Galatians 4:3

‘So we also, when we were children, were held in bondage under the rudiments (elements) of the world.'

All men are under some restraint, whether through the Law, or tradition, or their own laws, or regulations and rules, or the principles by which their society is governed, or by philosophical ideas, or even in their own minds by their belief in invisible forces and influences over which they have no control, mediums, fortune-tellers, astrologers, fate, and so on. Thus they are like children kept under by forces outside their control, and are in bondage.

‘Rudiments, elements (stoicheion).' This refers to elements of learning, fundamental principles, basic religious ideas and even the spoken alphabet. It could also refer to the elemental spirits such as fire, air, earth and water, and to the heavenly bodies as having influence on the world. But the former would seem to be more in mind here, for it includes the subjection to the observance of days and months and seasons and years (Galatians 4:10). Paul may, however, have intended to include all influences and restraints on men, whatever they were.

Thus man is under all kinds of ‘laws'. This reminds us that, while when Paul is speaking of the Law he has the Jewish Law firmly in mind, he also includes, in the background, whatever laws may control men. It is just as true of religious ‘laws' today as it ever was.