Galatians 4:8 Commentary and Bible Study

Paul now reminds the Galatians of the truth about their past lives as unbelieving Gentiles following their pagan religious practices. He does this so that he can compare their past idolatry and their present even greater foolishness in willingly returning to their former state of ignorance after God has so mercifully set them free from it. Before conversion they worshipped idols. Although that was not without blame and deserved God’s judgment, at least it was done in ignorance. Even the most ardent devotees of false religion are described as those who know not God, for the gods that they worship are the inventions of men’s minds and therefore limited like their creators. They can never be invested by human minds with the glorious attributes of the one true God – love, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth. Man can only create what is limited like himself, for no one can create what is greater than himself. Even those who like the Jews had a zeal for the true God did not know God, for their zeal was ‘not according to knowledge’ (Romans 10:2). Although they went to the temple daily, studied the Scriptures, and prayed, they were strangers to the Lord, servants in his household but not sons, for the only true knowledge of God is saving knowledge and brings with it adoption into God’s family. It is not just familiarity with ritual, or even with facts about God, but it is a personal knowledge of God that makes us his true children. The former idolatry of the Galatians was a matter of shame to them. To serve is to voluntarily submit yourself to a master and, in the case of religion, to a god, to one who ought to be far greater than you, before whom you humble yourself as the ultimate authority over you. But to humble yourself before an inanimate object, something which is incapable of thought, or movement, or independent action, which is less than the one who worships it, is a matter of great shame. By doing so the worshiper reduces himself to a block of wood or stone, if that is what he has chosen to worship. Men not only forfeit the grace of God by idolatry, but make fools of themselves. How refreshing, how enlightening, is the knowledge that frees men from such darkness and liberates them into the worship of the living and true God. The gods which they used to worship were ‘by nature not gods’, that is, they were not real gods but the product of human invention, the creations of human imagination. What then did they worship? Paul tells us elsewhere that those who worship idols actually worship demons (1 Corinthians 10:20), but they do so unawares, thinking that they are serving their false gods.