Today's reading: Exodus 26; Galatians 4
The beginning of Galatians 4 can be a little confusing, but I am going to say it boils down to, “The things you pursued before you knew Christ are inferior to Him, which is why you left them in the first place, so why would you turn back to dabbling in these lesser things again??”
Specifically, Paul is talking about their spiritual beliefs, not their sin habits in this context.
In the opening paragraph, Paul is addressing the Jews who were born and raised under the law. And while the law was good, it is not superior to Christ. This is the culmination of the argument Paul has been making through chapter 3. Yes, God gave the law, and yes, the law is good, but you cannot keep the law and that is supposed to point you to your need for something greater; a need which is fulfilled in Christ. So, he says, you are no longer slaves [to the law] but you are sons [of God in Christ].
In the second paragraph, Paul switches audience and addresses the Gentiles in the group who were born and raised under other gods than Yahweh. Most likely, given the “days and months and seasons and years” language, Paul is referring to the astral deities, the Fates, who controlled individual lives by their movements across the skies. The Gentiles in the audience too then, like the Jews, recognized the insufficiency of their gods and turned their allegiance to the true God, but now are beginning to turn back to the Fates.
Now the Galatians had outside influences trying to push them back into these things. Specifically there were those trying to teach them that Christians had to maintain Jewish laws in order to be saved, or in order to carry on their faith, and Paul is flatly rejecting that. It is not that the law was bad or sinful, but that it was meant to point you to Christ, and now that Christ is here, we are no longer under the law. So why turn back to the lesser thing???
I don’t feel like I have something super applicable to draw out of this for many of us today. Mostly this is a couple paragraphs that confused me for a long time, but felt it was cleared up for me reading Michael Heiser’s The Unseen Realm where he discusses, at one point, the “elemental principals” language Paul uses and how that Greek word can be used both for the law and for elemental deities in this passage.
That said, there has been, and is, a big push in our culture to “normalize” all spirituality. And I don’t mean “make it all normal or common,” but reduce it all down to one thing. Spirituality becomes an expression of you personally rather than being about an objective reality outside ourselves. So if you want to conflate teachings and practices from various religions with following Jesus, you do you, and it will all bring you closer to God! But Paul says that’s not the case. Those other things, whether it is the law given by God Himself, or whether it is the pursuit of other gods, the zodiac, transcendental meditation, the occult, or anything else, are what Jesus came to rescue us from, and are to be left behind, not brought into our worship.
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