The Great Commentary of Cornelius a Lapide: the Epistle to the Galatians
Chapter 4
i. He continues the argument of the preceding chapter that the Jews, like children and slaves, were under the Jewish law as a pedagogue, while Christians, as sons of full age, were led, not by the law, but by the Spirit of adoption, whereby they cry, “Abba, Father,” and that it is, therefore, unworthy of them to return to the weak and beggarly elements of the law.
ii. He observes (ver. 13) on the eagerness with which the Galatians had formerly embraced his preaching, that he may shame them for so lightly departing from it.
iii. He introduces (ver. 21) a new argument from an allegory drawn from Abraham's history. His wife Sarah, a “free woman,” bore him Isaac as his son and heir, by whom were represented Christians, the free-born sons of God, free from the bondage of the law, and in due time heirs of Abraham's blessing. His bondwoman Hagar bore him Ishmael, who was cast out, and who represented the Judaisers, to be shut out from the blessing promised by God to Abraham.
Ver. 1 . — Now I say . This is closely connected with vers. 24 and 25 of the preceding chapter, where it was said that “the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, but after that faith is come we are no longer under a schoolmaster.” He proceeds to prove this at greater length, and begins with the example of a child who is under tutors.
The heir , as long as he is a child , differeth nothing from a servant. An infant, as the Greek word is, who has not yet attained to years of discretion, inasmuch as he is under a tutor and a pedagogue, and cannot exercise the right of dominion over his property, is in the position of a slave rather than a lord, nay, he is subject to a slave, viz., his paedagogue, and is under tutors and governors.
Ver. 2. — Governors . Stewards who administer his property.
Until the time appointed The prescribed day when the power of the tutor came to an end, i.e., the date when the heir was twenty-five years of age, which in many places is the age of majority.
Ver. 3. — Even so we. That is the Jews, whom he so describes.
When we were children . Like boys untaught in the knowledge, and therefore in the love of God and His righteousness.
Under the elements of the world. 1. Serving the letter of the Old Law. For the law, as being imperfect, was first given to the world, i.e., to the Jews, and through the Jews to all nations, to teach them the rudiments of faith and piety. But the Gospel, succeeding the law, teaches their perfection. As Justinian calls his Institutes the “elements of the law,” and as we speak of the elements of grammar, philosophy, and music, so here the Apostle speaks of the law as elementary. As boys, says Anselm, learn the elements, and their conjunction, but do not understand the words and sentences composed from them until they proceed to higher branches of learning, to which they can only attain by first learning the elements, so the Jews had the elements in their ceremonies, of which they did not understand the meaning, until by these elements, as their elevators, they come to the faith of Christ.
S. Paul calls the men of the world by the name of the world. The reference is first to the Jews, then, by metonymy, to all men. God willed to open, in one corner of the world a school, where He might teach men the rudiments of faith and piety, until He should open everywhere schools where they were most learnedly taught. 2. More properly and naturally the elements of the world are the days, months, times, and years of verse 10. These he calls elements by an allusion to Gen. i., where it is said that God created the elements of the world in seven days, and then rested on the seventh day, and instituted the Sabbath as a memorial among the Jews of His creative rest. The days are thus called elements , because in them the elements were created, and their creation represented by metonymy on the Sabbath. Or they may be so called because time governs the world and all in it, as the generation, corruption, and succession of things. Accordingly, in grateful recollection of God's providence, disposing by sun and moon the succession of the seasons and of day and night, He willed that Sabbaths, new moons, and other days should be observed by the Jews, that they might continually recognise God as the Creator and Preserver of all things, through the instrumentality of these stated feasts, till, being better taught by the Gospel, they should worship God in spirit and in truth.
Erasmus, however, thinks that the world here by catachresis stands for whatever has the nature of visible and transitory things, such as the ceremonies of the Old Law, which, in Col. ii. 20, he calls “ the rudiments of the world.” But this is not the usual meaning of the word with the Apostle, nor is it the meaning in Col. ii. 20, as I will prove when I come to comment on it. Cf. also infra, notes on verse 9.
We were in bondage . Theophylact explains this from the analogy of the child under tutors. As this child differs nothing from a slave, so, when we were children in the knowledge of Christ and the love of God, we were, like slaves, under the aforesaid elements of the world, and under the tutorship of the Old Law.
Ver. 4. — But when the fulness of the time was come. When the time fixed beforehand for the end of the law and the beginning of the Gospel was fully come, we were transferred from the servitude of the law to the freedom of sonship. S. Bernard (Serm. 1 de Adventu) explains the passage somewhat differently : “ The fulness and abundance of temporal things had brought about forgetfulness and famine of eternal things . It was at the moment when temporal things held sway that eternal things opportunely arrived.” But this is a symbolical rather than literal explanation. Literally, the fulness of time is not the abundance of temporal things, but the full completion of the pre-determined time.
God sent forth His Son , as His legate or Apostle, with full instructions to act on His behalf. He sent His Son, not by change of place, as though He left heaven and arrived at earth ; but the Son, remaining where He was, in heaven and on earth, took a new role, viz., that of a Human Ambassador from God to man.
Made of a woman . Woman here denotes, not corruption, but the female sex, and applies as well to a virgin as to another woman. Made of a woman denotes conception without a male, from the sole substance of the mother. From this it clearly follows that Christ did not assume a heavenly body, which He brought to earth by passing through the Blessed Virgin as through a pipe, as the Valentinians formerly, and the Anabaptists now teach, but that His body was formed from the Virgin.
Made under the law . Though Christ, even as man, was not subject to the law, because He was still the Son of God, the giver of the law, yet of His own free-will He observed it, and of His own free-will submitted Himself to circumcision, and to its other ceremonial enactments. Made , therefore, denotes, not obligation, but practice ; not right, but fact.
To redeem them that were under the law . By paying the price, might bestow on them Christian liberty. The reference is to the bondage of the law, not of sin.
That we might receive the adoption of sons, (1.) The Son of God was made of a woman, Son of man, that He might make the sons of men sons of God. “ God was made man ,” says S. Bernard, “ that man might be made God .” (2.) This adoption is by grace, by which we obtain not only a right to be heirs of God the Father, but also participation in the Divine Nature, the Holy Spirit Himself, and sonship with God. (3.) Although all the righteous, even before Christ, were sons of God by adoption, yet the Apostle calls them all slaves — (a) because, although the righteous were truly sons of God, yet they had not the status of sons, but only of slaves, being under the law, and consequently under the spirit of servile fear,
(b) Because they had not the right of sonship through the law, but through their faith in Christ yet to come ; and they belonged, therefore, more to the New Law than to the Old, as Augustine proves happily and exhaustively (contra Duos Epp . Pelag. cap . 4).
(c) Because they lacked the fruit of adoption, in being unable to discern their heavenly inheritance before Christ revealed it
(d) Because Christ, in setting us free from the yoke of the law, substituted for it in the New Law the one spirit of adoption and of love.
Ver. 6. — The Spirit of His Son. The Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. This is an argument from effect to cause, as when we say, " Where there is smoke there is fire.” God first sent forth the Spirit of His Son to us, from which it followed that we became sons of God. Because we are sons, therefore, we know that He hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son, else should we not be sons. Because , therefore, denotes not so much the efficient cause as the logical reason.
Or, better still, we may connect the particle because with the cry, “ Abba, Father.” God hath sent forth His Spirit, not to make you sons, but to make you cry, “ Abba, Father.”