Galatians 4:1-31

CHAPTER 4

SYNOPSIS OF THE CHAPTER

i. He continues the argument of the preceding chapter that the Jews, like children and slaves, were under the Jewish law as a pædagague, while Christians, as sons of full age, were led, not by the law, but by the Spirit of adoption, whereby they cry, "Abba, Father," and that it is, therefore, unworthy of them to return to the weak and beggarly elements of the law.

ii. He Observes (ver. 13) on the eagerness with which the Galatians had formerly embraced his preaching, that he may shame them for so lightly departing from it.

iii. He introduces (ver. 21) a new argument from an allegory drawn from Abraham's history. His wife Sarah, a "free woman," bore him Isaac as his son and heir, by whom were represented Christians, the free-born sons of God, free from the bondage of the law, and in due time heirs of Abraham's blessing. His bondwoman Hagar bore him Ishmael, who was cast out, and who represented the Judaisers, to be shut out from the blessing promised by God to Abraham. Ver. 1. Now I say. This is closely connected with vers. 24 and 25 of the preceding chapter, where it was said that "the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, but after that faith is come we are no longer under a schoolmaster." He proceeds to prove this at greater length, and begins with the example of a child who is under tutors.

The heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant. An infant, as the Greek word is, who has not yet attained to years of discretion, inasmuch as he is under a tutor and a pædagogue, and cannot exercise the right of dominion over his property, is in the position of a slave rather than a lord, nay, he is subject to a slave, viz., his pædagogue, and is under tutors and governors. Ver. 2. Governors. Stewards who administer his property.

Until the time appointed. The prescribed day when the power of the tutor came to an end, i.e., the date when the heir was twenty five years of age, which in many places is the age of majority. Ver. 3. Even so we. That is the Jews, whom he so describes in chap. iii. 25.

When we were children. Like boys untaught in the knowledge, and therefore in the love of God and His righteousness.

Under the elements of the world. 1. Serving the letter of the Old Law. For the law, as being imperfect, was first given to the world, i.e., to the Jews, and through the Jews to all nations, to teach them the rudiments of faith and piety. But the Gospel, succeeding the law, teaches their perfection. As Justinian calls his Institutes the "elements of the law," and as we speak of the elements of grammar, philosophy, and music, so here the Apostle speaks of the law as elementary. As boys, says Anselm, learn the elements, and their conjunction, but do not understand the words and sentences composed from them until they proceed to higher branches of learning, to which they can only attain by first learning the elements, so the Jews had the elements in their ceremonies, of which they did not understand the meaning, until by these elements, as their elevators, they come to the faith of Christ.

S. Paul calls the men of the world by the name of the world. The reference is first to the Jews, then, by metonymy, to all men. God willed to open, in one corner of the world a school, where He might teach men the rudiments of faith and piety, until He should open everywhere schools where they were most learnedly taught.

2. More properly and naturally the elements of the world are the days, months, times, and years of verse 10. These he calls elements byan allusion to Gen. i., where it is said that God created the elements of the world in seven days, and then rested on the seventh day, and instituted the Sabbath as a memorial among the Jews of His creative rest. The days are thus called elements, because in them the elements were created, and their creation represented by metonymy on the Sabbath. Or they may be so called because time governs the world and all in it, as the generation, corruption, and succession of things. Accordingly, in grateful recollection of God's providence, disposing by sun and moon the succession of the seasons and of day and night, He willed that Sabbaths, new moons, and other days should be observed by the Jews, that they might continually recognise God as the Creator and Preserver of all things, through the instrumentality of these stated feasts, till, being better taught by the Gospel, they should worship God in spirit and in truth.

Erasmus, however, thinks that the world here by catachresis stands for whatever has the nature of visible and transitory things, such as the ceremonies of the Old Law, which, in Colossians 2:20, he calls "the rudiments of the world." But this is not the usual meaning of the word with the Apostle, nor is it the meaning in Colossians 2:20, as I will prove when I come to comment on it. Cf. also infra, notes on verse 9.

We were in bondage. Theophylact explains this from the analogy of the child under tutors. As this child differs nothing from a slave, so, when we were children in the knowledge of Christ and the love of God, we were, like slaves, under the aforesaid elements of the world, and under the tutorship of the Old Law. Ver. 4. But when the fulness of the time was come. When the time fixed beforehand for the end of the law and the beginning of the Gospel was fully come, we were transferred from the servitude of the law to the freedom of sonship. S. Bernard (Serm. 1 de Adventu) explains the passage somewhat differently: " The fulness and abundance of temporal things had brought about forgetfulness and famine of eternal things. It was at the moment when temporal things held sway that eternal things opportunely arrived." But this is a symbolical rather than literal explanation. Literally, the fulness of time is not the abundance of temporal things, but the full completion of the predetermined time.

God sent forth His Son, as His legate or Apostle, with full instructions to act on His behalf. He sent His Son, not by change of place, as though He left heaven and arrived at earth; but the Son, remaining where He was, in heaven and on earth, took a new role, viz., that of a Human Ambassador from God to man.

Made of a woman. Woman here denotes, not corruption, but the female sex, and applies as well to a virgin as to another woman. Made of a woman denotes conception without a male, from the sole substance of the mother. From this it clearly follows that Christ did not assume a heavenly body, which He brought to earth by passing through the Blessed Virgin as through a pipe, as the Valentinians formerly, and the Anabaptists now teach, but that His body was formed from the Virgin.

Made under the law. Though Christ, even as man, was not subject to the law, because He was still the Son of God, the giver of the law, yet of His own free-will He observed it, and of His own free-will submitted Himself to circumcision, and to its other ceremonial enactments. Made, therefore, denotes, not obligation, but practice; not right, but fact.

To redeem them that were under the law. By paying the price, might bestow on them Christian liberty The reference is to the bondage of the law, not of sin.

That we might receive the adoption of sons. (1.) The Son of God was made of a woman Son of man, that He might make the sons of men sons of God. " God was made man," says S. Bernard, " that man might be made God." (2.) This adoption is by grace, by which we obtain not only a right to be heirs of God the Father, but also participation in the Divine Nature, the Holy Spirit Himself, and sonship with God. (3.) Although all the righteous, even before Christ, were sons of God by adoption, yet the Apostle calls them all slaves (a) because, although the righteous were truly sons of God, yet they had not the status of sons, but only of slaves, being under the law, and consequently under the spirit of servile fear. (b) Because they had not the right of sonship through the law, but through their faith in Christ yet to come; and they belonged, therefore, more to the New Law than to the Old, as Augustine proves happily and exhaustively (contra Duas Epp. Pelag. cap. 4). (c) Because they lacked the fruit of adoption, in being unable to discern their heavenly inheritance before Christ revealed it. (d) Because Christ, in setting us free from the yoke of the law, substituted for it in the New Law the one spirit of adoption and of love.

Ver. 6. The Spirit of His Son. The Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. This is an argument from effect to cause, as when we say, "Where there is smoke there is fire." God first sent forth the Spirit of His Son to us, from which it followed that we became sons of God. Because we are sons, therefore, we know that He hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son, else should we not be sons. Because, therefore, denotes not so much the efficient cause as the logical reason.

Or, better still, we may connect the particle because with the cry, " Abba, Father." God hath sent forth His Spirit, not to make you sons, but to make you cry, " Abba, Father."

Crying. Causing you to invoke God ardently, confidently, with filial affection. It is the clamour of the heart, not of the mouth, as in Exodus 15:15.

Abba. The Hebrew Ab, the Syriac Abba, which in Greek and Latin becomes Abbas, denotes father. See my notes to Romans 8:15. As this place is a terror to the lukewarm, who rarely experience this feeling of filial prayer, so does it inspire the devout, who seek it within with a hope of salvation and enjoyment of their heavenly inheritance. Ver. 8. Howbeit then. When you were pagan unbelievers, and lived in ignorance of God.

Which by nature are no gods. But only in the estimation of man. Ver. 9. But now after that ye have known God, &c. Known by God, as beloved sons of their Father. " God is ignorant of no one," says S. Jerome, " but He is said to know those who have exchanged error for piety." Better still, it may be rendered, made to know, taught by God, by a common Hebraism. The Hiphil ("he caused to know") and the Hophal ("he was made to know") have no exact equivalent voice in Latin or Greek, and are, therefore, expressed by a participle, with a loss of the force of the original Hebrew. Cf. 1 Cor. viii. 3. In other places, God is said to know when He makes us to know; and the Holy Spirit is said to cry aloud, or to pray, when He makes us cry aloud or pray. Cf. Romans 8:26. The meaning of the verse is, therefore, this: Since you have been taught by God inwardly by His grace, outwardly by our preaching what is the way of salvation in Christ, why do you turn again to the elements of the law, to be taught perfection by them? You are like a metaphysician beginning again the elements of grammar, or a runner returning from the goal to the starting-point. You were once near the goal of salvation; why then go back to the place you started from? You were theologians taught by God; why do you return to the law, as though you had lost your rights and were beginning again?

To the weak and beggarly elements. What are these? 1. Augustine and Ambrose understand by the phrase the sun and moon, and the idols formerly worshipped by the Galatians, and see a reference to the false gods mentioned above in verse 3. Tertullian, in a similar vein, says (de Præscript. c. 33): " The Apostle censures Hermogenes, who, by introducing matter as uncreated, compares it to the uncreated God, and by making a goddess as mother of the elements, sets her up as an object of worship side by side with the one God." But the objection to this explanation is that the Galatians had no wish to return to Gentilism but to Judaism; and this the whole Epistle, with its condemnation of the Jewish ceremonies, clearly shows.

2. The explanation of Chrysostom, Theophylact, and Œcumenius is better. According to them, these elements are the sun and moon, to which the Galatians wished to return, not to serve them as gods, as they had been used to do before they embraced Christianity, but to determine by their courses the Sabbaths, New Moons, and other Jewish feasts. He calls these elements weak and beggarly with reference to God, whose support they require continually, without which they are weak, and even unable to exist. If God withdrew His hand, they would sink into the nothing from which they came. That S. Paul is referring to the sun and moon appears from the fact that they are properly the elements of the world, as he styled them in verse 3, and also because he asks, " Why turn ye again " to the things which you used to worship? Among the Galatians these of course were not the Jewish ceremonies, but the sun and moon.

3. But the best explanation is that of Jerome, Theodoret, Anselm, and Tertullian (contra Marcion, v. 4), who understand by these elements the Sacraments, and feast-days, and other ceremonies of the Old Law, which were given to the Jews, as the first rudiments of faith and piety, and through them to the whole world, and which were, as I have said in the notes to verse 3, symbols of the creation and government of the world. They are beggarly, and, as Tertullian calls them, fallacious, because they neither contain nor confer grace, but need for this the power of Christ. They are also weak, because they are of themselves of no efficacy to justify or sanctify; for without faith in Christ they could justify no one, nay, even with that faith they did not justify by themselves and ex opere operato, but only ex opere operantis, i.e., by the faith of the receiver. Accordingly, they were done away with when Christ came.

That this last explanation is the correct one is evident from what follows; for S. Paul goes on to say, " Ye observe days and months, and times and years," by which he gives them to understand that these were the elements that they served.

Moreover, this explanation is much the more simple and pertinent. For these elements, that is to say, these festal days they did observe, but they did not worship the sun and moon. Nor can it be said with strict truth that whoever observes the first day of the month is a moon-worshipper, or that one who keeps the Lord's Day is a sun-worshipper, when the Lord's Day is merely identified with Sunday, because the best of all days is assigned to the chief of all the heavenly bodies.

It may be objected that the word again is opposed to the explanation, and implies that the Galatians, as being formerly worshippers of the host of heaven, had returned to this worship, and not to Jewish observances, to which they had not been addicted.

I reply that S. Paul regards all men without distinction as having been under the law as their pædagogue, and accuses the Galatians of again setting up, by their action, the obsolete rites of Judaism.

But the answer of Adam is perhaps better, who refers the word again, not to the whole but to the part, as signifying only that slavery was restored in general, but not in this or that particular. The Galatians had at one time served idols, and afterwards Judaism, and they are here exhorted not to become slaves once more, whether to demons or to Jewish shadows. So we might say to a Lutheran who had embraced the Catholic faith, and afterwards lapsed into Calvinism: How can you fall into Calvinism again, that is into heresy? It is not Calvinism that is the significant word, but lapse, and the force of the question lies in its appeal against deserting the Catholic faith for heresy of any kind whatsoever.