Galatians 4:7-11
7 Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God. 8 However at that time, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those which by nature are not gods. 9 But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles, to which you want to be enslaved all over again? 10 You meticulously observe days and months and seasons and years. 11 I fear for you, that perhaps I have labored over you in vain.
The idea of putting yourself back in to prison after you have been freed is one that very few people can identify with, but what if I were to tell you that it does, in fact happen?
In fact, some of the homeless people in the larger cities have been known to throw bricks through shop windows to set off the alarm and just sit down in front of it without taking anything just so they will be arrested by the police and taken to jail. They also plead guilty so that they can stay there as long as possible.
Why do they do it?
Firstly because they want three square meals a day and shelter, and secondly, because they have become institutionalized and are used to the lifestyle that comes with it. That, in many ways, is the same mentality that Paul is addressing in this scripture when he is discussing their return to a meticulous observance of the "days and months and seasons and years."
In other words, they followed the litigious part of the feasts and fasts to the letter, and in doing so, they re-enslaved themselves to the law from which Christ died to free them.
Later on, and in other letters, Paul expands this out to all legalism with regard to the Mosaic Covenant. The fact is that Christ died specifically to free us from a law which we could not keep. So why then do people keep trying to return to it?
The answer is the same as in the example above, they are comfortable with it.
There is a certain comfort that comes from a law system. For example, the law says that I just have to not commit adulatory, that is far easier than when Christ says that if you look at a woman lustfully you are already guilty.
With the law, all I have to do is the mechanical parts of the feasts and fasts, when the scriptures repeatedly say, from cover to cover, that God rejects even the "right" feast or fast if the heart doing it is not right.
We like the comfort of the law. The left and right parameters. The impersonableness of it.
We want to feel like we are in control, and that exactly what the law is, it is something we can control.
Except we cannot control it, we cannot keep it, heck, that is why Jesus had to come and save us from it. He even died to save us from our conceitedness that says that we should keep it because we can.
In the end, what Jesus desires is a relationship built on both trust and faith, and that is far harder. He wants a heart that WANTS to be like Him, not a heart that feels like it MUST be like Him. That is the biggest difference between the law and a relationship.
So why then do believers continue to try to put themselves back under the law?
Because somewhere deep down they cannot accept the truth of God's free grace that they cannot earn.
That is something that they consider unbelievable at best, and unbearable at worst.
May we live today in the freedom that Jesus brings, with hearts that LONG to follow after Him rather than ones that are forced to.
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