Weak and beggarly

But now after you have known God, or rather are known by God, how is it that you turn again to the weak and beggarly elements, to which you desire again to be in bondage? Galatians 4.9

Here we go back to something we have read about a few times in the last few verses. We have been saved by grace. We have been delivered from the power of the Law and the power of sin. We are free from the power of our schoolmaster. Free, free, free. 

And yet the legalisers keep coming along and telling us that to be godly we must resubmit ourselves to all those rules and regulations. It is not enough to be delivered. We must go back under bondage to their ideas of what makes us spiritual. 

Paul makes it clear how he feels about these characters. He calls them 'weak and beggarly elements.' That may sound kind of harsh, but it really describes what that kind of attitude. It is weak and it is like a beggar looking for scraps. 

God has so much more for us than weakness and beggarliness. God has freed us from the system of legalism. Now we live in the liberty that us in Christ. Sure, it is a liberty that is not a license to sin, but it is freedom from the complicated systems the legalisers had dawn up and still draw up today. 

There is no spiritual strength to be found in following the weak and beggarly elements that seek to control us. Let us not go into bondage to those elements, but let us live in the liberty of grace that Jesus has provided.