Gálatas 4
Wayne Barber · Citado em PreceptAustin
Gálatas 4
Barber applies the truth of the believer's relationship to God the Father as Abba - When a person is under the law and living after his own flesh, then he is under a curse. He has put himself there and there is no forgiveness in the law. However, when a person is under grace and he chooses to walk and live that way, he can cry out when he fails because he is not going to be condemned. There is no condemnation of those who are in Christ Jesus, and he can cry out “Abba, Father, I have failed again,” and God immediately surrounds him and the forgiveness is his; and he can stand up and continue to walk in the newness of life that God gives to him. We don’t have that under law. We have that under grace. Now technically, positionally, it is always ours, but we can refuse it when we choose to do things our own way. One of the beautiful things about my children—and they are in their 30’s—when they call me and they are hurting—that’s not beautiful—but when they call me they say “daddy,” they always say daddy. If they aren’t hurting it’s “dad,” and that’s more respectful and that’s more adult. But when you’re hurting you cry out for daddy, you cry out for daddy. And that’s what you have in the relationship. If I choose to walk by faith I enter into the fullness of that relationship even though positionally I have always had it. I get to enjoy it for myself. (Galatians 4 Commentary-Barber)
Gálatas 4
Barber applies this truth - What are the implications of that statement, “you are no longer a slave, but you are a son,” with full privileges in the family of God? You see, if you’re not enjoying that, perhaps you have to be taught it and you still don’t know it. Even though it’s true, we haven’t yet grasped it. Once we are free from the bondage to the law we are free from slavery. But then we have to learn to live by faith because it is faith that appropriates what is already ours in the Lord Jesus. You know what the Galatians did? They dropped out of the school of grace and they re-enrolled into the kindergarten of law. And how many times in our life have we all done the same thing? When we choose not to live in that intimacy of a relationship, we choose not to say yes to God, we choose not to let His word totally affect our behavior and our life, we choose to enroll one more time in the school of the law, the kindergarten of law. We have a choice today. We have a choice to live as a slave and we have a choice to live as a son. Slaves have no relationship with the Father and they have no relationship with the family. Only by faith do we enjoy those relationships. Even though technically, positionally, they are ours, we don’t enjoy them unless we are willing to live by faith. (ED: And faith is shown by obedience, obedience enabled by the Spirit of grace. See Obedience of faith) (Sermon Notes) And if a son, then an heir through God - "And since you are his child, everything he has belongs to you." (NLT) Note that the KJV (Textus Receptus) adds "through Christ." (dia christou). What is Paul saying with the phrase through God? He is emphasizing that God in the sovereign initiator of grace, the very truth declared by Jesus... “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day.(John 6:44, 65) And He was saying, “For this reason I have said to you, that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted him from the Father.” (John 6:65) Note - What is sovereign grace?
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Barber asks "Now what he’s talking about, “when you did not know God,” refers back to when they weren’t believers. It wasn’t talking about when they didn’t know about God, really. But he is talking about, they knew about Him (Ed: As everyone has a sense that there is a God), but he is talking about when they didn’t know Him intimately. He uses a particular Greek word here. It is oida. But it means to intuitively know someone. A little baby intuitively knows the sound of his mother’s voice. It’s something intuitive. He doesn’t have to go to school to learn it. It’s something that’s given to him." (Galatians 4 Commentary-Barber)
Gálatas 4
Barber on idols - Anything that is an idol is nothing more than pure flesh. And if we want to put it in simplistic terms for us today to get anything out of what Paul is saying here, he is saying, remember when you were lost and you used to serve the idols that your flesh came up with, whatever that was? Maybe it was your job. Maybe it was power. Maybe it was money. Maybe it was something else, but you were a servant before you got saved to some kind of pagan idol. (Galatians 4 Commentary-Barber) Addressing the intelligentsia in Athens (where there were many so-called gods, even one called the "unknown god" just to make sure they did not miss any!) Being then the children of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man.(Acts 17:29+) Compare what happens to men when they suppress the truth about God (Ro 1:18+) which is evident in them (Ro 1:19+) and has been clearly revealed to them (Ro 1:20-21+) Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image (IDOLATRY) in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. (Ro 1:22-23+) You were slaves (1398)(douleuo from doulos = slave in bondage oto another, in state of being completely controlled by someone or something) means to be in bondage or in the position of servant and to act accordingly, dutifully obeying the master's commands. The verb means to serve as a slave, with all personal ownership-rights assigned to the owner, in this cause those who are no gods! In 1 Cor 12:2 Paul alludes to their enslavement writing... "You know that when you were pagans, you were led astray (ONE GETS THE PICTURE OF SLAVES LED BY A CHAIN AROUND THEIR NECK!) to the mute (SPEECHLESS) idols, however you were led. Nature (5449)(phusis/physis from phuo = to bring forth. Physis gives us our root for the English word physics, study of the laws of nature) means natural condition,natural order, essence. Phusis is “that which belongs to a thing by virtue of its origin,” and so “its essential character," which in this case is no gods! Barber adds that phusis is "used in Galatians 2:15+ when Paul says “We are Jews by nature.” And he says those gods you served back before you became a believer, they didn’t have any nature of God in them. There was nothing divine about them." (Galatians 4 Commentary-Barber) John
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Barber says the truths Paul is discussing beg the question - "Are you—now draw a circle around yourself and forget that anybody else is here, but just draw that circle and say—am I living as a slave or am I living as a son? Have I chosen to say yes to God?" (Galatians 4 Commentary-Barber) Turn back (1994)(epistrepho from epí = motion toward + strepho = twist, turn quite around or reverse) means to revert, to turn about, to turn around, to turn toward, to return and figuratively to convert (as in Jn 12:40, 1 Th 1:9+, 1 Pe 2:25+). The passive voice in Galatians 4:9 indicates that the turning "force" comes from outside of themselves so to speak, and in context is the attractive force of the weak and worthless elemental things. The present tense depicts the readers as in the process of turning. John Stott paraphrased the thought: “If you were a slave and are now a son, if you did not know God but have now come to know Him and to be known by Him, how can you turn back again to the old slavery? How can you allow yourself to be enslaved by the very elemental spirits from whom Jesus Christ has rescued you?” (See The Message of Galatians) Wayne Barber - We have already determined that elemental means ABC’s, means religion. Why would you go back to religion which requires performance, and performance is nothing that God accepts? The word for “weak” is the word asthenes. It means it has no strength; it has no inherent power. Have you ever tried to go back to some religious performance mentality and realized there’s nothing here? You can have your quiet time till you fall over in the floor, but if you’re not there to meet God out of love for Him, it’s not going to do a thing in the world for you, but just suck some time out of your life. That’s all it’s going to do. You can give your tithe to the church, and you can do that and do that and do that. It can become so mechanical all you end up is broke. It hasn’t done any good. It’s weak. It’s not in the doing. He said the doing isn’t the key. It’s the becoming. And he says all religion offers is weak....Your ideas, your religion, your system, your rules, your regulations, he says all that is, they are weak, and they are worthless, and you have desired—it blows me away—you have chosen, you have committed yourself to going back to the very thing Jesus has freed you from. (Galatians 4 Commentary-Barber) How was the religious system they were turning back to weak? It had no power to justify in the first place. Of course once justified by faith they continued in that state. But Paul wants them to recall that before they were justified, all their "religious works" had accomplished nothing in regard to their being declared righteous before a holy God! Their former religious practices were also weak because they provided no supernatural power of living, for progressive growth in Christ-likeness (cf Gal 3:3+). Warren
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Barber - Now, as a former Pharisee, Paul identified with these very quickly. Because, remember, the deceiving people that had come amongst them were Judaizers, the Mosaic law, the ceremonial, etc. They had come to put this back on these Galatians, and the Galatians had foolishly bought it...many of those Pharisees had observed every one of those things during their lifetime. And yet they had no life in them whatsoever. It’s like a lot of people today. They can come to church. They can give to the church. They can’t miss anything for a whole year. Back when I was growing up they had attendance pins and some people would trip over them as they walked through the door. They have never missed a time and they are spiritual, yet they are the meanest people in the whole church. It hadn’t done them any good. And that’s what he’s trying to say. You want to go back to that kind of thing? All these terms most likely fit the Judaizers, terms that they had deceived them with in their false doctrine. These Galatians which Paul calls foolish, or as we could say stupid, had re-enrolled in the kindergarten of the law instead of graduating into the school of grace, learning what grace is and walking in that relationship with Him. We have to be careful when we deal with them however cause every one of us, when we choose our flesh, have just done exactly the same thing. We love to measure what we do. “How many did you have at church last week?” “Well, we had this many.” “Well, we had this many.” “Oh, you’re more spiritual than we are.” And we tend to measure ourselves by the way the world measures us. Brother Hession told me one time, he said, “Wayne, we are preaching the same message in England you are preaching over here. We are losing people; you are gaining people. Which one of us is doing it right?” And the point was well taken. When God does something you cannot measure. You don’t know exactly what He’s doing. You just let Him do it. But, you see, when we get back up under that mindset that’s what kills us. That’s what robs us of the intimacy of relationship we can have with Christ. But the utter foolishness of choosing to be a slave, the frustration; it’s not going to provide anything for us. There’s nothing divine in it with the flesh. But not only that, the foolishness of it, why would you choose to go back to something that offers you nothing? And then finally, the feat of choosing to be a slave. (Galatians 4 Commentary-Barber) The NLT paraphrases it "You are trying to earn favor with God by observing certain days or months or seasons or years."
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Barber explains is "Maybe you didn’t come to know Christ to begin with. Maybe everything I taught you just went right over your head, in one ear right out the other ear. It never lodged; you never received that truth. You never were changed by that truth." (Galatians 4 Commentary-Barber)