The Folly of Turning Back: Galatians 4:8-11
Introduction: The Great Reversal
The Christian life is a one way street. It is a march out of Egypt, through the Red Sea, and into the Promised Land. It is a flight from the City of Destruction toward the Celestial City. The entire logic of the gospel is forward motion, from slavery to sonship, from darkness to light, from death to life. But the Galatians, bless their hearts, were trying to put the car in reverse. They had been liberated from a pagan junkyard, and now, having been given the keys to a mansion, they were looking wistfully back at the scrap heap, thinking it might be nice to go collect some of that rust again.
Paul is not dealing with a minor theological quibble here. This is not a dispute over the color of the sanctuary carpet. The issue in Galatia strikes at the very heart of the gospel. It is the difference between freedom and slavery, between being a son and being an orphan, between Christ and nothing. The Judaizers who had infiltrated these churches were peddling a gospel of Christ-plus. You need Jesus, they said, plus you need to get circumcised, plus you need to keep the old Jewish calendar. But the moment you add a "plus" to the gospel of grace, you have subtracted Christ. A gospel of grace-plus-works is another gospel entirely, which is to say, it is no gospel at all.
What Paul confronts here is a fundamental misunderstanding of redemptive history. Christ's coming was not an update; it was an earthquake. It was the end of the old world and the inauguration of the new. To go back to the shadows and types of the old covenant now that the reality has come is like a married man who, instead of embracing his wife, prefers to spend his evenings staring at her high school yearbook photo. It is an insult to the reality standing right in front of him. Paul's alarm, his fear that his labor has been in vain, is rooted in this great danger. The Galatians were on the verge of trading their inheritance as sons for the shackles of slaves, and doing so willingly.
The Text
However at that time, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those which by nature are no gods. But now, having known God, or rather having been known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things, to which you want to be enslaved all over again? You observe days and months and seasons and years. I fear for you, that perhaps I have labored over you for nothing.
(Galatians 4:8-11 LSB)
Your Former Futility (v. 8)
Paul begins by reminding the Galatian believers, who were mostly Gentiles, of their pathetic condition before the gospel arrived.
"However at that time, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those which by nature are no gods." (Galatians 4:8)
Before Christ, their lives were defined by two things: ignorance and slavery. First, "you did not know God." This is the root of all paganism. It is not that they were sincere but mistaken seekers of truth. Scripture is clear that the knowledge of God is evident in creation, but men suppress that truth in unrighteousness (Romans 1). Their ignorance was a culpable ignorance, a willful refusal to acknowledge the God who gave them breath.
The necessary consequence of not knowing the true God is slavery to false gods. There is no neutral ground. You will either worship the Creator or you will worship something in creation. And notice what Paul says about these gods. They are "by nature no gods." They are nothing. They are cosmic zeroes. The pagan deities of Galatia, whether they were the old Anatolian gods or the newer Roman imports, were ontological nothings. They were vanity, emptiness. And yet, these nothings had the power to enslave. This is the great irony of idolatry. Men fashion a god out of wood or stone or lust or ambition, a thing that cannot see or hear or save, and then they become slaves to the thing they created. In reality, as Paul says elsewhere, the sacrifices offered to idols are offered to demons (1 Cor. 10:20). So they were in bondage not just to empty ideas, but to malignant spiritual forces.
The Great Reversal and the Baffling Return (v. 9)
In verse 9, Paul describes the glorious reversal of their condition, and then expresses his utter astonishment at their desire to undo it.
"But now, having known God, or rather having been known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things, to which you want to be enslaved all over again?" (Galatians 4:9)
The first phrase, "But now, having known God," describes their conversion. They moved from ignorance to knowledge. But Paul immediately corrects himself, or rather, deepens the point: "or rather having been known by God." This is a crucial distinction. Our salvation does not begin with our search for God; it begins with His sovereign, gracious search for us. Our knowing Him is a result of His knowing us first. To be "known by God" in Scripture is not just to be observed by Him; He observes everyone. It means to be chosen, to be loved, to be brought into a covenant relationship with Him. It is the language of election. "You only have I known of all the families of the earth" (Amos 3:2). This is the foundation of their security and their freedom. They are not Christians because they were smart enough to figure it out; they are Christians because God, in His mercy, set His affection upon them and drew them to Himself.
And this is why their behavior is so baffling. "How is it that you turn back again?" Having been rescued by the living God, why would you return to the "weak and worthless elemental things?" The word for "elemental things" is stoicheia. It refers to the basic, rudimentary principles of the world, the ABCs of a religious system. For the pagan, this was their idolatry. For the Jew, it was the ceremonial law. Now that Christ has come, both are part of the old aeon, the old world order that has passed away. The ceremonial law was good and God-given, but it was a tutor, a schoolmaster, designed to point to Christ. Now that Christ, the graduate school, has arrived, to go back to the kindergarten of the ceremonial law is to go backward. Paul calls these things "weak" because they have no power to save, and "worthless" (or beggarly) because they can bestow no spiritual riches. Why would a son, an heir of a vast fortune, want to go back to the slave quarters and live on bread and water?
The Symptoms of Regression (v. 10)
Paul then identifies the specific way this backward turn was manifesting itself in their churches.
"You observe days and months and seasons and years." (Genesis 4:10)
This is the evidence of their folly. The Judaizers had convinced them to adopt the Jewish liturgical calendar, the Sabbaths, new moons, and festivals. Now, we must be careful here. Paul is not condemning all calendrical observance. The New Testament church met on a particular day, the Lord's Day, the first day of the week, to commemorate the new creation in Christ's resurrection. The error of the Galatians was not in having a calendar, but in adopting the old calendar as a means of justification. They were observing these days as a way to earn favor with God, to add to the finished work of Christ.
Their observance was a functional denial of the gospel. The old covenant calendar was a calendar of anticipation. It was a series of signposts pointing down the road to the coming of the Messiah. To meticulously observe those signposts after you have already arrived at the destination is absurd. It is to live as though Christ has not come. It is to say that His death and resurrection were insufficient, and that we must still live in the world of shadows. They were turning the gospel into a religion of performance, a ladder of merit, which is simply a polished-up form of paganism. Whether you are trying to appease Jupiter by sacrificing a bull or trying to appease Jehovah by keeping the feast of booths, if you are doing it to make yourself right with God, you are still a slave to the weak and worthless elemental things.
A Pastor's Anguish (v. 11)
Paul concludes this section with a raw expression of his pastoral fear and anguish.
"I fear for you, that perhaps I have labored over you for nothing." (Galatians 4:11)
This is not the frustration of a failed businessman. This is the heartbreak of a spiritual father watching his children run toward a cliff. Paul poured his life into these people. He preached the gospel, discipled them, loved them, and prayed for them. And now he sees it all beginning to unravel. His fear is that his work will have been "for nothing."
Does this mean that people can lose their salvation? Paul is speaking covenantally. He is addressing the visible church in Galatia, and he sees them, as a body, abandoning the gospel. Within that body, there are those who were truly known by God, and they will be preserved. But there are also those whose profession was superficial, and they are now being exposed. And for those who are true believers, this slide into legalism is a spiritually ruinous thing that robs them of their joy, their liberty, and their assurance. Paul's fear is a pastoral warning, a loud alarm bell intended to wake them up from their stupor. To abandon the gospel of grace is to abandon Christ, and to abandon Christ is to have nothing.
Conclusion: No Turning Back
The error of the Galatians is not confined to the first century. The temptation to turn back to the weak and worthless elemental things is perennial. Modern man is just as enslaved as the ancient Galatians, only his gods have different names. They are the gods of secularism, of materialism, of sexual autonomy, of political salvation. And the church is constantly tempted to flirt with these gods, to create a hybrid gospel of Jesus-plus-social-justice, or Jesus-plus-therapeutic-self-esteem, or Jesus-plus-nationalism.
Anytime we look to something other than the finished work of Christ for our standing before God, we are observing "days and months and seasons and years." Anytime we believe that our political activism, our moral performance, our doctrinal precision, or our emotional experiences add one iota to our justification, we are turning back to slavery. We are trading the freedom of sonship, which is a gift, for the bondage of performance, which is a wage. And the wages of that sin is death.
The only proper response is to do what Paul is urging the Galatians to do: stand fast in the liberty with which Christ has made us free. Our relationship with God is not based on our grasp of Him, but on His unbreakable grasp of us. We know Him because He first knew us. That is the anchor. Everything else is sinking sand. Do not turn back. The mansion is before you; the junkyard is behind you. March on.