We have been learning that relating to God through the Holy Spirit and relating to God through the law are two different things. We relate to God as beloved sons of our Abba Father. Christ died to bring us into this relationship and the Spirit has been sent into our hearts to create this kind of intimate, affectionate relationship.

ANY kind of external, law-based living is contrary to this new life in the Spirit. BUT in this passage Paul confronts these people SPECIFICALLY about keeping the RITUALS of the law, such as “observing days and months and seasons and years”. They were starting to keep the feast days and weeks, the new moons and Sabbath Day, basically the whole Old Testament religious calendar.   Many people are drawn to this kind of structure, either from Jewish law or even from Christian traditions.   But here’s the problem: this structure easily becomes a substitute for the sufficiency of what Christ did for you on the cross and what he is doing for you now by pouring out the Spirit into your heart.    

If we retreat from our relationship with God, through the Spirit, to any kind of ritualism, it is wrong and it is dangerous. And that is what has Paul worried! Gary DeLashmutt said, “To go back to an impersonal religious system of any kind, now that a personal (and affectionate) relationship with God is now possible through the indwelling Holy Spirit is to go back to a state no better than paganism!”

The entire book of Galatians is a call to “Come back to freedom!”. I think it’s a call most of us need to hear often!

Verse 8 “Now that you have come to know God, or rather be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world...whose slaves you want to be once more?”.   A big part of the message of Galatians is, “Don’t turn back!”. Some turn back to a life of sin, some turn back to the world, but many turn back to legalism, to religious externals, going through the outward motions.

But Paul says laws and commandments and duties and rituals, are weak and worthless in making you right with God. They can’t produce the kind of heart change that you and I and everybody really need. Even though this is true, people are drawn to this kind of thing. Despite clear teaching against it, here in Galatians and in Colossians, the church, down through history, has been plagued by excessive devotion to ritual, to liturgy and religious calendars, turning pastors into priests, adding special religious garments, and even turning good things like the Lord’s Supper and baptism into formal church rites that are trusted for salvation or to give us spiritual status with God.

When Paul confronts them about observing days and months and seasons and years, he is using that as an example, of the elementary principles that war against people entering into a true spirituality. I think he would add, “and things like that!”.

Paul saw this as becoming slaves again. God has pronounced you sons with full rights. He had given you the heart-cry of sons, by sending the Spirit of HIS Son into your heart. And yet there is this inclination to go back and find meaning and status in keeping a religious calendar, in keeping outward religious forms and duties.

So Paul asks, “Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again?”. Nobody THINKS THEY are enslaved by these things. But before you know it you find yourself in bondage to these things. They get a grip on your mind and heart and emotions, and you feel things are just not right, without them. You feel insecure without it. You feel you NEED them.

Christians can celebrate certain days as special, but if we become attached to that in a way that we think MUST keep those days, or that we would miss some kind of fundamental spiritual blessing by not keeping them, or that others are less spiritual because they don’t, then we are becoming enslaved ourselves and enslaving others.

I was brought up in a Christian culture that heavily emphasized quiet time. A popular saying was “no Bible no breakfast”. You were asked, ”Did you have your quiet time today?” And it produced real shame and guilt if the answer was “no”. I love to read my Bible, I get so much encouragement and nourishment, it brings my mind back to the joy producing truths, that God is good, that he answers prayer, that he loves me, that Christ gave his life for me. But it is not to be turned into a ritual, by which I gain status with God because I read my chapters. If I miss a day of reading it does not ruin that day. It does not make me less spiritual that day, less accepted by God in Christ. It does not keep me from walking in the Spirit as a beloved child of God, which is my main calling as a Christian.

Verse 11, “I fear that perhaps I have labored over you in vain”. Putting attention on rituals is a deadly distraction. It keeps “Christ from being formed in you” as Paul says in verse 19. It effectively puts a stop to the work of the Spirit in working in you the likeness of Jesus!   Paul said, I am afraid all my love and work has NOT resulted in you living the kind of life that Jesus died to give you.   What was supposed to happen isn’t happening. The goal of the gospel is that Christ be formed in you, by the Holy Spirit sent into your hearts! The gospel of Jesus Christ has nothing to do with conforming to some outward religious rituals or keeping all these external observances.

Spiritual growth is a spiritual process of you listening to the voice and the leading of the Spirit to the point where Christ himself is so real and dominant in your heart that it can only be said Christ himself is formed in you dwells in your heart and is seen through your life. No daily ritual can do that. No religious calendar can do that. Nothing in the law can do that. So you give yourself over completely to the Holy Spirit, not to a pattern of ritual, or external religious trappings.

Verse 12 “I plead with you brothers and sisters, become like me”.   In order to reach them, Paul became like them in this sense: they were people without the law. When he says he became like them, he does NOT mean that he sinned like them, or adopted their pagan values, or participated in the sins of their culture. But he came to them as a man without the law. He ate with them, he went into their homes, he didn’t practice Jewish Law. Paul wanted them to imitate his LIBERTY. Paul was free in Jesus, TO LIVE IN THE SPIRIT AND BY THE SPIRIT and he wanted them to know the same freedom. AMP “Believers, I beg of you, become as I am (free from the bondage of Jewish ritualism and ordinances), for I have become as you are (a Gentile). Adam Clarke: Be as I am - Thoroughly addicted to Christ! - I was addicted to the rites and ceremonies of Judaism, but I was saved from that!

The irony in the Galatians wanting to follow the law, is that they could never do law and well as Paul did law and now it meant nothing to him! In Philippians 3 he said, “I was circumcised the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless!!…BUT I count all those things loss for the sake of Christ! Because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ. For Christ’s sake I HAVE thrown those things away. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ.

There has to come a point in your life when you utterly give up any and every confidence in external religious things. There has to come a point in your life where you count them garbage. Where you NO LONGER VALUE THEM, because you have come to know Jesus Christ through his Spirit dwelling in your heart! You are to walk in such complete freedom from religious externals and so completely boast in Christ alone, that you can say to others, become as I am!

John Stott said, “All Christians should be able to say something like this, especially to unbelievers, namely that we are so satisfied with Jesus Christ, with His freedom, joy and salvation, that we want other people to become like us.”

A person who is living in the Spirit, free from legalism, and glorying in Jesus Christ is a powerful model. Seek to be that person!

AMP again captures the line of thought here. “You did me know wrong, (when I first came to you; do not do it now). On the contrary, you know that it was because of a physical infirmity that I remained and preached the gospel to you the first time, and EVEN THOUGH my physical condition was a trial to you, you did not treat me with contempt or scorn, (or reject me); but you received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus himself”.

You were so overwhelmed by the glory and the joy of the message I brought, that, you didn’t EVEN NOTICE that my physical condition (or appearance) was a burden to you. (It’s possible there was something offensive or grotesque about the way Paul looked) But the message of the cross and the Spirit was so precious to them, that it captured their attention above his weak appearance.

You accepted this message of grace like I was an angel or Christ himself. He reminds them of the thrill of message of the gospel when it really hits you, how free you are in Christ. They loved Paul, who brought them this message! He says, “you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me”. That is how much they loved him. They loved him for bringing this message.

It is too entirely miss the point of this passage to get into a long discussion about what Paul’s infirmity was, and whether or not it had something to do with his eyesight.

David Guzik includes a quote in his commentary that I think is good to keep in mind. “The difficulty of diagnosing the case of a living patient should warn us of the futility of attempting it for one who has been dead almost nineteen hundred years.” 

The point is: the message of forgiveness of sins and acceptance with God and freedom from the law, and that we are sons and daughters of God, is such great news that we glory in that message, and don’t have to have a glorious messenger! If our pastors and teachers and deacons and spiritual leaders and Sunday school teachers give us the message of grace, we don’t care that they are NOT that impressive.

Paul said he came to Corinth in much weakness and trembling. Some found him unimpressive and his speech contemptible! But not these people in Galatia. They didn’t see that, or if they did they were so taken by the message of being right with God as a pure gift by faith in Christ, that his weaknesses meant nothing to them.

Verse 15 (NASB) “Where is that sense of blessing you had?”. Or “What happened to all your joy?”. Adam Clarke translates this, “How great was your happiness at that time!”. He said the text should be read: Where then is your blessedness? Having renounced the Gospel, you have lost your happiness. What have your false teachers given you to compensate the loss of communion with God, or that Spirit of adoption, that Spirit of Christ, by which you cried Abba, Father!”

Paul had led them into new life, in Christ and in the Spirit, free from law, and it had given them this incredible sense of blessing. The message of the gospel rightly understood will always bring rejoicing and exulting! It will bring a sense of blessing!! It has a glory to it that blesses our hearts beyond measure.

Romans 4:8 “Oh how blessed is the man, whose sins the Lord will never count against them”.

In Romans 5 Paul describes us as exulting, and rejoicing in this blessing! “Having been justified through faith (as a pure gift) we have peace with God! We have gained access to God by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we EXULT in hope of the glory of God, and we exult even in our tribulations, and we exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have now received reconciliation.

I don’t know about you but I want to have joy. I want to have this sense of blessing! I don’t always live in it. BUT, I know it is found in the gospel! It is found in knowing and understanding and being reminded of the gospel! If you’re not feeling very blessed it’s because you have forgotten the richness, the blessing, the liberty of what Jesus did for you.

Verse 16 “Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth?” People become enamored with steps or systems or keeping Lent, or other religious days, worshiping in a certain kind of building, or eating a certain kind of diet, or abstaining from certain foods, or dressing a certain way, or following a certain kind of teaching. And if you tell them, “You know what, you don’t really need that”, some will get mad. They will fight you on it. They will take offense.

Verse 17 “Those people are zealous to win you over, but for no good”. There are always people who will seek to pull you into something more formal, more systematic, more official, more “professional” than pure and simple devotion to Christ. Most people get pulled away from freedom by pressure from somebody else, perhaps from family members or an impressive teacher.

Verse 19 “What they want is to alienate you from us, so that you may have zeal for them.” Of course it is good to be enthusiastic and zealous, but not about these teachers who came and talked them into giving up their liberty in Christ for a return to Jewish law.

Verse “My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth, until Christ is formed in you...”. Paul said I am looking for Christ in you, not a religious calendar, not circumcision, not any kind of OUTWARD religious ritual! We are looking for Christ in you! Christianity is Jesus Christ living in you and expressing himself through you by the Spirit. We call you to let the Spirit freely and fully work in your lives. Fully abandon yourselves to him so that he may form Christ in you.

The Spirit of God will form the Son of God in you if you rely on him to do that! As Paul said, we live by faith in the Son of God. Look to Christ to form himself in you and through you at all times in every situation, in every problem, in every need, every day.