What Does Galatians 4:3 Mean?

(3) **We.**—That is, in the first instance, and specially, the Jews; but the Gentiles are also included. The Apostle is speaking from the point of view of the Christians: “all who are now Christians, whatever their antecedents.” Before the coming of Christ both Jews and Gentiles had been subject to law; and what the Apostle says of the law of Moses applies more faintly to the law of conscience and of nature. **Elements of the world.**—The word translated “elements” is peculiar. The simpler word from whence it is derived means “a row.” Hence the derivative is applied to the letters of the alphabet, because they were arranged in rows. Thus it came to mean the “elements” or “rudiments” of learning, and then” elements” of any kind. The older commentators on this passage, for the most part, took it in the special sense of “the elements of nature,” “the heavenly bodies,” either as the objects of Gentile worship or as marking the times of the Jewish festivals. There is, however, little doubt that the other sense is best: “the elements (or *rudiments,* as in the margin) of religious teaching.” These are called “the elements of *the world”* because they were mundane and material; they included no clear recognition of spiritual things. The earlier forms of Gentile and even of Jewish religion were much bound up with *the senses;* the most important element in them was that of ritual. The same phrase, in the same sense, occurs twice in the Epistle to the Colossians (Colossians 2:8; Colossians 2:20).