8 Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods. 9 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[d]? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again? 10 You are observing special days and months and seasons and years! 11 I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you.
We follow on from the previous Note. This is a very big issue on the pastoral and, so to speak, psychological, level, as well as the doctrinal. Indeed, it is one of the very biggest of all issues. For with so many, there seems to be a built-in inability to believe the position God has given them in the adoption of sons, and therefore just to believe they are really children of a loving Father, and that God really looks upon them with a Fatherly care and tenderness and love. Instead, they have a basic, inbuilt conception of God as a rather stern, forbidding, almost tyrant-like Figure, standing over them threateningly, ready to criticize or condemn their slightest deviation from the standards He has set them - or, rather, the standards they have set themselves (for so many of these standards are man-made and man-arranged). The repercussions of this are truly vast and farreaching in Christian life. Consider our Lord's parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30, especially 24, 25) in this connection. The unprofitable servant said to his Master, 'Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man...and I was afraid'. But is there any slightest evidence in the parable that the Master was hard? Did the other servants think so? Of course not. The problem with this servant was that he had a totally wrong conception of the Lord in whose service he was. He had got it all wrong! And just look what this wrong attitude did to him: it paralysed him as to any service he might have rendered; and it lasted for a lifetime. All through life he was gripped and conditioned by this wrong attitude towards the Lord he served. This is the measure of how serious the issue can be! This is what a servile spirit, and a misconception of what God is like, can do to us as Christians. Bondage indeed! Have we got it all wrong, too, about the Master whom we serve? Think about this today!