Summary:

We know “infirmity” (4:13) can mean any kind of affliction, for the Lord healed all kinds of things (Lu.5:15). We think Paul’s infirmity was an eye disease, for the only way he’d call Galatians a “large” epistle (Gal.6:11) is if he had to use large letters to write it. Paul calls his infirmity a temptation (4:14) because tempt can mean test (Rev.3:10). Infirmities test to see if we’ll receive them as Paul did (IICor.12:8-10).

The Galatians didn’t reject Paul for his infirmity (Gal.4:14), even though his eyes were probably gooey, and the Greeks despised “weak” bodies (IICor.10:10). Their willingness to give Paul their eyes (Gal.4:15) gives more proof he had eye trouble. When he didn’t scold them, it proves organ trans-plants and blood transfusions are okay, for eyes have blood.

Paul calls that joyful spirit of giving a “blessedness” (v.15) because the Lord said it is “more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). God is the most joyful person in all creation because He is the biggest giver. He gives us life, and eternal life by grace when we believe. That made the Galatians want to be givers like God. Grace always does!

But we know the law robbed them of that blessedness, for Paul had to tell them to pay their pastors (6:6). They went from wanting to repay Paul with their eyes for teaching them how to be saved, to not wanting to pay teachers anything for teaching them the Bible. Grace makes us want to be givers like God after we learn all He’s given us, but if you think you’re under the law, you’re going to wonder why God isn’t giving you the health and wealth He gave the Jews under the law. That made the Galatians not want to give to others.

The Galatians didn’t like being called out about their legalism, so they considered Paul their enemy (Gal.4:16). But they thought of the legalizers as friends, so Paul explained why they affected the Galatians in verse 17. That word means to desire. They desired the Galatians, “but not well,” i.e., not for a good purpose. They did it to make themselves look like successful leaders (cf. 6:12,13). They excluded them, knowing it would make them want to be part of their group even more. They did it to make the Galatians desire them. There’s nothing wrong with being zealous (Gal.4:18) in good things, things like good works (Tit.2:13), praying for others (Col.4:12,13) and giving (IICor.9:2). If you’re not a giving Christian, you’re acting like a child, so Paul calls them “children” (Gal.4:19). But they were his children, because he led them to Christ (cf.ICor.4:15).

But if he fathered them, why does he say he “travailed” in birth for them? That’s the mother’s part! It is because Paul played both parts in their conversion, having to labor to bring them to Christ. He feared having to go through the labor of teaching them the basics of salvation by grace again now that they believed the legalizers who said they had to keep the law to be saved (Acts 15:1,5). If you believe that, Christ will never be formed in you, which was God’s goal in giving birth to you (Rom.8:29). But that only comes from growing in grace, and they were growing in the law instead.

Christ came to earth in “the form of a servant” (Phil.2:5,7), and if He is formed in you, you’ll act like a servant too. We know the Galatians weren’t, because Paul had to tell them to bear one another’s burdens (Gal.6:2). They were so far gone in legalism, Paul knew it would take so much work to bring them back to grace that he wished he could be there to do it in person (Gal.4:20). If he was there, he says he would change the tone of his “voice” from the kind and patient tone he used to lead them to Christ and make them God’s children, to something more stern and fatherly now that they were God’s children, but were misbehaving. Not because he doubted their salvation, for he calls these Gentiles “brethren” 11 times in this epistle. He “stood in doubt” of their understanding of salvation, and that was affecting their joy, and their ability to share salvation.

A video of this sermon is available on YouTube: The Apostle Paul’s Infirmity – Galatians 4:13-20

Summary:

The Galatians “knew not God” (v.8) back when they were heathen unbelievers (cf. Jer.10:25). Back then, they “did service” to idols instead of to God (cf.Ps.97:7), idols “which by nature are no gods” (v.8). By nature, they can’t see, hear, or smell like God can (Ps.115:4-6).

When they “did service” to those idols, that made them servants to those idols, and Paul has just finished telling them that they are no longer servants (v.7). So he went on to wonder why they’d want to be in bondage again (v.9).

But right after saying they knew God, Paul remembered they didn’t know God as well as they should have. They were like the Corinthians, whom Paul said didn’t have the knowledge of God (ICor.15:34) because they’d stopped believing in the resurrection (v.12). The Galatians didn’t have the knowledge of God that said they shouldn’t leave grace for the law.

So Paul adds that they were rather “known of God” because they trusted in Him (cf. Nahum 1:7). God knew them in the sense that they belonged to Him (IITim.2:19). He knew them in the way Cain “knew” his wife and she conceived. That is, God knew them in an intimate way that made Him one with them, and made them His very own.

Paul calls the law “weak” because it was weak “through the flesh” (Rom.8:3). It was strong enough to save us if we could keep it continually (Rom.2:5-7), but we can’t, so it is weak through our flesh.

Paul called the law “beggarly” for the same reason. God promised to make the Jews wealthy in the kingdom if they could keep it continually (Deut.28:1,2,11,13). But they couldn’t, so they ended up slaves in Babylon, begging the Babylonians for their next meal. We see this pictured in Acts 3, where the lame man begging at the door of the temple, too weak to enter it, was a type of Israel under the law, begging at the door of the kingdom, too weak to enter the kingdom.

And this was the law the Galatians had put themselves under, even though God had already saved them by the power of the gospel (Rom.1:16) and enriched them with glory (Rom. 9:23,24).

The “days” they were observing (Gal.4:10) were the law’s sabbath days and feast days and “fasting” days (Jer.36:6). The “months” (v.10) were the months of the new moon (Ps. 81:3,4), and the “times” (v.10) were the times of uncleanness that women observed (Lev.15:25), and men as well. The “years” they were observing were years like the tithing year that came around every 3 years (Deut.26:12). After hearing about all that, Paul was “afraid” that all he’d heard was true, and he had labored to teach them grace in vain (Gal.4:11).

In telling them: “be as I am” (Gal.4:12), Paul meant that he wanted them to be like him and not like Peter and Barnabas. Peter was eating with Gentiles until some men from James arrived and then stopped eating with them. This caused even Barnabas to go back to observing the law’s separation law, just as Peter had done (Gal.2:9-13). Paul wanted the Gala-tians to be like him and resist the peer pressure the legalizers were giving them, just as he had resisted it (Gal.2:14).

When Paul said, “for I am as you are” (Gal.3:12), that’s a figure of speech that meant, “I’m on your side!” (cf. II Chron. 18:3). He said that because he knew it sounded like he was not on their side, that instead, he was so upset they’d left grace that he was mad at them. So he added, “ye have not injured me at all” (Gal.4:12). That is, “you haven’t hurt my feelings!” Paul didn’t take it personally when the churches he established let him down (II Cor.2:5). Other spiritual leaders often did, because it made them look like they weren’t good spiritual leaders (II Cor.13:7), but not Paul!

A video of this sermon is available on YouTube: Faithful Service to the Wrong God – Galatians 4:8-12

Summary:

Paul begins by comparing being an “heir of God” (Gal.3:29; 4:7) to being an heir of men (4:1). A man’s boy was already “lord” of his lands and servants, but he wasn’t ready to be in charge of his lands and servants. He needed to be under “tutors and governors” (4:2) to teach him how to be an adult so he knew how to be in charge of them. That continued “until the time appointed of the father” (v.2). After that, he was ready to be about his father’s business, as the Lord was at age 12 (Lu.2:42,49). Modern Jews call this a bar mitzvah.

As heirs of God, we were “in bondage” or servitude (cf.Ezra 9:9) under the “elements of the world.” The word element means the simplest form of something, as when Sherlock said, “Elementary, my dear Watson.” In elementary school, I learned that in chemistry, elements are the simplest form of matter that are the building blocks of all other forms of mat-ter. For example, water (H2O) is made up of two atoms of the element hydrogen and one atom of the element oxygen.

The elements in our text refer to the law. When the law says, “thou shalt not kill” etc., those are simple rules that are the building blocks “of the world” (4:3). Paul could tell the Galatian Gentiles “we” were under it, for if a Gentile wanted to be saved in time past, he had to learn what the law said about being saved. God put all mankind under the law to teach us we couldn’t be saved by keeping even the simplest of rules.

But “when the fulness of the time was come” (4:4), i.e., when the years were fulfilled that Daniel said must pass before Messiah could come (Dan.9:25), He came. That’s when “the time appointed of the Father” to stop treating the Jews as His children came. It was time to make them His sons and make them the lords of all He owned in the earth in the kingdom. But they wouldn’t have it, so God introduced the mystery.

The Lord had to be “made of a woman” (Gal.4:4) because

He had to be kin to us to redeem us (Lev.25:47-49) out of the bondage of sin Adam sold himself into—and us with him, since the children of slaves are slaves too. When we believe, Christ redeems our souls (Gal.3:13), but our bodies will be redeemed at the Rapture (cf.Rom.8:23). That’s why Paul said he was still “sold under sin” (Rom.7:14). So Christ had to be made a man to redeem men, and made under the law to redeem them that were under the law (Gal.4:4).

He did all that so that we could “receive the adoption of sons” (4:5), the bar mitzvah-type sonship we’re talking about. We received it (Rom.8:15) when we got saved, but Jews in the kingdom dispensation won’t be sons till they appoint the Lord their Head in the kingdom (Hos.1:10,11). That’s when God will put His Spirit in their hearts (Ezek.36: 27). But He’s done that for us now (Gal.4:6cf.IICor.1:21,22).

The name “Abba” (4:6) is associated with saying, “not my will, but Thine be done” (Mark14:36; Lu.22:42). When God puts His Spirit in kingdom Jews, they’ll be able to say that, just as the Lord could, because the Spirit will “cause” them to do His will (Ezek.36:27). Paul could say we have received that Spirit because the Spirit does that “in us” when He fulfills the righteousness of the law “in us” (Rom. 8:3,4).

What do we inherit as God’s heirs? Well, we are only His heirs because we are the spiritual seed of Abraham (Gal.3: 29). That means we inherit the eternal life that he inherited, but also “the world” (Rom.4:13-16; ICor.3:21,22). We’re not going to live in the world like kingdom Jews will, but we will “judge the world” because “we shall judge angels” in heaven (I Cor. 6:2,3), and heaven is over the earth (Isa.55:9).

So when Paul says we are no longer servants, we are sons (4:7), that means we went from owning nothing to owning everything. A slave owns nothing,for his master owns all that he has, but a son is “lord of all.” What a rags to riches story is ours in Christ!

A video of the sermon is available on YouTube: Heirs of God – Galatians 4:1-7

Summary:

“Faith” (v.23) is just believing what God says, and men have always had faith (Heb.11:4). So when Paul talks about a time “before faith came” (v.23), he must be talking about a different kind of faith—and he is! He’s talking about “the faith” that he mentions again at the end of verse 23. That’s a reference to the body of truth revealed to Paul, the one he told the Corinthians to “stand fast” in (I Cor.16:13).

Before that body of truth came, we were kept under the law, “shut up unto” the faith, meaning we had no contact with it, as we see in how that phrase is used in II Samuel 20:3. That’s because the body of truth revealed to Paul was a mystery.

But why would a Jew like Paul say to Gentiles like the Gala-tians that “we” were under the law? It’s because if a Gentile wanted to be saved under the law, he had to go see a Jew, who would teach him how the law said he could be saved by getting circumcised, and keeping the law’s offerings, sabbaths, and feasts, etc. So Jews and Gentiles were under the law, shut up to the faith “afterward” revealed to Paul.

This wasn’t to deprive us of that faith. We just weren’t ready for it. When God heard the Jews say they would keep all the things in the law (Ex.24:3), it showed they thought they could keep it well enough to be saved. They had to be taught they couldn’t, so God sent them to school for 1500 years.

You see, “the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith” (Gal.3:24). A schoolmaster was a teacher, but also a disciplinarian who spanked a student if he was bad, as all teachers used to do. The law was a schoolmaster because it taught God’s rules, but spanked the Jews with things like bad crops and bad health, etc. And you’d think that after 1500 years of being spanked for being bad, they would have learned the lesson that they couldn’t be saved by being good!

But they didn’t. And men still need to learn this lesson. So Paul says we should use the law to teach them. That’s the lawful “use” of the law (ITim.1:8,9). It wasn’t given to righteous (saved) men, it was given to unsaved men to teach them they need righteousness. But after you use the law to teach a sinner that lesson, the law should “perish with the using” (Col.2:20,22), for after we are “justified by faith,” we are no longer under the schoolmaster of the law (Gal. 3:24,25).

The legalizers were telling the Galatians they had to keep the law to be saved, but Paul told them they were “children of God by faith in Christ” (3:26). God made us His children by baptizing us into the Body of Christ (v.27 cf. I Cor.12:13). When that happened, we “put on Christ” (v.27). The legalizers were telling the Galatians they had to “put on righteous-ness” as Job did (Job 29:14) by doing righteous things (12-17). Paul says if you received “the gift of righteousness” (Rom.5:17), you’ve put on Christ, God’s righteousness (ICor.1:30; II Cor.5:21). Even under the law, saved Jews knew God clothed them with righteousness (Isa. 61:10).

The legalizers were telling the Galatians they had to become Jews to be saved, for that’s what the law said (Ex.12:48). But Paul says there’s neither “Jew nor Greek” in Christ (Gal. 3:28). Under the law, Gentiles were servants to Jews Lev. 25:45,46) and always will be, even in the kingdom of heaven on earth (Isa. 14:1,2;61:5) when men will be back under the law. But there’s “neither bond nor free” in Christ (Gal.3:28). Under the law, women couldn’t be priests (Deut. 21:5), and priests brought God and men together with sacrifices. But there is “neither male nor female” in Christ, so even women can be “ambassadors for Christ” (IICor.5:20) who can bring God and men together by offering them Christ’s sacrifice.

Christ was Abraham’s seed (Mt.1:1), so if you’re in Christ, you are too (Gal.3:29)—his spiritual seed, the one God promised eternal life to (Gen.13:15 cf. Rom.4:13-16). Study Romans 4:13-16 to find out more about how that works!