Galatians 4:8-20

Slavery: 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. 

Service: 12 Brothers, I entreat you, become as I am, for I also have become as you are. You did me no wrong. 13 You know it was because of a bodily ailment that I preached the gospel to you at first, 14 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. 15 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. 16 Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth?

 Seduction: 17 They make much of you [“zealously court you”], but for no good purpose. They want to shut you out, that you may make much of them. 18 It is always good to be made much of [“zealously courted”] for a good purpose, and not only when I am present with you, 19 my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you! 20 I wish I could be present with you now and change my tone, for I am perplexed about you.

There really is nothing new under the sun.  The blogosphere, book stores, and broadcasting today are full of nice men and women seducing nice people into self-righteous, self-centered rule-keeping sprinkled with Christian buzzwords. Ever since Adam and Eve threw off God’s righteous covering and put on dead fig leaves, people have been attracted to false messiahs who sell us fig-leaf-based products.  False teachers are “slitheringly” seductive because fig leaves are still the preferred fashion statement of our sin nature as it strives for outcome-based performance.  

“What must I do to inherit eternal life?” ask the sons of Adam and daughters of Eve.  “Follow me!” cry the false messiahs.  “Read my blog; buy my books; ridicule who I ridicule and love what I love.  Vote how I vote.  And don’t forget to stop by my gift shop on your way out for some godly merchandise for you and your family. We have gold coins, patriotic moralism novels, and survival products on sale just in time for Christmas.”

Our passage this morning teaches us how enslavement to rule-keeping changes a loving congregation into self-centered individuals as they are courted away from grace by the nice men from Jerusalem. Paul exposes the congregations’ present hearts, their formerly-loving hearts, and the hearts of the nice false teachers in three snapshots:  (1) slavery; (2) service; and (3) seduction.

    1. SLAVERY (4:8-11)
  • Little “g” gods
        1. It is almost always true that teachers who proclaim false doctrine in the name of Christ are insincere and self-promoting no matter how they cultivate their public persona.  Paul called the nice men from Jerusalem many unflattering names that would draw criticism in our culture (dogs, wolves, self-mutilators, slave traders, etc.).  Paul would have been seen as “unloving”.
        2. But biblical “love” is not a kind of vacuous sentimentality; it is love grounded in the truth of God.  The apostle is concerned with precisely THAT kind of love.  Teachers who lie about God’s nature have no biblical love for God or man.
        3. Paul had no interest in joining the nice men from Jerusalem in a fight to reclaim cultural morality, re-write history, or recast biblical theology.  Paul cared about Jesus’ glory and how the Galatians were being drawn away from it by the nice, glory-seeking little “g” gods who promised a new and morally-secure worldview, a safe culture, and God’s special approval.
        4. He writes, “Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. 
        5. Once the Gentile Gauls worshiped Zeus, Aphrodite, carved images, demons – all wild and unpredictable things of the demonic realm.  The Gauls were enslaved by little “g” gods with little “l” laws.  The Holy Spirit fell upon them through Paul’s preaching and set them free.
        6. But the nice men from Jerusalem came with their requirements for holy living and faithful works, watered-down perfection and cheap grace “earned” through keep-able rules.  Do you see what Paul is saying here?  The false teachers from Jerusalem were no different than the demon-gods the Gauls used to worship!  Both promoted weak and worthless elementary principles.
        7. That is a very powerful statement!  Moralism is moralism no matter whether it is sprinkled with the names of Jehovah, Jesus, or Zeus. Jehovah is a triune God who fully and finally revealed Himself in Christ Jesus, the second person of the Trinity.  Seeking life in the Mosaic Law when Jesus has already fulfilled that Law is no different than seeking life in Zeus.
        8. “Yes Paul,” the Gauls would reply, “the nice men from Jerusalem slightly disagree with you about how we get saved.  But they have such important principles of family values, and such insightful critiques of Roman economics. They are cleaver and sincere and fun to listen to.
        9. “Paul, all you talk about is your gospel but these nice men give us practical advice to help us achieve our life goals in this immoral society! They are witty, pretty, and relevant. We have to protect our families from pagan influences. Paul, your talk about God’s Word and Spirit just isn’t good enough to keep us safe and help us achieve holy purity and cultural change.” 
        10. How do we know that’s what the Gauls are thinking as they fall into the arms of these seducers?  Because that is what every self-focused person thinks when heretics draw them away from the gospel by offering special knowledge and special rules that, at best, de-emphasize the gospel and at worst change it into a works-righteousness scheme.
        11. But look at verse 9. Paul adds hope into this letter for the first time.
  • Known by God
      1. 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?
      2. The fundamental issue at stake for the Gauls was NOT their knowing God, but that they had come to be known BY God.  God’s Spirit testified to their spirits that they were God’s children.  The nice men had come to draw them away from that simple beautiful comforting doctrine and into a life of self-centeredness and the “kingdom of me and mine.”
      3. It is the one-way love of God, God’s saving and keeping grace, to which Paul appeals in his attempt to woo back these wayward rule-keepers.  
      4. God knows everyone.  He is the sovereign creator of all things, knowing the number of hairs on every head and knowing every sparrow that falls.  
      5. But Paul is speaking even more intimately here; he is referring to God’s SAVING knowledge in which God chooses to set his love upon his people and chooses to make us His own.  
      6. Remember Jesus promised, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. 30 I and the Father are one” (Jn. 10:27-30).
      7. Paul is saying to these troubled and anxious rule-keepers that God knows them with an eternal, loving intimacy.  God has set his one-way love upon them and entered into a most intimate and eternal relationship with them.
      8. It is not so much that we have come to know God and accepted him into our little “kingdoms of me;”  it is that God has come to know us in all of pride, all of our self-reliance, all of our attempts to control our own destinies through rule-keeping.
      9. Have you ever seen a patient parent with a spoiled, difficult child pitching what my daddy used to call “a wall-eyed hissy fit”?  Maybe you have seen a mom or dad look patiently, lovingly at their screamingly angry child.  Then you have seen some pale reflection of how the Father looks at you and me when we say, “I want what I want and if I and those around me will just keep this rule, then I can get what I want.
      10. “This set of rules will get me the perfect spouse.  This set of rules will ensure perfect children.  This set of rules will ensure the perfect environment, the perfect society, and the perfect life that God demands.”
      11. “O foolish Galatians,” says Paul “Don’t you remember your first love?  Can’t you recall the things you did at first?  Won’t you repent and recover from your anger and frustration at your inability to control through rule-keeping?”
      12. Once the Gauls had joy and freedom.  Now, “You observe days and months and seasons and years! 11 I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain.”
      13. The Gauls had begun to celebrate the feast days and holy festivals of Israel, all of which were designed to point to Christ and him crucified. They were living according to temple rules and regulations at a time after Jesus had come as the new and true and eternal temple of God.  
      14. So they were living in a way entirely contradictory to the gospel.  And that kind of life produces selfishness and anger and bitterness and smugness.
      15. These once-joyful people had changed.  Legalism does that because it cannot deliver the perfect life it promises, making us angry and even more self-centered.  Rather than repent and submit to God’s gracious will, we re-commit to keep more rules more strictly and the anger cycle spins faster and higher.  
      16. Legalism is just a more deceptive form of “name it and claim it” prosperity gospel.  If I give this, I WILL get that.  But when “that” doesn’t come, then I need to double down on my attempts to control God, control my family, and control my environment.  “I need dominion.  I will have my dominion.  I must rule until I have put all things under my feet in the name of Messiah!”
      17. Shortly Paul will tell them that compared to the love, joy, peace and patience of being known by God THERE IS NO LAW!  But for now, he only asks them to remember how their gospel focus once made them joyful and generous.
  • SERVICE (4:12-15)
  • Other-Focused
        1. 13b You did me no wrong. …14 and though my condition was a trial to you, you …received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus. …15b if possible, you would have gouged out your eyes and given them to me.
        2. Paul describes the Gauls as people who responded his to preaching of God’s one-way love with selfless joy.  They were thrilled to learn that they were made children and heirs of God by Jesus’ perfect life and sacrificial death.
        3. That good news made them live as if they already had everything they needed so they were free to truly love Paul and each other without any need to earn anything from God or men.  Once, they had lived freely under the banner of “Done!”
        4. Paul is passionate and personal here.  He tells the Gauls he has become like them.  That is, Paul lives in the reality of being saved just like a Gentile apart from the Mosaic Law (see: 2:15-16). The Gauls need to return to the reality of God’s one-way love, that place where Paul lives.
        5. When Paul came into those towns of Galatia, he came chased and harassed by the Jews, beaten, stoned and left for dead, covered with bruises and cuts and scars (Acts 14:19ff.; 2 Tim. 3:11).  In the ancient world, illness and oppression were considered signs of divine disfavor.  So Paul came bearing the marks of cultural rejection, not cultural change or cultural victory.
        6. Paul came without the marks of health and wealth.  He didn’t fly in on his private jet.  He didn’t have fancy clothes.  He was weak and poor, black and blue, harried and humble.  What a contrast he must have been to the nice men from Jerusalem that followed him into those cities with their “give-to-get” message of self-improvement, family values, and cultural victory.
        7. Yet the Gauls received Paul despite everything about him that cried out, “Looser!” They didn’t just receive him; they accepted him as God’s messenger and Jesus’ chosen apostle.  They nurtured him in his weakness and nursed him back to health.  They could not love Paul enough.
        8. But when the nice men from Jerusalem came, these congregations began to change into unhappy, self-interested, self-centered, bitchy people.  That’s what rule-keeping does; it forces God’s grace further and further into the background in favor of ritual and the promise of intellectual, cultural, and religious superiority.
  • Self-Focused (15a)
      1. Paul asks the Gauls, “What then has become of your blessedness?”  What happened to your joyful spirit of contentment?  
      2. Once they felt happy and contented; they had “a sense of blessing.”  But all that was gone now, robbed from them by their intense focus upon self and life improvement to earn more favor from God and men.
      3. Before the nice men from Jerusalem began to court them, the Gauls were willing and eager to give up their most precious possessions for the sake of gospel ministry.  But their former happy state has vanished with the coming of legalism, adding to the work of Christ.
      4. It is a heart wrenching thing to see people once excited over the 200-proof grace of God begin to add things to the gospel.  For the Gauls it was circumcision, observance of holy days, fasts and feasts and faithful works, penance and performance.
      5. Today it is no different: Jesus plus sacraments and good works, Jesus plus ancient worship style and mysticism, Jesus plus patriarchy and family focus, Jesus plus economics and politics, Jesus plus culture change and proper worldview, Jesus plus childhood education, even Jesus plus perfect theology.
      6. Sometimes I can tell smug-peddling gurus have been seducing you Monday through Saturday by the anger and agitation you give off some Sunday mornings.  Even good theologians can make us smug because our sin natures crave perverting Godly truths into self-glory.
      7. But the new nice men from Jerusalem have no good theology.  Their false gospel of Jesus plus sacraments and working faith will make you miserable no matter what insightful things you think they have to say about culture or eschatology or family values or modes of education because – short of their repentance – they are cursed by God for their false gospel. They lead the sheep away from the water of life to starve in the wilderness of arrogant rule-keeping.
      8. Sanctification by works is a joyless system. It is self-improvement with Jesus language sprinkled on it.  It turned the Gauls sour.  It will turn you and me sour.  We are justified and sanctified by grace through faith.
      9. Paul writes in 4:16, “Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth?”  The truth of the gospel is always an enemy to the wolves.  But it is never an enemy to the sheep.  Prov. 27:6, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy.”
      10. The nice men from Jerusalem cannot stop pitching woo to the Gauls.  But they do not love the Gauls.  They are seducers, not lovers.
  • SEDUCTION (4:17-20)
  • Zealous Courtship
        1. They make much of you, but for no good purpose. They want to shut you out, that you may make much of them. 
        2. Paul warns Rome of the smooth talk and flattery of those that pervert God’s grace (Rom. 16:18).  Here he pictures them as courters and coveters.  They zealously court the Gauls.  They covet them for a following.
        3. One of the marks of the false teacher is that he courts others to himself.  He covets followers.  He comes dressed like the sheep, but only to lead them away from Jesus and to himself.
        4. Men who are nasty and mean on the surface don’t gather much of a following.  But those who can write and speak charming words, can entertain and appeal to your concerns, those men gather people to themselves.
        5. They don’t claim to teach error; they claim to be teaching only the most refined of truth.  But it is “truth” that always detracts from God’s one-way love, lays emphasis on elevating your opinion of yourself, and wins you away from Jesus and to them.
        6. Any publicity is good publicity to false teachers because they want you to make much of them as they cut you off from apostolic teaching.
  • Honest Love
      1. Finally, Paul calls the Gauls, “my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you!”
      2. The apostle wants to see Christ in his people.  Paul wants to promote Jesus, to portray Christ and him crucified clearly to these seduced congregations.  Calvin writes, “If ministers wish to do anything, let them labour to form Christ, not to form themselves, in their hearers.”
      3. The mark of the true shepherd is that he points you Christ, not to himself.  He rejoices when the gospel is preached by others, rather than attacking them.  He encourages you to humility, not smugness and anger.
      4. There is no smirk or sneer on Paul’s lips here.  He is deeply concerned.  He loves deeply and he is deeply anguished for the souls of the agitated and irritable Gauls.

Beloved, the key to the Christian life is not more aggressive living; it is not any set of rules or products sold by nice men from Jerusalem zealously courting followers to line their pockets and gain them notice.

Jesus is not earned.  He comes through trust.  He is formed in you by the Holy Spirit working patiently through the ordinary means of Word and sacrament that bring joy and peace and humility and sacrificial love for one another.