

Heavenly life.

And you're going, no, I don't want to come in the big house.

I'd rather sit out front on the porch.

It's more comfortable for me, right?

I'd rather be out there with the law

and everything else, but not come in here.

Yeah, but not come in, right?

Right.

So Paul was on, but when the fullness of time had come,

God sent forth his son, born of woman,

born under the law.

So Christ is born under the law, very significant.

The law is not so wicked that Christ

doesn't come born under the law,

but he comes to redeem those who were under the law

so that they might receive,

so that we might receive adoption as sons.

What's Paul driving at there?

Why is it important to be redeemed from under the law?

So redeem, you can, like we redeem coupons

and things like that, right?

It's kind of like ransom, right?

But the main, sometimes people get really bothered

like, well, wait, who did God pay?

God pay death, did he pay the devil?

Did he pay the law?

Some money to get, what are we talking about?

That's not actually the biggest point, right?

But you transfer from one domain of authority

and power to another one.

God had put everybody, put Israel under the law on purpose

as a guardian, but now to redeem them

from being under the law or under these things.

He comes and in Christ gets them through the death

and resurrection of Jesus, brings them fully and perfectly

into his direct domain so that they're dealing not simply

with Moses, but with God, speaking not just

with Moses or an angel or somebody else, but with God.

Eating the bread, not just of human bread

that miraculously fell, but the bread of angels itself,

the bread of God, right?

And so that they can receive adoption as sons.

And so redemption is ultimately ordered

towards being part of God's family

and being brought in to union with the sun.

And it's really important for Paul,

think we often overlook this.

We're not sons and daughters of God

apart from Christ.

We, in a sense, share for Paul.

We share Christ's sonship with the Father.

We share in his relationship with the Father.

And all of this Paul says happens because of the Spirit.

God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts,

crying, Abba, Father.

And here we have imagery that's taken from prophets

like Ezekiel, where God promises that in the future age

when God redeems, when he restores his people,

he will send his Spirit and he will give his people

a heart of flesh.

He will take out the heart of stone

and give his people a heart of flesh.

So here we have that idea of the Spirit

being sent into our hearts so that we can be transformed.

And that transformation is nothing less

than becoming like Christ, becoming like the sun,

crying out, Abba, Father.

And so you are no longer a slave,

but a son and if a son, then an heir through God.

And so if you are a son of God,

Paul is explaining to the Galatians,

you are an heir and you are heir of the promises

that were made to Abraham.

You're no longer outside the family of Abraham.

In Christ, you're united to the one

who is the descendant of Abraham, Parachs Lawns,

and you are given his Spirit, Christ Spirit,

so that you can become like him.

Any thoughts on that before we move on?

No, just one note here.

You can see the beautiful, sort of,

trinitarian work of God to redeem us.

One of the lines I like from Thomas Aquinas

is that on the one hand,

we can think about the different persons

in the Trinity having characteristic actions, right?

The Spirit sanctifies the sun redeems,

the Father creates that kind of a thing, right?

And that's not a bad thing, right?

You can talk about God, excuse me,

you can talk about God, the Trinity,

as like creator and redeemer and sanctifier,

but Thomas insists and he's totally right, right?

Thomas Aquinas, yeah.

That all of the Trinity is always involved, right?

And this is one of the reasons

I got a question from a student the other day,

they read in the book of Acts

and then they read some of Paul and they said,

I thought that we weren't supposed to say

that the Father raised, that God raised Jesus from the dead.

I thought we were just supposed to say Jesus rose

because he has the power himself.

I'm like, well, he does have the power himself.

He has the power because he's God,

which means that God the Father is doing it too,

and so is the Spirit and so is Jesus,

and you can actually find all of those things

being said differently in the scriptures.

And here also in our redemption, right?

The Father sends the Son, the Son redeems by dying

and rising again, but then in his sending out

of the Holy Spirit is when that sonship, right?

That adoption actually comes to reside in our hearts, right?

Where the Spirit of God takes up its dwelling in us.

And he says, Father to the Father,

and he can do that without hedging his bets,

without anything else.

And that means that because he's in you,

you can call God Father without hedging your bets, right?

This is why we say in the liturgy, right?

We dare to say, right before we say our Father, right?

Because that's a bold thing to say, right?

For a little pipsquick like me to look at God and go,

Dad, Father, right?

But Jesus invites us to do that

because he sends us his Holy Spirit

so that we can call out Abba, Father to him, right?

And we can't do that apart from the Spirit.

And so we need to ask the Father

to continually send that Spirit to us

and to unite ourselves to that Spirit.

Paul goes on to say, formerly,

when you did not know God,

you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods.

Here he's talking about the forces of demonic powers, right?

Those who are false gods, right?

So before you knew God in Christ,

before the gift of Christ, you were enslaved, right?

And so this is the reality of life apart from Christ

that we do not have freedom.

We're not able to do the things that we're called to do

because we lack the gift of that Spirit

that enables us to empower us to be faithful.

But now that you have come to know God,

or rather, like I put this,

but now that you've come to know God,

or rather to be known by God,

because I mean, let's be honest,

we don't really know God fully, right?

And in reality, God is the one who makes himself known to us.

How can you turn back, Paul is saying to the Galatians

who want to be circumcised?

How can you, the Galatian Gentiles,

how can you turn back again to the weak

and worthless elementary principles of the world

who slaves you want to be once more?

You observe days and months and seasons and years.

So the idea is it seems that there's some pressure

to adopt practices, not just like circumcision,

but maybe even to observe certain Jewish festivals

or at least any festival, the idea is,

it's not enough to have faith in Christ

that in order to receive the grace of Christ,

some people are being told, no,

you have to make yourself worthy in advance

by doing all of these things.

Paul's saying, no, you're going backwards, right?

Says, I'm afraid I may have labored over you in vain.

And so here we can just maybe come up

with a quick little Venn diagram, right?

Where on the one hand, we see basically

there are two spheres of existing.

One sphere is under the law that's ordained by angels.

And in that sphere, you're under the elemental spirits,

the elemental principles, the powers of this world.

But then there's a new covenant age that's coming.

There's the age that is marked by faith in Christ

and that realm of existence, if you will,

that way of being actually elsewhere, Paul says,

you'll judge the angels and he says,

we're no longer under the law.

And what happens is in Christ, if we're united, the Christ,

there's kind of an overlapping of these two periods.

And that's really what Paul's talking about here, isn't he?

Yeah.

And if I could add to your comments about God

taking the initiative for us, Grace,

this little kind of correction that Paul has in verse nine,

I think is really beautiful.

And I just want to note it real quick.

He says, now that you've come to know God,

rather, you've been known by God, right?

What's the first thing that happens?

There is a lot of times we can go into the sort of struggle

of thinking, okay, I got to earn my place before God.

Sometimes also we can go into the sort of like next struggle

of saying, oh, well, I thought I had to,

but now I know I don't.

And so it's not about me knowing God's about God knowing me.

So who cares if I ever study

or ever try to keep his commandments

or anything like that?

One of the beautiful things is when God takes the initiative

to know us and give us his grace,

that creates this new relationship

where we're transformed and we want to, right?

Follow and know him.

So here, right, God knows us.

So you ought to know him, right?

You ought to want to know him, right?

Because he has come and brought us into this relationship

of sonship and daughtership to him.

Philippians three, there's another thing that's just like this

and I want to share this with you,

even though it's not on this screen.

Philippians three, verse 12, if you're watching,

you can pause and flip to your Bible if you want

or you can just trust me.

But Paul says, right, I want to attain the goal of perfection

and to be raised from the dead.

He says, not that I've already obtained this

or already imperfect, but I press on to make it my own

because Christ Jesus has made me his own, right?

Because Jesus has come and made me unworthy his own,

now I want to make his gifts my own

and live to strive and live into them, right?

It's not a striving for something that is beyond us

and being dangled like a carrot, right?

It's striving to make real the gift

that he's already put in us, right?

And that the Holy Spirit already is within us.

And these guys want to run the opposite way, right?

All right, so then Paul was on in verse 12,

brothers, I entreat you.

Become as I am, bald.

No, that's not.

That's not, don't think that's right.

Because brothers, I entreat you become.

You're in the brow.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, there are lots of interesting portrayals of Paul,

depictions of Paul.

There is a famous passage in a non-biblical,

but ancient Christian work that gives us

a description of Paul himself.

We can find that in our book, Paul, A New Covenant Jew,

book I wrote with Bram Petri and John Kay,

the basic idea seems to be that Paul

wasn't all that especially attractive to look at,

but what made him great was his speaking

and was his virtue.

So he wasn't great in the eyes of the world, right?

So to speak.

Anyway, for I also have become as you are

and here we really see Paul modeling

what he believes Christ has done, right?

That Christ has become as we are.

And so Paul, let me see that in Philippians

as well, Philippians too.

Brothers, I entreated to become as I am,

for I also have become as you are.

You did me no wrong.

So Paul's talking about how he gave himself here,

so to speak, to the Galatians,

how he tried to become like them, became one of them,

says, you know, it was because of a bodily ailment

that I preached the gospel to you at first.

So it doesn't seem like Paul ended up in Galatia initially

because he had this careful plan,

but he came there somehow because of some bodily ailment.

He preached the gospel at first

and though my condition was a trial to you,

so what this was, we're not really clear, right?

It could be an I malady, it could be something else.

And his conditioning and a physical condition

that was a trial to them,

you did not scorn or despise me,

but received me as an angel of God,

the Greek were there for angels,

the word for messenger.

So you received me as the messenger of God

as Christ Jesus.

It's really a beautiful passage.

Right.

Any thoughts here you want to,

before we move to the next?

Well, no, it's easier.

Only to say, you find this language a lot of,

you find it in Paul's letters, particularly,

of receiving other people as though they were Christ.

Right.

Paul wants churches to receive apostles

and other ministers and helpers, deacons,

as though that person is Christ

because they represent Christ.

Even other Christians.

He hears you, hears me.

Exactly, exactly, right?

That he wants people when they receive

or meet another Christian coming to them

in the name of God to treat them

like they would treat Jesus, right?

And there's something beautiful to that,

not only when we're being visited by somebody,

but also when we're visiting somebody else

and we see somebody to treat them

as though we were going to go and visit the Lord

because if the Holy Spirit is in all of us,

through baptism, then the Lord is in each of us.

That's right.

That's right.

But in the context here,

it's not all that beautiful

because he's gonna say, it was great what happened.

Right.

He originally recognized that Paul was preaching

the true gospel and they received him as Christ Jesus

even though he was wounded,

even though he was vulnerable,

even though he had an ailment, right?

But these other representatives,

these other teachers have come to these churches in Galatia.

They've presented themselves as the be all and all

and Paul is upset because they've been,

the Galatians have been listening to these other preachers

and been led astray.

This is so mind-boggling for Paul, he goes on to say,

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.

Right.

The Galatians were so grateful for Paul,

for him bringing the gospel,

bringing the Spirit to them which they received.

Paul says, 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.

What do you think Paul means by that there?

Yeah, but this whole section here is a good reminder

that if we read Galatians to be only about our,

what we think and about doctrine, right?

Then we're missing something, right?

Paul says, I came to you, right,

you received me as an angel of God,

and now you've got these other people who showed up,

and you're gonna leave the truth through my apostleship,

through the church, to jump in with other people, right?

It's not just an issue of,

you got the wrong teaching a little bit,

but also, right, that people are gonna leave

the apostolic church for these other Yehoo's, right?

For something else.

And who are in some ways flattering them, right?

They make much of you, right?

And they want you to make much of them, right?

That's right.

And they're gonna shut you out,

shut you out from what, Paul?

Right, right.

From the communion of the church, right?

You're gonna leave the message that Peter

and all the other apostles and I preach,

and you're gonna actually break off communion with me,

your apostle, and run off after these jokers,

and they'd love that because then you'd be like,

oh, you guys, you guys are the true church,

you guys are the real apostles of Jesus.

That's not actually gonna be good for you.

They're trying to break you off from us.

Do you think that, in some sense,

what's going on here is that these false teachers

are also sort of making much out of their Jewish background,

right? They're circumcised.

You have to become like us, right?

And so in some ways, there's a subtext here

that these people are trying to shut you out

from the church because they want you

to make much of them as Jews,

because they want you to have to become Jews

by being circumcised.

So do you think there might be maybe not?

That's how I kind of detect that in the background here.

No, I can see that.

Definitely though, it's worth remembering

that when we talk about Jews in this context, right?

We're not talking about non-Christian Jews.

Right, that's right.

The people who are preaching to the Galatians are Christians

that they just are from Jewish descent

and they're trying to voice all of the things from their own.

But it's not good enough for you to be a Gentile.

You need to become a Jew so that you can then be a Christian.

Yeah, that's right.

I think that seems...

Yeah, they're bringing some...

Gentiles aren't gonna be saved.

You gotta be circumcised, make yourself a Jew.

And so they want to shut you out of the family of Abraham

that you may make much of them.

Oh wow, you guys are so great because anyway.

I wonder if there's a little bit of that going on here.

Verse 18, 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.

So here Paul is talking about his great love

for the people here and he's describing himself

as being in the anguish of childbirth,

what a strange image to use for a man.

Wouldn't you say it's sort of a...

Yeah, well Paul talks about himself in First Thessalonians

also as like a nursing mother.

Right.

Paul doesn't just say, right, Abraham,

we're only gonna use masculine types of images for myself.

But he uses motherly ones as well, right?

And this is really an important part of the Christian message.

Because what happens when you're baptized?

That's right.

You're born again.

Right.

And so if bringing somebody to Christ

is like giving them new birth, right,

then all of us are like midwives under God, right?

We're like mothers, right?

Right.

And bringing them to birth.

And bringing them into the oneness of the church,

which is community understood as mother church here, right?

And I love this idea that Paul is in an anguish

until Christ is formed in you.

And that's a message that we should all sort of reflect on.

In this life, Christ is constantly being formed in us.

Yes, we are in Christ and Christ is in us.

But there's a sense in which this is a lifelong process, right?

Of being made more and more in conformity

to the image of the sun.

Paul says in Romans 8, right,

that we are to become conformed to the image of Christ.

Paul is an anguish here because it seems like these false teachers

are leading them astray.

And Christ is not going to be fully formed in them.

And so what will happen is they will be cut off from Christ

and they'll lose that life that is in them.

And he says, I wish I could be present with you now

and change my tone for I am perplexed about you.

And it kind of gives us an insight into Paul's relationship

with the Galatians as well, right?

He seems to have a different tone in person

than he does in his letters.

And it reminds us to, when we read Galatians,

it was really easy to look and notice, we should notice it, right?

The Paul's kind of like cranked here, right?

He's got white knuckles, right?

I mean, he's not holding the pen until the end

because he tells us he picks it up.

But he's rare in, right?

And sometimes he kind of jumps, right?

And he doesn't always like explain things in this sort of nice,

like, OK, now let's think about it this way.

Now do I mean this?

No, of course not.

Let's go on and talk about it, right?

He does that in some of his other letters.

It ain't happening here, right?

This is one of the only letters where

he doesn't have a promise to come and visit them

in the near future, right?

He just says, I wish I could, but I can't.

And so I have to write you this really kind of rough,

really insistent appeal to get you back

because he doesn't know if he's going to see him again.

That seems.

And this is a really important thing to consider, right?

Oftentimes people imagine that to be pastoral,

to reach people where they are, you

have to sort of bend over backward,

you have to accommodate people.

You never want to use a tone that might be strong,

that might be off-putting.

But Paul is identifying himself in this passage

as a mother, right?

And he's recognizing that in order

to enable you to be fully formed,

if you have Christ fully formed in you,

he needs to use a tone that commensurate with the situation.

And so here, Paul is using some harsh language,

and we're going to see that harsh language

continuing Galatians.

But in no way should we mistake that for a lack of love

for the Galatians?

No, right?

He sees them as his little children.

So when you're dealing with little children,

sometimes you have to use a tone that's

going to help them understand that there is a severity

to the circumstances that, so I tell my son, Simon,

don't run out in the middle of the street.

Don't run out in the middle of the street.

You really shouldn't run out in the middle of the street.

That's not going to get his attention.

If he's in the immediate circumstance,

where he's in danger of being run over by a car, right?

And for Paul, those are the stakes here.

Yeah, this literally happened to my wife

a couple of weeks ago, she was getting her car fixed.

And the mechanics place was right on the corner

of two big streets.

And the two-year-old ran out and was very close

to being hit by a car.

And the man, the mechanic, was a really good guy.

He stepped out, and he just screamed.

Stop!

Stop!

That guy is attention.

And so my child went and turned back around

and ran to mom, right?

And she spent the next day or two crying like,

that man was mean, right?

And she's like, yeah, but you're alive, right?

Paul doesn't have a problem in this case, right?

If he was with him, he could change his tone

because he could teach them through it.

But he can't.

He could just write this letter.

And so he's got no problem yelling out,

don't do this.

Because if they do this, right?

They will cut themselves off from the life of Christ.

And death is the circumstance that they are going to face.

Real death.

And we're going to talk more about what that life and death

looks like in our next episode as we move into Paul's teaching

further in Galatians 4 and 5.

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