Cast Out the Legalists
What Is an Heir with Christ? (1-11)
In Galatians 1 and 2, Paul confronted the Galatians’ bad gospel, and in chapter 3 he dealt with their being quickly seduced into earning God's Spirit by becoming Jewish through circumcision. Now, in chapter 4, Paul turns his attention to what it means to be set free by the Spirit and to become an heir with Christ.
The Example from Roman Slavery (1-4)
First, Paul provided a picture of a slave versus a son. In Paul's day, Roman children had neither rights nor significance but were treated as property of their parents until they matured (reached the age of puberty) and were adopted or made sons and rightful heirs (1). Children, like slaves, had all their decisions made for them by their trustees (2).
Using the guardian of children metaphor, Paul explained the similarities. The Galatians were enslaved to the principles of the world (“lust”); they were, in essence, owned by lust and controlled by desire with no hope of freedom. The Law was used as a guardian to keep their lust-driven cravings from becoming so out of control that it would be impossible to save them (3). Then, at the perfectly prepared moment in history, Jesus arrived as God's Son; His birth was by a woman (thus susceptible to all lust), and he was born under the Law (thus accountable to the Law) (4).
The Purpose of Jesus' Arrival (5-7)
Jesus arrived with a mission: to redeem or deliver those who were under the Law but were not being liberated by the Law to become a genuine part of God's actual family (5).
Paul made it clear: the Galatians knew when they were actually free because they were no longer strangers to God; they exchanged all their former views of a Law-based God into a simple, affectionate cry for a redeeming God, whom they referred to as “Daddy” (6). As “free sons,” they found their relationship with the Father to be like Jesus’ relationship with the Father, inheriting with Jesus all that Jesus inherited (7).
The Example from Gentile Slavery (8-11)
Paul reminded them that as Gentiles, they were formerly in bondage to the laws of paganism. In other words, they obeyed the principles of lust, greed, and sensuality their gods had caused their culture to be built on.
Paul was likening their former pagan life to the life of Judaism. In both cases, paganism and Judaism, there were certain principles to live by to make their gods or God happy. Both paganism and Judaism tempted those who would follow to be happy and fulfilled by pleasing their gods or God.
In Paul's mind, paganism worked the same way as Judaism—do the right things to win the favor and blessing of the gods. Both “lusted” for a better life. Both were built on what human strength could accomplish (8).
So, Paul simply asked, “Why would you, now that you have become known to God as His children, want to return back to the kind of worldly lust-driven life by seeking to become more acceptable to God, more bless-able by God, by becoming more Jewish through circumcision and religious, cultural observance?” Paul viewed their ever-returning to trying to please God by good moral behavior as making his entire ministry among them a complete waste of time (9-11).
The Galatians' Former Love (12-16)
Paul had rejected legalism as a means for being made right with God, and he begged the Galatians, after having received Christ, to become as Paul himself had become, and to renounce all legalism as a form of pleasing or appeasing God (12).
Paul then reminded them of his time among them during his first missionary journey (Acts 13-14) when he became sick. His suffering had become a trial to them, but they did not treat his sickness as a burden, rather they considered their caring for him as caring for an angel or even Jesus Himself (13-14). Paul then wondered what had happened. They would have, at one time, gouged out their own eyes to have lessened Paul's pain (15). He veiled a mild rebuke by merely questioning how he had now become their enemy (16).
The Motives of Those Who Preach the Law (17-20)
Paul moved the discussion forward. With the Law being reintroduced into their relationship, love had been lost and intimacy between Paul and the church abandoned.
Those teaching the Law sought to keep the Galatians and Paul separated and disconnected from each other. While Paul commended their zeal in preaching, he also wondered why these false teachers were only zealous and wanting to serve the Galatians when Paul was present. Paul was exposing the false teachers’ motives as serving the Galatians to win them away from Paul rather than serving them out of love (17-18).
In contrast, Paul was in anguish with an unchanging purpose, not to get the Galatians to like him, but to have Christ formed within them (19). Paul then commented on how much he wished he could be with them and soften his tone in person (20).
The question of Paul became, does Law-keeping, or becoming more Jewish, produce the good fruit of love? Is Law-keeping really better than following Christ? Paul's point was simple: whose motives should you trust—those who encourage you away from Jesus to religious rites, or those who first led you and continue to lead you to Christ?
Paul Confronts the False Teachers in Allegory (21-31)
Paul's final example contrasted being slave-bound under the principle of Law to being free in Jesus. He used the birth of Abraham's first two sons, Ishmael and Isaac, as examples. Abraham had two households living together, and their relationship was difficult (Genesis 16:5). Paul followed two lines of people: the line of Isaac—the free son of promise, Abraham's heir; and the line of Ishmael—likened to a slave, son of the flesh, not an heir to Abraham's fortune or promise (21-23).
The whole example rested on the fact that Isaac was free and an inheritor of promise, but Ishmael was a slave, a product of the flesh, ambition, even lust, and was not an inheritor of promise.
Hagar was likened to Mount Sinai (and thus, present earthly Jerusalem), where Israel became slaves when they refused to listen to the voice of God, and instead asked Moses to listen to God for them (Exodus 20:18-21), then tell them what God had said. In essence, they refused personal relationship with God and wanted rules instead. Paul was likening refusing the voice of Jesus to being like Ishmael, like going back to Sinai and refusing God once again (24-25).
Paul then compared Isaac as being one not enslaved to sin; he also compared Isaac to Jerusalem coming down from above. Isaac was a good comparison because he was born by a promise made from above (26). Paul quoted Isaiah 54:1 and reminded the Galatians that Sarah started barren but became the mother of the child of promise. The promise was meant for those who have no means to be abundant, no power to prosper on their own (27-28). The son came not by obeying the Law but by believing. Ultimately, the son of the flesh persecuted the one born of promise, and the animosity continued on into Paul's day (29).
Paul then sternly called for the Galatians to cast out the legalists, as God had called for Abraham to cast out Ishmael (Genesis 21:9). Paul's question was, “Why, having been saved from the law of sin, would you want to leave Jesus, Abraham's ultimate Son, and return to laws of Judaism, thus disinheriting yourself?” (31)
Psalms 120-134 are all “Pilgrimage Songs” and were written to be sung by the Jews on their way up to Jerusalem for the three feasts held there each year [the feasts: Passover, Pentecost, Booths]. Ten of the Psalms are anonymous, four are attributed to David (122, 124,131,133), and one to Solomon (127)].
I have written these chapter devotionals as Jesus would have sung them and heard them as He was going to Jerusalem to celebrate feasts as a Boy, as a Man, and then ultimately in His final ascent to Jerusalem as the Passover culminated at Calvary. I will especially let these Psalms flow from Jesus’ own lips as we imagine a bit of what might have been going through His mind as He walked His disciples to that city 3,800 feet above sea level—the city in these Psalms referred to as Jerusalem and Zion.
Some imagine these Psalms were written for Solomon's Temple, each Psalm written for the fifteen steps leading up to the inner court—one Psalm at a time sung by the Levitical choirs accompanied by musicians as the priest made his way up each step.
Others imagine the Psalms were written for the exiles returning from Babylon to Jerusalem. Still others place them at 445 B.C. during Nehemiah's time, after the walls were built, when the Jews ascended to the temple for the Feast of Tabernacles.
The Psalm of Escape
This Psalm was authored by David; the occasion is completely unclear. Some place it at the end of David's life as a reflection of God's care. This is where I place the writing of this Psalm as I write this review. David was aware of all the times Israel had faced predatory armies and been Divinely delivered.
The Psalmist recognized, “if not for Yahweh,” he himself would have been little more than a bird destroyed and eaten on his way to becoming king at Jerusalem.
Preserved from Peril (1-5)
This Psalm is lyrics created from the memoir David had written of his life of following God.
If not for Divine intervention, he and Israel would have been swallowed up by greater powers and absorbed into the beast of another political system.
David composed a song to be sung where Israel would not merely fill their minds with the knowledge of divine intervention but would also announce, “If it had not been Yahweh who was on our side …” (1-2).
The full wrath of monstrous nations had been focused upon Israel's destruction more than once. Their raging force was like a flood that would have sent them running, engulfed them, and finally would have swallowed and buried them as a nation to be remembered no more (3-5).
David likely was an old man remembering the last battle of Saul when Saul and Jonathan were killed. Israel was overrun by the Philistines driving the armies of Israel across the Jordan River. The nation lay lifeless and open for complete occupation and annihilation. They were without a king and without government. The Philistines were ready to pounce and finish off the last of the Israeli forces.
It was Yahweh who had raised up David, and Yahweh who, through David, would unify Israel and defeat the Philistines in less than a decade. Engraved on David's mind would have been the sentiment, “If it had not been Yahweh who was on our side …”
As Jesus was making His way to Jerusalem, He would remember how Israel had been flooded by the monstrous powers of Nebuchadnezzer and taken captive to Babylon. He would have remembered, “if it had not been for Yahweh,” Israel would have been buried alive in Babylon, never to be heard from again.
As Jesus was making His way to Jerusalem, He was warning the Jewish leadership of the coming destruction of the temple, the city, and their nation by declaring, “the axe was at the root” of their being. Jesus had been sent by Yahweh to gather them and save them from the catastrophe.
Had it not been Yahweh who had sent Jesus, then all Israel and the promises with them would have been lost.
In a moment of eternal wisdom, however, Jesus, God's secret, was revealed. Yahweh was having Jesus become Israel to save Israel and the whole world. Jesus, to the core of His heart, was singing, “if not for Yahweh …”
Praise for Preservation (6-7)
David then compared Israel to a defenseless bird. First, Yahweh saved Israel from being devoured by the teeth of the beasts of government, who desired to greedily guzzle down Israel in their savage wrath (6). The second picture is of Israel’s being captured and ensnared by wild bird hunters.
David sang on—Israel was not devoured, but they were ensnared. Yahweh broke the snare and Israel like a bird caught air and flew away (7).
Jesus, marching up to Jerusalem, would certainly have thought of the amazing ways God had broken the traps of Egypt and the traps of Babylon in freeing Israel. But now Israel was in a Roman trap, and more, Jesus had called out to Israel telling them they were in a far more serious trap than a Roman trap; they were in a sin trap. This was an unarguable truth, for all die as a result of the sin they are trapped in.
Jesus would have been singing high praise as He was anticipating Yahweh’s coming to deliver Israel from their sin trap.
Jesus would also be aware the only way to break the trap would be to shatter the teeth of death, the teeth of the one setting the snares.
Jesus would need to die to destroy death.
The song is thrilling, “Yahweh is on our side.” The song is also sobering, at least for Jesus—”our help in the name of Yahweh”—as the kind of help necessary was going to require sacrifice.
Praise the Name of Yahweh (8)
David then reaches back to Moses, declaring Israel's help was in the name of Yahweh. The meaning of Yahweh's name, I AM WHO I AM, as given to Moses, was the meaning behind Yahweh's name. Every time Yahweh's name was invoked, His presence grasped the hearts of those who proclaimed His name in allegiance.
David, in the Psalm, was declaring THE PRESENT ONE was present in Israel to HELP, and the very One who was present to help is the Maker of heaven and earth (8).
Jesus sang this last verse; He sang it for His disciples knowing that they were about to face the week of Jesus' passion. “Our help” is in the utterance. “Our help is in the name of ‘YAHWEH’; He is here to help you.”
Jesus would also have been saying, “Yahweh is here to help Me; I will not be left dead but will rise to break the teeth of death and free souls from sin to fly to Yahweh.
Yes, My help is in the name of Yahweh. No matter how forsaken I feel, Yahweh is present to help.”