Galatians 4:1-3 - Homiletics

The Church of God in its minority.

The apostle now passes to a new phase of argument. He has used the similitudes of a testament, a prison, a schoolmaster, to mark the condition of believers under the Law; he now uses the similitude of an heir in his nonage. The Galatians are here taught that the state of men under the Law, so far from being an advanced religious position, was rather low and infantile. Mark—

I. THE HEIR 'S POTENTIAL POSITION . He is "lord of all." He is such by birth and condition; and, if his father is dead, he is actual possessor, though he may not in the years of his minority enjoy his property or assert his complete mastery over it. This passage implies that saints under the Law had experience of blessings enjoyed by saints under the gospel, though their dispensational privileges were fewer and their knowledge far less perfect. There is but one inheritance in which the saints of all dispensations share alike—they are all "Abraham's seed" by faith in Christ Jesus.

II. THE PERIOD OF DISCIPLINE AND SUBJECTION . "The heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a bond-servant."

1 . The infantile period. The apostle does not refer to childhood in the physical sense so as to imply any weakness of understanding or immaturity of judgment, but childhood in its legal aspect. He refers to the lifetime of the Church. The pro-Christian state was childhood; the Christian state was ripe age in full possession. The heir in his nonage thus represented the state of the world before the gospel, when both Jews and Gentiles were under tutelage; because he had said in the third chapter that all, both Jews and Gentiles, were heirs and children of God.

2 . Its discipline. The heir is "under guardians and stewards." This subjection is necessary to ensure that he should not misapply his powers or waste his property. The discipline is manifest in two or three respects.

(a) It was a burdensome condition; for the Levitical ordinances "gendered to bondage;" "a yoke," says Peter, "which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear "—very exacting in its demands and ineffectual in the result. Every duty was minutely prescribed, and nothing left to the discretion of worshippers, as to worship, labour, dress, food, birth, marriage, war, trade, tax, or tithe.

(b) The education was limited to "the elements of this world;" to elementary teaching through worldly symbols—the fire, the altar, the incense, the blood-shedding—having reference to things material, sensuous, and formal, rather than to things spiritual. Thus the Church in its minority had outlines of spiritual truth suited in a sort to its capacity. The elements in question were "weak and beggarly," though those of the Jews were much superior to those of the Gentiles, because they were appointed by God.

III. THE PERIOD OF DISCIPLINE WAS TO BE TEMPORARY . "Till the time appointed of the father." The father's will was to be supreme in the whole transaction. The Church was not always to be under Law. The fulness of time was to end the nonage of the Church. Believers were not, therefore, to be always children. "This is a powerful battery," says Calvin, "against Roman Catholic ceremonies: they are to aid the ignorant, in sooth; but it was during the nonage." "Are Roman Catholics," he asks, "children or full-grown men?" It also condemns the Judaists for going back to "elements of the world," which had their place and use only in a condition of nonage. "Yet the pope and Mahomet have tried to bring back the race, free and of full age , to its minority again."