The Blessed Hope Podcast -- Episode Eight: "Do You Want to Go Back to Slavery?" (Galatians 4:1-20)

Paul’s question to those listening to the agitators in Galatia is a profound but simple one. “What has happened to all of your joy?” Paul is referring to that joy they had experienced together with Paul when he first preached the gospel to them. These people were Paul’s spiritual children. He loved them, and he thought they loved him. They took him in when he had been felled by illness. There was much joy. And then the Judaizers came. Do the Galatians really want to follow them and return to slavery?

The spoiled fruit of such legalism is not only a loss of Christian liberty, but also the loss of the assurance of salvation. The agitators turn the church into a court–a contentious place of charges, complaints, and accusations. How can I eat with so and so? They eat pork. They do this, and they don’t do that. They don’t care about Moses or his law. Paul describes this as a return to the elementary principles of the world, in effect, a return to slavery. . . putting the shackles back on after they were removed by Christ.

Paul reminds the Galatians that God sent his Son and his Spirit, so that the Galatians can call God their father. Why would anyone wish to give this up? Why replace freedom with rules? This is our subject for this edition of the Blessed Hope Podcast.

Resources for Episode Eight:

Irons: Not Under Law But Under Grace

The Works Principle in the Mosaic Economy

R. S. Clark: The Attraction of Legal Preaching

John Hendrix: What Is Legalism?

Suggested Bibliography for the Series:

F. F. Bruce, Paul: The Apostle of the Heart Set Free

Guy Waters, The Life and Theology of Paul

Martin Luther's Commentary on Galatians

Moo, Galatians (Baker Exegetical Commentary)

J. V. Fesko, Galatians, Lectio Continua Series

Music (Shutterstock): Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op 92m, second movement, Allegretto (A minor)