This article comes from the June Q&A segment of The Deeper Christian Life Network.
Given its relevance to current trends, we are featuring it here.
The following questions are answered below.
* I’ve been blown away by your exposition of the Old Testament, how you reveal Christ in it. I have read Jesus: A Theography and From Eternity to Here. They’ve both completely upended my understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures. Where else have you opened up the Old Testament in light of how the early Christians understood it?
* I’m disturbed to see some Christians I know who I thought were on the deeper journey revert back to being back under the Law, following the rituals and regulations of the Mosaic Law that Christ fulfilled in Himself and that He nailed to His cross. Have you seen this also? I know you’ve written a great deal about the Law and its relationship to the Christian, any chance you can all of them in one place? By the way, your Galatians in 3D Master Class and your book Insurgence have set me free from both legalism and libertinism, so thank you!
* What do you say about the current trend to return to “Hebrew roots?”
* Someone told me that Jesus should be called Yahshua (Yeshua) instead of the so-called “pagan name” Jesus? They also say that God is a pagan name and should be called Yahweh. What this person said doesn’t seem right to me because every New Testament scholar and Bible commentator I’ve ever read uses Jesus and not Yeshua, as well as “God.”
I’ve been blown away by your exposition of the Old Testament, how you reveal Christ in it. I have read Jesus: A Theography and From Eternity to Here. They’ve both completely upended my understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures. Where else have you opened up the Old Testament in light of how the early Christians understood it?
Thank you. I appreciate this feedback, especially because so many Christians today continue to read the Old Testament in a way that’s different from the way Jesus and the New Testament writers understood it.
Beyond From Eternity to Here and Jesus: A Theography, here are some other places where I’ve unveiled the Lord through the Old Testament Scriptures.
He Takes Away That He Might Establish
Epic Jesus: The Christ You Never Knew
The Unsearchable Riches of Christ
Who is This Woman? Unveiling the Bride of Christ
A City Whose Builder and Maker is God
Vantage Point: The Story We Haven’t Heard – Part I
Vantage Point: The Story We Haven’t Heard – Part II
The Exquisite Passion Master Class on the Network
Also the book Insurgence: Reclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom has a great deal of the Old Testament narrative in the section on the world system.
I’m disturbed to see some Christians I know who I thought were on the deeper journey revert back to being back under the Law, following the rituals and regulations of the Mosaic Law that Christ fulfilled in Himself and that He nailed to His cross. Have you seen this also? I know you’ve written a great deal about the Law and its relationship to the Christian, any chance you can all of them in one place? By the way, your Galatians in 3D Master Class and your book Insurgence have set me free from both legalism and libertinism, so thank you!
Yes, I’ve seen this a few times.
In the book Insurgence: Reclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom, I discuss the four shades of legalism.
All legalists aren’t the same.
Some seek to be saved by the Law, others seek to be sanctified by it.
Others turn the New Testament into a Law and treat it exactly as an Old Testament Jew treated the Law of Moses.
I grew up in a legalistic denomination which did this. Regarding turning the New Testament into Law, the great scholar F.F. Bruce rightly said, “I think Paul would roll over in his grave if he knew we were turning his letters into torah.”
In short, legalism is trying to please God by seeking to keep the letter of the Law. And that attempt is done in one’s power and energy.
Legalists also invariably add their own personal convictions to God’s word in some respect.
As I point out in Insurgence, I’ve never met a legalist who saw himself as a legalist. And on the flip side, I’ve never met a libertine who recognized herself to be a libertine.
There is an astonishing lack of self-awareness involved in both.
When legalism is driving a person, self-righteous judgmentalism is always riding shotgun.
In the cases I’ve known about, after three to seven years, those who embraced legalism have had their eyes opened and they came back to learning how to live by Christ alone.
In some cases, they confessed that they really didn’t know what living by the Lord’s indwelling life was practically all about.
I recall speaking in Phoenix Arizona once. The church that invited me there was heavily steeped in the Law.
These people were in bondage up to their eyeballs. And they were starting to recognize it.
I remember hearing their stories. One story was how they sought to keep the Hebrew feasts, removing every vestige of yeast from their homes, throwing out toasters, etc. Anything that was “defiled.”
Some of the women talked about it with tears in their eyes. It was sheer bondage for them.
That’s an extreme example, but when a person gets serious about trying to fulfill the Law, they are putting themselves into slavery.
Peter said so much when he was referring to putting the dictates of the Law on the Gentile believers. (By the way, Paul wasn’t talking about the tradition of the elders or the Mishna. He was referring to the Law of Moses.)
So why are you now challenging God by burdening the Gentile believers with a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors were able to bear?
~ Acts 15:10
Scholars tell us that there are 613 laws in the Law of Moses. James tells us that if a person fails to keep one of them, they are guilty of violating them all (James 2:10).
Not a nice way to live, in my book.
In Galatians chapter 5, Paul says that if a person feels obligated to keep circumcision (insert any other Mosaic law there), they are obligated to keep the entire Law.
And if one seeks to be justified by the Law, they are alienated from Christ.
According to the clear teaching of the New Testament, the Law neither saves nor sanctifies a person.
Only Christ does that by His indwelling life (which is in the Spirit), not by trying to follow the written commandments (see 2 Corinthians 3 where Paul lays this out).
According to the New Testament, there are two ways to live out of a desire to please God.
One is to live by the indwelling life of Jesus Christ in the Spirit; the other is to live by the Law.
The first is internal (and it is how a person actually fulfills the moral righteousness of the Law – see Romans 8:1-4).
The other (living by the Law) is a railroad track to legalism, continued defeat, self-righteousness, harsh judgmentalism, and believe it not, uncontrollable sin.
Paul made this plain in Romans 7.
The strength of sin is the Law (1 Corinthians 15:56).
I’ve observed this unmovable fact over many years. That is, if anyone seeks to please God by trying to fulfill the dictates of the Law, they will find themselves struggling with sin constantly and losing gloriously (that’s the grand argument Paul makes in Romans 7).
This happens because the human attempt to follow the Law stirs up and incites sin.
Consequently, in my experience of over 40 years, the churches and groups that were fixated on “keeping the Law” were the ones that had more sins of the flesh operating in their congregations.
In many cases, the sin was running out of their ears.
But it was hidden.
I was involved in several groups who were Torah-observant when I was in my 20s. I also had strong exposure to “Jews for Jesus” and other Jewish-Christian groups that were Torah-observant (down to following the ceremonial laws).
Throughout the years, I’ve also been invited to speak in groups that were coming out of those kinds of church expressions. So I got a front-row seat into some of these groups.
One megachurch that was headed down the road of “Hebrew roots” and teaching its congregants to observe the ceremonial laws invited me in to speak to their staff.
I did so for three and a half hours.
Unfortunately, the lead pastor chose to stay on their course of Law-following. Not long after our meeting the pastor crashed and burned, and they lost many members.
Later, the assistant pastor told me in a phone call that they made a major mistake in going into the direction they took. Their decision put many of their congregants in religious bondage.
To my mind, here is the root of all of this.
The fallen human psyche always wants to DO something to make God happy. Especially if they are failing at it.
That impulse is a reversion back to eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. (Notice that it’s the knowledge of GOOD as well as evil.)
Eating from the wrong tree is essentially living by the Law.
And in my experience, this always stirs up sin rather than curbing it (again, Romans 7 describes this dynamic).
Another reason is that sometimes a person will hear Christ presented in glory along with the riches of His grace, but because of a darkened heart they will pervert and distort the message into license to sin (this happened in the first century, see Jude 1:4).
Some observing will wrongly conclude that the answer is that the Law needs to be laid down as the solution to sin in the camp.
(By the way, James was responding to a misunderstanding of Paul’s message in his letter – James. But the things that James argues for Paul agrees with. There is no tension in either message.)
Right or wrong, my message since 1998 — when I began publicly proclaiming the Eternal Purpose — has never wavered.
That message is anti-legalism and anti-libertinism (anti-antinomianism).
I believe the gospel that both Jesus and Paul preached transcends both legalism and libertinism (which were incarnated in the Pharisees and the Sadducees of His day).
Regrettably, a handful of people have misinterpreted my message, filtering it through the lens of their own heart inclinations.
(This always happens with all who preach, teach or write, by the way. In fact, I wrote an entire chapter on it in 48 Laws of Spiritual Power.)
So over the years, a handful of people have heard my message on grace and wrongly taken it to be libertine. Even though I have given blistering messages to those same groups about separation from the world system.
On the other side, a few people who have heard my cutting message on the radical call of Jesus have interpreted it to be legalistic.
As I’ve said elsewhere, someone who preaches the genuine gospel of the kingdom will be accused of being legalistic by some and libertine by others.
To my mind, that’s a trustworthy sign that a person who proclaims the gospel is on the right track.
For instance, Paul was accused of being a legalistic by some of his libertine contemporaries, and he was accused of being an antinomian by the legalists of his day.
Even some in the Corinthian church misunderstood Paul’s message of grace and turned it into license. The same thing happened in the Roman church (see Romans 6:1-2).
I don’t claim immaculate perception, but I do know when my message is being misinterpreted.
The book that best details the contrast between the gospel of the kingdom (which isn’t separate from the eternal purpose) against libertinism and legalism is my signature work INSURGENCE: RECLAIMING THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM (2018).
Ever since I can remember, I’ve always viewed the Old Testament in light of Christ, which doesn’t ignore obedience but upholds it.
However, for me, it’s always been a question of the source of our obedience to God: whether we obey (respond) by the indwelling life of Christ in fulfilling the righteousness of the Law or we strive to do so in our own strength and power.
Before I give you my resources that explain all of this on one page as you’ve requested, a few texts to look at.
Romans 10:4 – For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.
Galatians 3:24-25 – So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.
Hebrews 4:9-10 – There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his.
Colossians 2 – The Law was a shadow pointing to Christ. He is the substance of those shadows. Therefore, don’t let anyone judge you with respect to the rituals found in the Law. They were all fulfilled in Jesus. So says Paul.
2 Corinthians 3 – The difference between the Old and New Covenants is stark; it’s a choice between living by the Spirit or living by the Law.
Romans 7-8 – The difference between trying to live by the Law vs. living by the Spirit.
Hebrews – The entire book is written to those who were reverting back to finding their holiness by following the Law.
See also these texts:
For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace …
~ Ephesians 2:14-15, ESV
having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.
~ Colossians 2:14, NIV
For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.”
~ Galatians 3:10, ESV
Again, none of these passages have in view the tradition of the elders or any custom of the scribes and religious leaders of Judaism (Mishna, etc.).
But the Law is not of faith. Rather, “The one having done these things will live by them.”
~ Galatians 3:12
One of the problematic interpretations that Torah-observant people commonly adopt is to say that Paul wasn’t referring to the Law of Moses in his pleading with the Galatian believers to be free from the Law, but instead, he was talking about their bondage to pagan regulations (or words to that effect).
Apart from the fact that this interpretation will not hold up throughout the entire letter, virtually every first-rate New Testament scholar on the book of Galatians disagrees with this interpretation (Craig Keener, N.T. Wright, F.F. Bruce, John Stott, David deSilva, Richard Longenecker, Ben Witherington III, Thomas Schreiner, James D.G. Dunn, Scot McKnight, Gordon Fee, et al.)
The point Paul is making in Galatians 4 is that the Gentiles who were putting themselves under the Law of Moses are reverting back to the same legalistic bondage that they knew when they were pagans (for paganism has its own form of religious bondage).
Here is the text in question:
Galatians 4:8 Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. 9 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? 10 You observe days and months and seasons and years! 11 I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain.
* Go to the very bottom of this page to read a list of quotes by the scholars I listed above who demonstrate what Paul was actually saying in Galatians 4:8-10.
In Paul’s letters and the letter to the Hebrews, the Law of Moses is being contrasted with the Law of the Spirit in Christ Jesus as well as comparing the Old Covenant with the New Covenant.
If a person wants to follow the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament, that’s their prerogative.
The problem emerges when they push that conviction upon others as being mandated by God.
It’s also spiritually problematic when they feel morally superior to others because they “keep the Law,” something the New Testament makes clear that no one can pull off. Hence, there’s always hypocrisy involved in that pursuit.
This was the issue that Paul faced in most of the ekklesias he raised up, all of which contained Jews and Gentiles.
Just read Romans 14-15 as an example, and you will see how Paul handled those who felt that keeping the Sabbath literally was obligatory and those who did not.
Note that those who are “zealous for the Law” (to use Luke’s language) will take the above texts and interpret them to suit their own theologies.
But the best scholars on this particular subject have excoriated those interpretations, showing them to be faulty. (Again, some of them are quoted at the bottom of this page.)
A related point, Jesus and Paul taught that if we love God and others, we fulfill the intent of the Law.
Love is the nature of God’s life.
Therefore, if a person lives by the life of Christ, they are fulfilling the Law without “trying” in their own power to behave righteously.
What’s interesting is that the majority of my readers have come out of either Torah-observant groups (or those similar) OR antinomian groups that turned grace into license.
My book ReGrace (2019) argues for tolerance and love for all believers, despite their theological persuasions.
So I love all who disagree with me on the gospel of the kingdom and have instead opted to follow the dictates of libertinism or legalism.
In answer to your question, here are some of the resources I’ve produced on this topic.
By God’s grace and the illumination of the Holy Spirit, they have turned the lights on for countless Christians.
AUDIOS
The entire Galatians in 3D Master Class on the Network. I recommend more than one listen.
The entire Ephesians in 3D Master Class on the Network.
Colossians in 3D is planned to release in the future.
Rethinking the Christian Life. This message is part of the Beautiful Pursuit Master Class on the Network. It gets to the heart of how the Christian life is lived, from Jesus to the Twelve to Paul to us.
The Christian’s Relationship to the Law
ARTICLES
A postscript after you’ve read the above article: One question I’ve asked those who hold to the idea that Christians must observe the Sabbath in a literal way is: “Will we observe the Sabbath – as you do now – in the New Creation?”
Their answer has always been, “No.”
My response: “The New Testament teaches that the New Creation has arrived with the resurrection of Jesus. Therefore, we are now part of the New Creation and we can experience it today. Therefore, we live in the presence of the future, and that includes the Sabbath.
Jesus Christ is the Rest of God, and as Hebrews puts it, we enjoy Him as our Sabbath now. For the Christian, the New Exodus and the New Creation are now accessible to the people of God.
This is what the resurrection of Christ gave us.
So by answering the above question with a ‘No’ is to agree with Paul (Colossians 2 and Romans 14-15) and the author of Hebrews (Hebrews 4) that literal Sabbath-keeping is not an obligation for the believer.”
Then there’s the added question of HOW exactly does a person keep the Sabbath (literally) and for that question you’ll get all sorts of different answers by those who hold to literal Sabbath-keeping. But that’s another discussion. 🙂
8 Signs of a Modern-Day Pharisee
A Subtle Indicator of Legalism
On Legalism: Spurgeon vs. Moody
Legalism, License, Lordship, and Liberty
A Powerful Insight About Legalism
Are You Eating from the Right Tree?
Rethinking the Will of God (go straight to chapter 4)
BOOKS AND PODCASTS
Insurgence (the beginning parts contrast legalism with libertinism. They also list the different shades of legalism)
The Insurgence Podcast continues the radical challenge of Jesus and the titanic gospel of the kingdom, which is more demanding that anything found in the Law. But the Spirit is the One who empowers and fulfills those demands in the life of God’s people. A number of episodes deal with what Jesus said about the Law (see the show notes).
Jesus Now (deals with legalism and libertinism from a unique perspective)
Jesus: A Theography (explores the Jesus Story in the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament in the light of Jesus)
From Eternity to Here (follows the grand narrative of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation in the light of Christ)
The above is not all of my work in this area, but (hopefully) it’s enough to solve the issue you’ve articulated and remove any confusion.
As a postscript, here is an article written by Jon Zens on the subject of the Christian and the Law. It’s worth the read.
Read: The Law is Not of Faith by Jon Zens.
Zens is internationally known for his exposition on the New Covenant in contrast to the Old Covenant and living under Law.
What do you say about the current trend to return to “Hebrew roots?”
If by “Hebrew roots” you mean the trend for Gentile Christians to begin observing Jewish customs and rituals, then I have two points to make.
1) Learning the story from Abraham to Jesus . . . and learning Second Temple Judaism . . . helps us to understand the Jesus Story. I’ve argued for and even demonstrated this in Jesus: A Theography.
2) But when it comes to making the observation of Jewish customs obligatory based on a notion of “Hebrew roots,” I believe this is misguided.
As I explained in From Eternity to Here, the Christian’s roots precede Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They go back to eternity past where we were chosen in Christ “before the foundation of the world.” We are part of a new creation, which is neither Jew nor Gentile.
Jesus of Nazareth, our founder and head, was Jewish in His physical body. But His roots are eternal. He is the head of the new creation, which aren’t Jew or Gentile.
So for the Christian, our roots aren’t Hebrew.
They are part of something that extends far before.
In Christ, there is no Jew or Gentile. That’s not just a metaphor, it’s a reality. (See Galatians 3:28; Colossians 3:10-11; Ephesians 2:11–20; 1 Corinthians 10:32 – Paul makes plain that the ekklesia is distinct from Jew or Gentile.)
While the physical body of Jesus came from a Jewish lineage, He was a creature of two realms: The heavenly realm and the earthly realm.
(Listen to the message The True Hybrid in the Beautiful Pursuit Master Class on the Network.)
“Before Abraham was, I Am,” Jesus said.
Those are the true roots of the Christian.
The book of Hebrews addresses this as well. Our high priest is after the order of Melchizedek, not Aaron.
Anyone who is into “Hebrew roots” needs to get immersed in the letters of Ephesians, Galatians, and Colossians.
I’d recommend they listen to my Galatians in 3D Master Class (Spiritual Graffiti) on the Network as well as the Ephesians in 3D Master Class (Untraceable Riches). Again, Colossians in 3D is slated to drop in the future.
These classes have set many people free in this area after seeing how Paul viewed the Law vs. Jesus Christ.
Someone told me that Jesus should be called Yahshua (Yeshua) instead of the so-called “pagan name” Jesus? They also say that God is a pagan name and should be called Yahweh. What this person said doesn’t seem right to me because every New Testament scholar and Bible commentator I’ve ever read uses Jesus and not Yeshua, as well as “God.”
You are correct. What this person has said is inaccurate.
By calling the Son of God “Jesus” we are following the New Testament authors themselves who call the Son of God Iesous (Jesus), not Yahshua.
Also, God is never called Yahweh in the New Testament. It’s actually YHWH, by the way.
New Testament scholars are agreed in regarding the suggestion that Greek names are “pagan” as nonsense as if those names carried some inherent non-Jewish religious flavor.
That’s simply not true.
Consider that many first-century Jews were named Simon or Philip or John. Those weren’t Hebrew names!
The foundational error in this sort of thinking is the failure to understand that the Judaism of Jesus’ day was Hellenized.
Therefore, many Jews – and Christians – took Greek names. (The New Testament authors wrote in Greek.) There’s nothing wrong with this, and it’s not religiously “pagan.”
In addition, the roots of our heritage trace further back than the nation of Israel or even Abraham. It’s rooted in the Eternal Son, the Christ of God, before time and creation.
That’s where the lineage of Jesus, the Son of God, originates and that’s where our true identity is located.
We Christians are part of a new creation which is neither Jew nor Greek, chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. So we are neither Hebrew nor Gentile (see Colossians, Ephesians, and Galatians).
Although Jesus was Jewish in His flesh, He was an eternal being, the first of the new creation, neither Jew nor Greek, but the beginning of what the early Christians called “the third race” and “the new humanity.”
See the Introduction to Jesus: A Theography as well as From Eternity to Here for details on this point.
*Here are direct quotes by top-shelf scholars on Galatians 4:8-10. They all make plain that Paul was arguing that the Galatian believers ought not to put themselves under the Law of Moses. This argument runs through the entire epistle.
SCHOLARS COMMENT ON GALATIANS 4:8-10
On the face of it, this is an astonishing claim. The Galatians aren’t starting to worship their old pagan deities; they are wanting to become Jews. But Paul is adamant. Now that the Messiah has come, and with him the new world where God’s grace reaches out to all alike, if they try to embrace Judaism they are declaring their preference for a system in which ethnic and territorial membership matters rather than membership in the Messiah’s new family.
They are opting for the rule of the Jewish law, which kept Israel in a state of virtual slavery from Moses to the Messiah (3.23-25; 4.3). They are as good as saying that they prefer to be ruled by the old line-up of deities which kept the different nations under their sway, rather than by the true God who has now revealed, in action, who he really is.
Paul is quite clear that the Jewish law was given by God, with a purpose within his overall plan. But now that the plan has been fulfilled, anyone who goes back to the earlier stage is treating the law as though it were something independent that could stand for all time; treating it, in other words, as a god. And the Galatians ought to know that the whole point of becoming a Christian was to escape the rule of the enslaving ‘gods’, and to find freedom in knowing the true God.
Or rather, in being known by this true God. Paul corrects himself in verse 9, because, as he says in 1 Corinthians 8.2-3, what really matters is not your knowledge of God, but God’s knowledge of you. Our knowledge of God is small, feeble, and partial, and seems to go up and down with our moods and feelings.
If that was the thing that made us Christians, we would be building on very shaky foundations. What matters is that God has ‘known’ us; not just in the sense that he knows about us, though that of course is true as well, but that he has, from his own side of the relationship, established a bond, a covenant, in which he knows us through and through, and names us as his own family.
Wright, N.T. (2004). Paul for Everyone: Galatians and Thessalonians (pp. 49-50). John Knox Press.
Paul is startled that the Galatians are turning back to their old ways, and he apparently thinks that devotion to the Mosaic law is just another form of paganism! The word “return” (ἐπιστρέφω) is often used for conversion to Christ (Acts 3:19; 9:35; 11:21; 14:15; 15:19; 26:18, 20; 2 Cor 3:16; 1 Thess 1:9; 1 Pet 2:25), but here the term is turned on its head and used for “converting back” to paganism, for renouncing the faith (cf. 2 Pet 2:22) and reverting to false gods. On the one hand, Paul is “astonished” (1:6) and “at a loss” (4:20) that the Galatians would desire to return to that which is weak and impoverished. Indeed, they are on the brink of trading liberty for slavery, freedom for bondage. As in 4:3 the “elements” (στοιχεῖα) are linked with bondage. Seeing the “elements” here as spiritual powers, as “elemental spirits,” makes good sense in that the Galatians are returning to the gods they previously served.
On the other hand, perhaps Paul is simply saying that they are subjecting themselves to the things of this world, though it seems more likely that demonic powers are in view. In any case, the Galatians’ desire for bondage is inexplicable and irrational. What is astonishing is that Paul equates subjection to Torah with paganism. One can only imagine the shock the Pauline assertion would have given the Judaizers! 4:10 You are observing days and months, and seasons and years (ἡμέρας παρατηρεῖσθε καὶ μῆνας καὶ καιροὺς καὶ ἐνιαυτούς). The Galatians are beginning to observe the OT calendar.
The “days” refer especially to observance of the Sabbath, though other special days may also be in mind. Burton is likely correct in cautioning us from being too specific in distinguishing the four terms from one another. Paul piles up terms to designate the Galatians’ observance of the Jewish calendar.
Still, it is most natural to read the text to say that the Galatians were actually observing the OT calendar, though they had not yet submitted to circumcision. Perhaps we have an allusion here to Gen 1:14, where the words “seasons” (καιρούς) and “days” (ἡμέρας) and “years (ἐνιαυτούς) appear.
The same concern for observing certain days and feasts arises in Rom 14:5 and Col 2:16. In both instances Gentiles were apparently attracted to the OT law. One of the most surprising themes of this section becomes clear here. Paul compares devotion to the Mosaic law to reverting to paganism. The Galatians before their conversion to Christ were devoted to false gods (4:8), yet Paul sees their attraction to Judaism as equivalent to paganism.
Schreiner, T. R. (2010). Galatians (pp. 277–279). Zondervan.
The στοιχεῖα (see on v 3), it is now made plain, not only regulated the Jewish way of life under law; they also regulated the pagan way of life on the service of gods that were no gods. To be enslaved to such counterfeit deities was to be enslaved to the στοιχεῖα, and the Galatians would be enslaved to the στοιχεῖα all over again if they ‘reverted’ not to their former paganism but to Jewish religious practices. That, as Paul saw it, his Gentile readers were tending to revert to a form of religion which they had practised before their conversion to Christianity is emphasized by his repeated πάλιν … πάλιν ἄνωθεν. For all the basic differences between Judaism and paganism, both involved subjection to the same elemental forces.
This is an astonishing statement for a former Pharisee to make; yet Paul makes it—not as an exaggeration in the heat of argument but as the deliberate expression of a carefully thought out position. The στοιχεῖα to which the Galatians had been in bondage were the counterfeit gods of v 8; the bondage to which they were now disposed to turn back was that of the law. But in our discussion of 3:13f. and 4:4f. we concluded that Gentile as well as Jewish believers are reckoned to have been redeemed from existence ‘under law’—not, so far as Gentiles are concerned, explicitly under the Mosaic law, in relation to which they were ἄνομοι (cf. 1 Cor. 9:21; Rom. 2:12ff.), but under legalism as a principle of life. ‘The demonic forces of legalism, then, both Jewish and Gentile, can be called “principalities and powers” or “elemental spirits of the world” ’ (G. B. Caird, Principalities and Powers [Oxford, 1956], 51).
Bruce, F. F. (1982). The Epistle to the Galatians: a commentary on the Greek text (pp. 202–203). W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co.
Paul sees the Law, like the other forms of elementary religious principles, as ‘weak’ as it is unable to change human nature or provide it with the spiritual life and power it needs to obey God and ‘poor’ because it can not deliver the benefits that God promised to Abraham, it cannot provide the inheritance of eternal life or the presence of God’s Spirit which is the means by which such life is given to the believer. Verse 10 speaks not merely of observances of days, months, seasons and years, but the verb παρατηρεῖσθε suggests scrupulous observance of these calendrically based rites. This verb is not used elsewhere in the NT or in the LXX in a religious sense but we do find it used in Josephus to speak about observance of the Mosaic Law (cf. Ant. 3.91. 11.294, 14.264; Ap. 2.282).
The point of this verse is to draw a close parallel between what the Galatians used to do in regard to religious observances and what they are now doing or at least contemplating doing by following the Mosaic Law. Without question, the agitators would never have agreed that following the Mosaic Law was anything like practicing pagan rituals or participating in the worship of the Emperor, but that is what Paul’s analogy is meant to suggest, in so far as the effect on the worshipper is concerned. What they are about to do is a case of déjà vu; they have already been there and done that before when they were pagans.
The verb χεχοπίαχα (have worked) is in the perfect referring to Paul’s past ministry and its ongoing effects. Paul is worried it won’t have any lasting benefit for his converts. As Martin Luther once said, Paul is suggesting that the Galatians are contemplating giving up the substance for that which is but a foreshadowing of that substance or to put it in his terms, they are like “the dog who runs along a stream with a piece of meat in his mouth, and deceived by the reflection of the meat in the water, opens his mouth to snap at it, and so loses both the meat and the reflection”. It is Paul’s task to make clear that the Galatians already have what they are looking for, long for, and need.
Witherington, B., III. (1998). Grace in Galatia: A Commentary on St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians (pp. 300–303). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
Paul reminds the Galatians that they received the Holy Spirit—the sign of their salvation—by exercising faith in Christ, not by performing works of the Law. “Ending with the flesh” (seeking salvation through the Law) amounts to foolishness. The apostle’s position is not some current theological fad; rather, it originates with Abraham, the forefather of the Hebrew nation. More than four centuries before giving the Law through Moses, God made his promise to Abraham, who himself was not righteous but whose faith God regarded as righteousness.
Inheriting the promised blessings, therefore, does not depend on biological descent from Abraham; instead, the promises pass to his only truly righteous descendant, Jesus Christ, and to people who exercise Abraham-like faith in him. Till the coming of Christ, who through his own death killed the curse that doomed humanity, the Law served as a temporary guardian to expose our inability to obey God perfectly and thereby earn salvation even in part (3:23–24).
Rather than nullifying the faith-based covenant with Abraham, the Law itself is relieved of its role by emancipating faith in Christ, the necessity of which the Law points out and the availability of which extends to all people indiscriminately. Paul extends the metaphor of the Law as guardian of spiritual minors, whose moral immaturity postpones the receipt of their rightful inheritance and thus relegates them to the practical status of a slave (4:1–11).
Like the date set by a father for his heir’s coming of age, so came the “fullness of time,” when through the redemption from the Law effected by Christ God made possible our adoption as mature heirs qualified to receive the covenantal promises through faith. Why are the Galatians reverting to an inferior status by re-enslaving themselves to the “elemental” principles of the Law, including the observation of Jewish feasts and festivals (4:10)? Let them embrace his current admonition with the same enthusiasm they showed at their conversion. Paul ends his argument with an allegory from the very Law to which the Galatians are returning. Hagar, the slave of Abraham’s wife, represents the covenant made at Mount Sinai, headquartered at the Jerusalem temple, and perpetuated by Hagar’s descendant “slaves” of the Law—left out of the covenantal will.
The “free woman” (Abraham’s wife, Sarah) represents Christianity, the covenant of faith headquartered in the “Jerusalem above” (heaven). Sarah’s free heirs, though now persecuted by their Law-enslaved kin, will alone inherit the promises made to Abraham because of his faith.
Fee, G. D., & Hubbard, R. L., Jr., eds. (2011). The Eerdmans Companion to the Bible (pp. 668–669). William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
How is it (then) that you are turning back again to the weak and beggarly elemental forces? Again the idiom is very Jewish. ‘Turn back’ was the characteristic Jewish call for repentance—to turn back to God, to turn back from evil (BDB, s̆ūb 6c, d). But the same word was also used of turning back from God, that is, of apostasy (e.g. Num. 14:43; 1 Sam. 15:11; 1 Kings 9:6; Ps. 78:41; Jer. 3:19; but LXX usually uses a different compound of the verb—TDNT vii.724).
The assessment was not merely ironic: in turning to the traditional Jewish understanding of the covenant as defined by the law, they were actually turning away from the God of Israel’s covenant. Paul was convinced that Gentiles who believed in the gospel of Christ and received the Spirit of God’s Son had thereby come to experience and share in what the choice of Abraham and of Israel had been all about. In seeking to grasp Israel’s privilege more firmly the judaizing Gentiles were in danger of losing that very promise and blessing in which they already shared. The present tense (in contrast to the two preceding verbs) indicates Paul’s understanding that the apostasy was still in process (conative present = ‘trying to turn back’), and so could still be averted.
The situation and status to which they were in danger of reverting were those of enslavement ‘under the elemental forces of the world’ (4:3). Here the inference continues to be clear that Paul counted the law as one of these ‘elemental forces’. That is to say, the law regarded in the way it typically was within contemporary Judaism, the law being treated as it was by the other missionaries and the judaizing Gentile converts, was functioning in effect as one of those cosmic forces which were then popularly thought to control and dominate life (see on 3:20 and 4:3). Life under such a power was a life dominated by fear of infringing its taboos and boundaries (cf. Rom. 8:15; Col. 2:20–2; see also on 4:10).
Since they had already experienced freedom from precisely such slavery Paul found it hard to credit the reports that they wished to exchange their slavery to things which were in reality no gods for a slavery to the law misrepresented to function just like another false god. Paul calls the elemental forces ‘weak’ partly in contrast to the strength of the truth of divine reality.
But probably also because to live life by reference to a false god, to a power which only gains its power by human misunderstanding and presumption, superstition and fear (cf. 1 Cor. 8:4–6), is a form of weakness, not of strength (of principle or conviction or whatever); the elemental forces are weak because they weaken those who rely on them (hence Rom. 14:1–2; 1 Cor 8:7, 9–12; 9:22); Lagrange 107 notes the description of the law as weak in Rom. 8:3 and Heb. 7:18.
Similarly Paul calls the elemental forces ‘poor’ partly in contrast to the richness of divine reality (Rom. 2:4; 9:23; 11:33; Phil. 4:19; Col. 1:27; the antithesis of poverty/wealth was quite often evoked by Paul—Rom. 15:26–7; 2 Cor. 6:10; 8:2, 9). But probably also because life under such a power, life under the law, was an impoverishment in comparison with the riches of grace which Paul had experienced through Christ (Rom. 10:12; 1 Cor. 1:5; 2 Cor. 9:14–15; cf. Eph. 2:4).
Dunn, J. D. G. (1993). The Epistle to the Galatians (pp. 225–226). Continuum.
Paul appeals to his own example and to his own role in their reversion to Judaism (vv. 12–16); then he explains what is actually going on at Galatia (vv. 17–18) before appealing once more in a more emotional tone (vv. 19–20). The Problem (vv. 8–11) Elsewhere Paul describes the past of his Gentile converts in less than positive terms (cf. Rom. 1:18–23; 1 Cor. 12:2; Eph. 2:11–13; 1 Thess. 4:5). Here he does the same: “Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods.”
Put differently, there were two religious dimensions of their religious past: (1) they did not know the God of Israel, the true God of the world, and (2) the gods they did know were “by nature … not gods” (cf. 1 Cor. 8:4–6). These expressions confirm that the Galatian converts were formerly Gentiles. Paul goes on to state that now that they are converted, they have a good beginning. He corrects his own language in his description of their conversion: “But now that you know God—or rather are known by God.…”
This correction is designed, not to teach that they did not know God, but to put the emphasis where Paul usually puts it: on God’s sovereign grace as the initiating force in conversion. He insists that people do not seek God (cf. Rom. 3:11: “no one who searches for God”); rather, God seeks people. Humans are so caught in their sin and so in love with their sin that they do not seek holiness and love in and of themselves (cf. 1 Cor. 8:3; 13:12; 1 John 4:19: “We love because he first loved us” [cf. v. 10]).
That good beginning has now become a bad situation; that is the Galatians’ problem. In spite of having received the knowledge of God, they have reverted back to their former ways. Paul wants to know, “How is it that you are turning back?” What he says here may be the most radical statement he makes anywhere about the law. The Galatians had had a typical pagan past (ignorant about the true God and worshiping non-gods). They had converted wonderfully as a result of Paul’s preaching (3:1), but now they were “turning back to those weak and miserable principles” (cf. 1:6; 3:3).
Here Paul describes their “new-but-bad situation” with the term principles, the same term he used in 4:3 for the Jewish past under the law. Furthermore, in verse 10 he mentions what is by almost every reckoning Jewish observances of holy days and seasons (cf. Rom. 14:5–12; Col. 2:16–17). What is revolutionary here is that Paul considers “moving into Judaism” as nothing other than a reversion to “paganism,” to “non-gods” (cf. Gal. 1:6).
He asks, “Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again?” Their move from idolatry to Christianity and now to Judaism is for Paul no different than a venture back into “idolatry” or “paganism.” R. N. Longenecker says it well:
Beyond question, Paul’s lumping of Judaism and paganism together in this manner is radical in the extreme. No Judaizer would ever have accepted such a characterization of Torah observance; nor would those in Galatia who acceded to their message.… For Paul, however, whatever leads one away from sole reliance on Christ, whether based on good intentions or depraved desires, is sub-Christian and therefore to be condemned.
F. Bruce adds that this viewpoint is given “not as an exaggeration in the heat of argument but as the deliberate expression of a carefully thought out position.” Incidentally, Paul’s willingness to lump together both unconverted Jew and Gentile under the “elemental principles” encourages our application of the text of Galatians, which so often addresses the Jewish Christian problem, to all groups today.
Every human being, Paul would say, is captive to the “element principles” in some way and is only set free by Jesus Christ. This bad situation leads to Paul’s fear: “that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you.” Paul had worked hard on the Galatians’ behalf and for the universalism of the gospel. He risked rejection and censure in a private meeting (2:1–10), and he publicly rebuked Peter (2:11–14).
He risked his life in missionary work (cf. 4:12–16) and experienced a great deal of criticism from the Judaizers. Any pastor knows the heartache and fear that come when a parishioner wavers, stumbles, and even falls away. That is all Paul is saying here, and he will say similar things to other churches and try to rectify the problems (1 Cor. 4:16–17; 1 Thess. 3:5). His fear and frustration now give way to a plea.
McKnight, S. (1995). Galatians (pp. 215–218). Zondervan.
Paul now personalizes this framework for the Galatian Christians, particularly for the gentiles among the congregations, since they are also the principal focus of the rival teachers’ interest. He contrasts the “before” of their lives prior to their trusting encounter with Christ (4:8) with the “after” of their lives since receiving God’s Spirit and entering into a new and intimate relationship with the one God, all with the aim of laying bare the absurdity of the change in course they are contemplating (4:9) and, to some extent, beginning to undertake (4:10).
The paragraph recalls the earlier rebuke of Gal 3:1–5, not merely in the directness of Paul’s language, but in the subject matter. In both passages, Paul’s recollection of the Galatian Christians’ experience of the Holy Spirit (3:2, 5; 4:6–7) is materially connected to Paul’s frustration with their inability to draw the correct (and, to him, obvious) conclusion about the illegitimacy of the rival teachers’ position (3:3; 4:9b–10). In both passages, Paul expresses this frustration in terms of questioning whether all his investment (and, indeed, God’s investment) in them has been “for nothing” (3:4; 4:11). At the same time, it anticipates a further exhortation to the Galatians not to trade their costly freedom for a return to slavery (5:1), an exhortation that Paul would support by laying out the consequences of their repudiation of the freedom Christ won for them (5:2–4).
Paul focuses particularly on the gentiles among his congregations, as they are most targeted by the rival teachers and, therefore, most at risk of making a terrible mistake under their influence. In stark contrast to the Galatians’ present state of knowing the one God intimately as God’s own sons and daughters (4:9), they formerly lived ignorant of and alienated from this one God (4:8). Paul stands alongside other Hellenistic Jewish authors on this point: “All people who were ignorant of God were foolish by nature; they were unable, on the basis of the good things that are seen, to know the One who is” (Wis 13:1).
Gentiles failed to move from contemplation of the created order to the discovery of the Creator, falling instead into serving “things that are not divine by their very nature” (Gal 4:8): “Those who call ‘gods’ the products of human hands—gold and silver items carefully sculpted, images of animals, a useless stone worked by someone’s hand long ago—are pitiful, setting their hopes on dead things” (Wis 13:10). The Galatians might hear Paul naming their past failure to know God as in fact the cause of their previous enslavement to the stoicheia. Paul would include idolatrous religion as a facet of the stoicheia that dominated and regulated gentile life in society (as in 1 Thess 1:9), but he was looking beyond merely the practice of idolatry to the larger ways in which gentiles, like Jews, were slaves to the ideological and social structures around them. That state of benighted alienation came to an end when they encountered the gospel, responded with trust, and received God’s Holy Spirit.
Their coming to a place of knowing God—or, rather, being known by God (here Paul uses the rhetorical device of self-correction to highlight God’s taking the initiative in reversing their condition of alienation-through-ignorance)—ought to have positioned them to recognize and reject any attempt to persuade them from their position. They ought to have valued the testimony of the Spirit in their inner person more than the testimony of the rival teachers.
Thus Paul makes no attempt to hide his exasperation with them: “How can you turn back again to the weak and impoverished elementary principles, to which you desire to submit yourselves to live as slaves all over again?! (4:9b). Just as the adult cannot again be a child, the person who drinks deeply of God’s Spirit cannot again look backward to any of the stoicheia, Torah or otherwise, for the way forward. More insidiously, turning back to the stoicheia would mean repudiating the freedom, the new and glorious status of “heir” and “son or daughter,” that Christ won for the believer at such great cost through his death “under the Torah” (Gal 4:4–5). Paul’s rhetorical question suggests that he finds it incomprehensible—as indeed his Galatian converts ought to have found it unthinkable—that they would seriously contemplate taking on the yoke of Torah, that passé pedagogue, after all that God had done and Christ had opened up for them.
Convinced at least in a preliminary way by these teachers, the Galatian Christ-followers had begun to conform their practice to their recommendations: “You are observing days and months and seasons and years! I am afraid where you’re concerned, lest somehow I have labored over you for nothing!” Paul’s words here indicate that some of the Galatian Christians, at least, had begun to observe a particular calendar of religious festivals, most likely the sacred days of the Jewish religious calendar as an initial step toward conforming their lives to Torah’s regulations, as the rival teachers were urging.
The language of this verse specifically recalls the old Greek translation of Gen 1:14, where the stars and other astronomical bodies are created to serve “for signs and for seasons and for days and annual festivals.” These are precisely the same terms as found in Gal 4:10 (with the substitution of “months” or “new moon” festivals for “signs”). The Galatians were beginning to observe the Sabbath days (Exod 20:8–11; 31:16–17; Deut 5:12–15), quite possibly the new moon festivals (Num 10:10; 28:11–15), and could be expected, then, to observe the seasonal feasts (feasts lasting more than a day, like Passover, Tabernacles, and Booths) and annual commemorations, like the New Year.
The observance of the Sabbath, together with circumcision and the distinctive dietary practices, were the most obvious and most universally well-known “works of the law” that set Jews apart from gentiles. The rival teachers would have had material at their disposal to continue to use Abraham as a model here of the ideal proselyte who moves from idolatry to correct observance of the one God’s liturgical calendar.
They were also submitting themselves to the authority of the custodian who had kept Jews and gentiles corralled in separate pens, drawing back from the work of Christ creating the one, new humanity out of the two. If they are all now part of one family (3:26–29; 4:5–7), and that on the basis of the action of the Holy Spirit within them, there is no value in continuing to adhere to (or take up) practices that were in force while they were not kin—either to God or to each other. Whether they reverted to their pagan past religious calendars driven by the imperial cult and the rhythms of indigenous observances, or reverted to Paul’s own pre-Christian practice (the close observance of Torah), as was immediately the case, it was all the same to Paul: they were throwing away the freedom that Christ had died to give them and moving against the Holy Spirit of God that was at work sanctifying one people together for God. The seriousness of the situation in Paul’s eyes is underscored by his exclamation of fear that his work among them might turn out to have been all for nothing (4:11, also 3:4).
deSilva, D. A. (2018). The Letter to the Galatians (N. B. Stonehouse, F. F. Bruce, G. D. Fee, & J. B. Green, Eds.; pp. 362–368). William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
Judaism had its own special calendar of holy days, new moons, sabbatical years and so forth. Paul is saying that by returning to a ceremonial, calendrical religion, the Galatians return to pagan bondage under these spirits in the heavens (4:3, 9). From a technical standpoint, this argument is standard rhetorical exaggeration: Judaism and paganism felt that they had little in common. From the standpoint of experience, however, they would relinquish the Spirit (3:2; 4:6) for tradition and custom. Some commentators think that Paul here links the deified elements of paganism (4:8–9), which correspond to Judaism’s angels of nature, with the angels who gave the law (3:19); although that linkage is uncertain, Paul’s image here is negative, at best that of an adult going back under the guardianship of a slave.
Keener, C. S. (1993). The IVP Bible background commentary: New Testament (Ga 4:9–10). InterVarsity Press.
The object of the Galatians’ attention had become Torah observance, which Paul here calls “the weak and miserable basic principles”—carrying on the epithet τὰ στοιχεῖα (“basic principles”) used for the Mosaic law in v 3 and adding the highly uncomplimentary adjectives ἀσθενῆ (“weak,” “powerless,” “feeble”) and πτωχά (“poor,” “beggarly,” “miserable,” “impotent”). The use of πάλιν (“again,” “once more”) that appears here and in the appended relative clause points up the fact that Paul lumped the pre-Christian religious experiences of both Jews and Gentiles under the same epithet, that of being τὰ στοιχεῖα or “basic principles.”
For though qualitatively quite different, both have been superseded by the relationship of being “in Christ.” οἷς πάλιν ἄνωθεν δουλεύειν θέλετε, “do you want to serve them all over again?” Appended to Paul’s main rhetorical question is a relative clause that in effect becomes a supplementary question extending the impact of the main question: “Do you want to serve them all over again?”
The positioning of the relative pronoun οἷς (“them”) at the beginning of the sentence and the verb θέλετε (“do you want”) at the end expresses in dramatic fashion the new focus of the Galatians (i.e., on “the basic principles” as taught by the Judaizers) and their inclination to leave the Pauline gospel. The verbs δουλεύειν (“to serve”) and θέλετε (“desire,” “want,” “wish”) are both in the present tense, again indicating matters in progress. The adverb ἄνωθεν (here “anew”) coupled with πάλιν (“again,” “once more”) emphasizes the fact that by taking on Torah observance Gentile Christians would be reverting to a pre-Christian stance comparable to their former pagan worship (so the translation “all over again”)—not, of course, that paganism and the Mosaic law are qualitatively the same, but that both fall under the same judgment when seen from the perspective of being “in Christ” and that both come under the same condemnation when favored above Christ.
Longenecker, R. N. (1990). Galatians (Vol. 41, pp. 180–181). Word, Incorporated.
What really happened when the Galatians turned from grace to Law? To begin with, they abandoned liberty for bondage. When they were ignorant sinners, they had served their false gods and had experienced the tragedy of such pagan slavery. But then they had trusted Christ and been delivered from superstition and slavery. Now they were abandoning their liberty in Christ and going back into bondage. They were “dropping out” of the school of grace and enrolling in the kindergarten of Law! They were destroying all the good work the Lord had done in them through Paul’s ministry. The phrase weak and beggarly elements tells us the extent of their regression. They were giving up the power of the Gospel for the weakness of Law, and the wealth of the Gospel for the poverty of Law.
The Law never made anybody rich or powerful; on the contrary, the Law could only reveal man’s weakness and spiritual bankruptcy. No wonder Paul weeps over these believers, as he sees them abandon liberty for bondage, power for weakness, and wealth for poverty. How were they doing this? By adopting the Old Testament system of religion with its special observations of “days, and months, and times, and years” (Gal. 4:10).
Does this mean that it is wrong for Christians to set aside one day a year to remember the birth of Christ? Or that a special observance of the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost, or the blessing of the harvest in autumn, is a sin? Not necessarily. If we observe special days like slaves, hoping to gain some spiritual merit, then we are sinning. But if in the observance, we express our liberty in Christ and let the Spirit enrich us with His grace, then the observance can be a spiritual blessing. The New Testament makes it clear that Christians are not to legislate religious observances for each other (Rom. 14:4–13). We are not to praise the man who celebrates the day, nor are we to condemn the man who does not celebrate.
Wiersbe, W. W. (1996). The Bible exposition commentary (Vol. 1, p. 708). Victor Books.
The Galatians had been slaves to the stoicheia in the form of heathenism; now they were desiring to enslave themselves again to the stoicheia, and to commence them anew in the form of Judaism. Paul calls the stoicheia “weak and beggarly” (RSV): “weak” because they have no power to save or justify their devotees and “beggarly” (literally “poor,” as in 2:10) because they have no spiritual riches to bestow upon the Galatians—in short, they “have nothing at all to offer—but enslavement.”
Fung, R. Y. K. (1988). The Epistle to the Galatians (pp. 191–192). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
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