What Does Galatians 4:1 Mean?

(1-7) A further description, continued from the last chapter, of the state of wardship, with its restraints and servitude, compared with that Christian freedom—the freedom of sons—to which the Galatians had been admitted through their adoption into the Messianic family by adhesion to Christ. It may be observed that the allusions to the condition of minors are not in strict accordance either with Jewish or Roman law. It has been suggested that they have reference to a special code current in Galatia. It is, however, far more probable that the Apostle is referring exclusively to neither, but has in his mind a sort of abstraction of the law of minority, such as would present itself to one who had not himself had a legal education. (1) **Now I** **say.**—This phrase introduces a further and fuller explanation of what is involved in the state of nonage, as compared with that of adult freedom. **A child**—*i.e.,* an infant, a minor; though the term *is* not technically chosen. **Differeth nothing from a servant.**—Both the child and the slave were incapable of any valid act in a legal sense; the guardian was as entirely the representative of the one as the master of the other. Both the child and the slave were subject to the same restraint, discipline, correction. **Though he be lord of all.**—Strictly speaking, the inference from this would be that the father was dead. This, however, is a point that does not really enter into the Apostle’s thoughts. The illustration does not hold good in *all* particulars, but in the *chief* particulars—viz., the state of constraint and subordination in which the minor is placed so long as he is a minor.