Scripture Daily

Context No. 130 of 4322 · Galatians

Context · Reflection

Galatians 4:8-14: in context

8However at that time, not knowing God, you were in bondage to those who by nature are not gods. 9But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, why do you turn back again to the weak and miserable elemental principles, to which you desire to be in bondage all over again? 10You observe days, months, seasons, and years. 11I am afraid for you, that I might have wasted my labor for you. 12I beg you, brothers, become as I am, for I also have become as you are. You did me no wrong, 13but you know that because of weakness in the flesh I preached the Good News to you the first time. 14That which was a temptation to you in my flesh, you didn’t despise nor reject; but you received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus.

Paul is arguing with Gentile Christians in Galatia who have started keeping the Jewish calendar under pressure from other teachers. This passage is where the argument turns personal.

His logic is sharp. Formerly, not knowing God, you were enslaved to things that are not gods at all. But now that you know God, or rather are known by God, how can you turn back to the weak and beggarly elemental forces and want to be enslaved all over again? You are observing days and months and seasons and years. To a Jewish teacher, keeping the calendar was obedience. Paul tells former pagans that adopting it as a requirement would be going backward, not forward, into the same kind of bondage they left.

Then he stops arguing and remembers. You know it was because of a bodily ailment that I first preached the gospel to you, and though my condition was a trial to you, you did not scorn or spit at me but received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus. He arrived sick, they took him in, and that illness is the reason they heard the gospel at all. He never says what it was. What went wrong in my plans that turned out to be the only reason something good happened?

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