Galatians 4:10-11

The Judaizers had urged Paul’s readers to observe the Mosaic rituals. Here the annual feasts are in view. Paul despaired that they were going backward and that much of his labor for them was futile. They were not acting like heirs of God.

". . . Paul was always against any idea of soteriological legalism-i.e., that false understanding of the law by which people think they can turn God’s revelatory standard to their own advantage, thereby gaining divine favor and acceptance. This, too, the prophets of Israel denounced, for legalism so defined was never a legitimate part of Israel’s religion. The Judaizers of Galatia, in fact, would probably have disowned ’legalism’ as well, though Paul saw that their insistence on a life of Jewish ’nomism’ for his Gentile converts actually took matters right back to the crucial issue as to whether acceptance before God was based on ’the works of the law’ or faith in what Christ had effected. . . .

"Yet while not legalistic, the religion of Israel, as contained in the OT and all forms of ancient and modern Judaism, is avowedly ’nomistic’-i.e., it views the Torah, both Scripture and tradition, as supervising the lives of God’s own, so that all questions of conduct are ultimately measured against the touchstone of Torah and all of life is directed by Torah. . . .

". . . Judaism speaks of itself as being Torah-centered and Christianity declares itself to be Christ-centered, for in Christ the Christian finds not only God’s law as the revelatory standard preeminently expressed but also the law as a system of conduct set aside in favor of guidance by reference to Christ’s teachings and example and through the direct action of the Spirit." [Note: Longenecker, pp. 176, 177.]

Paul himself observed the Jewish feasts after his conversion (cf. 1 Corinthians 16:8; Acts 20:16). However he did so voluntarily, not to satisfy divine requirements. He did not observe them because God expected him to do so but because they were a part of his cultural heritage. He also did so because he did not want to cast a stumbling block in the path of Jews coming to faith in Christ (1 Corinthians 9:19-23; cf. Romans 14:5-6). In other words, he did so to evangelize effectively, not to gain acceptance from God.

"In recent years some have argued that all or at least most of the laws that these interlopers were pressing on the Galatians were the legislative pieces that established ’boundary markers’-the practices that differentiated Jews from other people, in particular circumcision, food laws, and Sabbath. Paul wants those things dropped because he wants to build a unified church composed of Jew and Gentile alike, and the boundary markers inevitably provoke division. Certainly Paul is constantly at pains to unite Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians. Nevertheless, this ’new perspective’ on Paul is too narrow. Paul cast the function of the law in more sweeping terms than boundary markers (esp. chap. 3), not least its capacity to establish transgression (Galatians 3:19), and he ties the heart of his debate to the exclusive sufficiency of the cross of Christ to see a person declared ’just’ before God." [Note: Carson and Moo, p. 466. See also pp. 470-72.]