4 I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything, 2 but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father. 3 In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.
What Paul says here has a bearing on the debate between the weak Christian and the strong (see Romans 14; 1 Corinthians 9). If we apply these words to this problem, we shall see that the Christian who is in bondage to scruples and prejudices and restrictions is not - as he and others so often assume - the strong, mature believer, but weak and undeveloped spiritually, with little knowledge of the glorious freedom that is ours in Christ. The truth is that there are some Christians so much in bondage to an accepted collection of shibboleths (and this was the danger the Galatians were in) that they never get beyond the stage of being preoccupied with certain forms and patterns of behaviour which they magnify until they become for them the major, if not exclusive, issues of Christian discipleship. It does not seem to have occurred to them that there could conceivably be a realm of Christian maturity and freedom and 'grown-up-ness' in which such issues are not only less important, but even irrelevant. And it is a salvation all in itself to have the eyes opened to this realisation, and to be released from such restrictions and bondage. How free are we in the basic attitudes of our Christian lives?