March 31. Galatians 4. Eduardo Mardini

Known by God

“Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods. But now that you know God—or rather are known by God—how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable forces? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again? You are observing special days and months and seasons and years! I fear for you, that somehow, I have wasted my efforts on you.” (Galatians 4:8-11)

I was reading this chapter and I had this idea coming over many times in my head: “… But now that you know God – or rather that you are known by God…”, this is a strong idea, even more when Paul under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is crafting an argument about why it was crucial for the Galatians not to start practicing Judaism as the means to finish the process of entering fellowship with God. It is so powerful because in general the argument is that no human means can help us to make our way to fellowship with God (the support of these two statements comes from the previous and following chapters)

The paragraph starts with “Formerly, when you did not know God” where we can say there was a time when the Galatians did not God, to later say “But now that you know God” to a time where they get to know Him; but now Paul brings the point home by saying “or rather are known by God” where the action does not come from the Galatians but from God.

We can meditate on the beauty of each verse, in fact on each word, but for the sake of concision I just want to concentrate on the question of how this can be of interest for a 20th century Christian who does not have the experience of struggling with going back to Judaism as the Galatians.

I can see that Paul concern is, at least up to this point, not that the Galatians will turn to the flesh in the way we understand it in the present time (idolatry, sexual sin, lying, hatred, stealing, sorcery and the like), but to go back to a religion of performance, where they can achieve fellowship with God via human actions.

This is, I think, the warning for us as believers today. I can see how can we make our relationship with God into things like: how much of a good husband I am? How of a good parent I am? Are my children believers? Do they behave? How many people have I helped to come to Christ?

It can even show up when we think we are better than believers from other churches (even between our own movement) because the way we perform our faith, the frequency of our church attendance, our giving, our practice of discipleship, our ministries, so on and so forth.

Undeniably, these are all things expected from our repentance, but is of the most importance to remember that even repentance is also a gift from God (Acts 11:18, 2 Timothy 2:25, contrast with Acts 17:30, Luke 3:8), at the end what matters is not that we know God, but rather that we are known by God.

During the last weeks whenever I have faced the temptation to trust in my achievement, or rather and even more frequently, my lack of it, I say in my prayer “Lord, You know me, that is enough” I do not want to forget that, and I pray this thought can encourage many of us to fight against the reliance on the flesh.