LIVING WATERS
For the proclamation of the Gospel and the edification of the Body of Christ
Slaves Again
In the epistle to the Galatians the word slavery is used repeatedly. The children of God turned into slaves? How so? Paul claims to have refused to submit to the "circumcising" brethren, so as not to lose the freedom he had in the gospel, and so that the truth of the gospel might remain with them. This refusal had to do with circumcision, but that was not the only issue, for circumcision involved the whole system of the law.
The slavery here does not refer to the slavery of sin directly, but to the slavery of the law. But that slavery would also bring about the slavery of sin, for, amazingly, the law makes slaves of men - the law understood as a system of works by which man seeks to justify himself before God. Therefore, it is not because the Galatians have returned to sin that Paul reconvenes them, but because they have returned to the slavery of the law.
Paul explains that we "were in bondage under the rudiments of the world" (i.e. the law), but that when the Lord Jesus Christ came he redeemed us from that bondage so that we might be adopted as sons. And of that is a proof the Holy Spirit who has been sent into our hearts. "So then you are no longer a slave, but a son", Paul concludes.
But the Galatians have erred: "How is it that you turn again to the weak and poor rudiments, to which you would be enslaved again? You keep the days, the months, the times and the years" (Gal. 4:9-10). And then he asks them: "Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, have you not heard the law?" (4:21), to remind them of the story of Sarah and Hagar. Hagar represents Mount Sinai (the law), which gives children for slavery, and Sarah represents the heavenly Jerusalem, which gives free children. Slaves have no inheritance, Paul tells them, but we are not children of the slave, but of the free.
All this has an immense emancipating value, not only for the Galatians in Paul's day, but for all those who in any age are enslaved by carnal systems that pretend to offer merits to approach God, to be justified by God or to please God.
The steadfastness of Paul's approach is liberating. "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and be not again subject to the yoke of bondage" (Gal. 5:1). Freedom here has to do, as we have seen, not with freedom from sin, but with freedom from the law. "From Christ ye are loosed, who by the law are justified; from grace ye are fallen" (5:4). The fact is so serious that it fully justifies the severe words with which Paul speaks. With them he tries to prick the conscience of the brethren and awaken them from the deception into which they have fallen.
The law as a means of righteousness is no small matter. It affects nothing less than communion with Christ, to the point of breaking it. Either we seek to be justified by grace in Christ, or by the law, but not by both. We cannot make a mixture, for in such a case we dissociate ourselves from Christ.
How much of our Christian practices today have the nauseating odor of the law, though cleverly disguised as pious exercises, as wholesome and spiritual observances? May the Lord give us anointed eyes to see it, and to break with it.