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Heirs, Part 1 (Galatians 4:1-3)

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You are an Heir.  You have an inheritance.  This fact is all over the NT.

Today we begin Galatians 4.  Our focus is verses 1-3.  This passage is important because Paul is explaining what an heir is.  An heir we’ve learned so far is someone who believes in Jesus Christ and by that faith they are also considered Abraham’s seed.  Paul’s thoughts in chapter 4 are flowing right out of his thought at the end of chapter 3, “If you belong to Christ then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”  And with that, Paul opens up chapter 4 wanting to expound on this thought of believers being heirs.  

The significance for the Galatian church was this:  both Jews and Gentiles were heirs together as believers in Jesus Christ.  The Jews were not superior to the Gentiles because they were physical descendents of Abraham – that physical descent meant nothing when it comes to the inheritance.  Faith is the only way anyone – Jew or Gentile – can become an heir.  The law gains nothing promised as an inheritance.  Therefore, the Galatians were to flatly reject anyone who was seducing or pressuring them into following the law. 

NO LONGER UNDER A GUARDIAN (1-2)

Verses 1-2 explain that a child of the Gospel is no longer under a guardian, “….read….” 

Paul is clarifying his comments at the end of chapter 3, you can tell because he says, “What I am saying is…”  What is that clarification?  Look at verses 23-25 and you’ll see exactly what he means….read

Just like a young child is assigned a guardian to watch over him until he is of age, so too the Law was our guardian Paul says until the right time.  The key point is that the guardianship was temporary.  The guardian a father assigned to his son came to an end when the child was older, and in the same way the Law was to come to an end when Israel “got older.”  

Why does this point matter?  Why does Paul explain this in Galatians?  Because he is continuing to reinforce the point that the Law is to be left behind in following Christ.  It is all faith and none of the law.  Nothing – nothing – that God has promised can be achieved by following the law.  Furthermore, their unity as Jewish & Gentile Christians was not to be disregarded on the basis of the law – meaning none of them were to reject any other believer over not following the law.  Because none of them were obligated by God to follow the Law now that they put their faith in Christ, therefore none of them were to obligate anyone else to follow it.  The role of the Law as a guardian over them had terminated.  It was over.  The time set by the father has been reached.  Coming to Christ is akin to coming of age.  

NO LONGER A SLAVE (3, 7a)

Paul now shifts his commentary from being an underage child who is like a slave, to stating that they actually were slaves.  Underage here is referring to “before Christ,” and so before Christ came, and before they came to Christ, they were underage.  But he says that at that time when they were “underage” before Christ they were in fact slaves.  They were in a real bondage.  He said we were enslaved to sin (3:22), the Law (3:23-25), and now Paul says they were enslaved to the elementary spiritual forces of the world.”   

What is that?  What are the “elementary spiritual forces of the world?”  What does it mean to be enslaved and in bondage to them?  This is heavy.  The word for “elementary spiritual forces” is “stoicheion.”  Stoicheion means “fundamental,” or “rudiment,” or “foundational.”  It was a word used to refer to the letters of an alphabet, or notes on a musical scale, or propositions in geometry.  They are the ABC’s of something, the basics on which everything after are built.  So what are the “stoicheion of the world?”  What are the rudimentary and foundational principles of the world that enslaved humanity before Christ?  

The answer to this question ranges from:

  1. The physical universe’s substance
  2. Heavenly bodies like planets, stars and moons
  3. Demonic spirits worshipped in pagan religions
  4. Mosaic Law
  5. Elementary teachings of world religions.  
  6. All religions and philosophies prior to Christ – including Law of Moses

I believe number 6 makes the most sense:  all religions prior to Christ – including the Law of Moses.  The Mosaic Law has to be part of it because so much in our text focuses on it.  For instance, the Law’s pre-Christ role is the focus of 3:23-25.  Then we see it in our text 4:1-7.  Then in 4:9-10 Paul refers to the Galatians error of re-enslaving themselves to the practice of observing special days, months, seasons and years.  Then in verse 21, he very explicitly says, “Tell me, you who want to be under the law!”  With so much focus on the law we can’t dismiss that somehow the Law of Moses incorporates “elemental spiritual forces of the world.”  

Yet, Paul also says things that don’t fit with the Law of Moses.  First, chapter 4:8 says, “Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods.”  That verse would indicate that the Law of Moses enslaved the Israelites to false gods.  We cannot say that.  It cannot be true because the Law of Moses is from God and points to God.  We cannot conclude that the Law of Moses enslaved people to “those who by nature are not gods.”  That is what false religious systems do and the Law of Moses is not a false religious system.  So this strongly indicates Paul has more than just the Mosaic Law in mind, and he is seeing pagan religions also as incorporating “stoicheia,” or “elemental spiritual forces of the world.”  

I think both are what Paul has in view.  Let me read a commentator’s explanation on this.  He explains this answer but he doesn’t agree with it.  At the end he raises the problem with it.  But I want to offer the answer to that problem.  

“The reference to ‘elemental spiritual forces of the world’ (one word in Greek) may be taen as referring to the elementary stages of religious experience common to all men.  The Greek word itself might suggest this, for the word is stoicheia and can mean ‘alphabet.’  If this is Paul’s meaning then he will be referring to the elemental stages of Jewish an dGentile religious experience his readers have gone through in the past but which have now been superseded by Christ’s coming.  The advantage of this view is that it can apply to both Jew and Gentile.  The disadvantage is that it is hard to see how Paul could have considered pagan ideas of religion in any way a rudimentary preparation for the coming of the Christian gospel.”  (EBC, 471-2)

I will explain how Paul could consider pagan ideas of religion as preparatory for the gospel.  Here are 11 ways pagan religions had commonalities with the Law of Moses:

  1. Priesthoods where priests mediated between man and gods
  2. Temples where god’s resided
  3. Sacrificial systems including animal’s blood.  All pagan animal sacrifices are based on the memory of Genesis 3 where God sacrificed an animal in the garden and clothed fallen Adam and Eve with its skins.  
  4. Theistic!  Even polytheistic – but not atheistic
  5. Gods that controlled the universe – earth, wind, fire, water, agriculture, etc
  6. God’s active in affairs of man
  7. Rituals to make expiation for sin after offending a god
  8. Morality found within their religious system
  9. Explanation for existence, origin stories, etc
  10. Faith that their god would bless, prosper, protect, provide, etc
  11. Enslaved its followers

None of these negate that the Law of Moses was in fact the one and only religion God gave and all other religions were based on worship of demons and false deities.  But there are similarities and those similarities very much serve as references for the work of Christ.  Think of it – 

None of these were “true” religions because they were not oriented to worship the one true God – the God of Israel.  All of the worship, fear, obedience, sacrifice, homage, reverence, faith and glory were given to idols – not the one and only God, the God of Israel.  Israel was the one nation that had the true God.  

 But God let the other nations go their own way until Christ.  Think of what Paul told the Galatians in the city of Lystra, “In the past God let all the nations go their own way.”  But now that Christ has come God is calling all peoples from all nations to Himself, the one true God, through His Son, Jesus Christ.  “Go into all nations and make disciples” (Matthew 28:19-20).  Or Acts 17 when Paul said to the pagan philosophers, “we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone – an image made by human design and skill.  IN THE PAST God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.”  Now that Christ has come, God is calling all nations to Himself.  Yet, for all of history prior to Christ’s coming, God overlooked the fact that human hands were fashioning idols out of gold, silver and iron.  For all of history prior to Christ God was letting the nations go their own way.  

To say there are similarities does not in any way negate that the Law of Moses is divine in origin and unique from all other religions.  Its the same thing with Christianity:  just because there are similar elements in other religions – even cults – doesn’t negate the truth that Christianity is the one and only true faith from God.  I hear people saying they don’t need Christianity to know how to be a good person.  That’s not the claim of Christianity, but that is true.  But just because there are overlapping moral teachings in other religions or worldviews, it doesn’t negate that Christianity alone is the path to eternal life.  Neither did any overlap or resemblance to the Mosaic Law in certain ways by other religions negate that the Mosaic Law alone was from God.  

I would argue – and this is me, there may be some scholars somewhere arguing the same thing – but I would argue that there is a resemblance because all of mankind descends from Adam and Eve and find their origins there, and so certain religious practices started there in very seed or primitive form, that all of mankind took with them wherever they went.

Prior to Christ’s coming, religions were wrong in the god they worshipped, and they were wrong in fashioning idols and in many other things.  But they had elements of religious experience in common with the Law of Moses.  Those elements served as rudimentary religious ideas that conditioned people to think with basic religious concepts – concepts like the existence of a god, that god or gods are the explanation for reality, that humans are faulty and can anger deities with their sins, thus the need for sacrifice to a god, the need for someone to mediate between you and god, the need for worship and honor given to a deity, the need for people to speak for the deity, the need for seeing deities involved in the going-ons of humanity and so much more.  

When Christ came people from pagan religions would have a basic religious concept from their pagan experience that would make them able to understand as they heard the gospel preached to them.  They would be able to understand things like Christ is the one who fulfills all those religious concepts and is the true substance of religion:

What they would learn as brand new was their religion was aimed at a false god, that they were ignorant of the true God, that their religion was unable to save them from this one true God, and that the true Son of God did not come from their religion but from the religion of the Jews.  That was the nation that the Savior came from because that is the nation that had the true God – the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – the God of Israel!  

Here’s the point Paul is making:  Gentile believers formerly in their pre-conversion state are in a similar boat with Jews in the pre-Christian state.  Both of them were to leave behind their respective religious worlds to follow Christ.  And neither was to return.  And certainly they were not to lead others or obligate other believers to follow former religions they left behind.     

CONCLUSION: HEIRS

You are an heir.  You are no longer a slave.  You are redeemed from sin, from the law, and the elemental spiritual forces of this world.  If you have not believed in Christ, then leave behind the basics of religion and step into the fullness of spiritual experience in Christ.  He washes your sins away.  He makes you new.  He gives you eternal life.  Come to Him today, believe in Him, and become an heir

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