Galatians 4:8-9
What is written? (ESV)
Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more?
What does it say?
Before when you did not know God, you were beholden to those that by nature are not gods. But now that you have come to know Him – or be known by Him – how can you turn back to those weak and worthless worldly principles?
What is its immediate context?
Paul’s letter to the Christians throughout Galatia, converted during his first missionary journey (Acts 13-14). He is confronting a persistent effort by Jewish Christians to continue in and bind on Gentile Christians customs and practices from the Old Law.
How Galatians 4:8-9 is applied across Bible answers
Can our free moral agency be lost?
Christians, if they are not careful, can become enslaved to sin or "turn back again", which is the state they were in before becoming Christians.
Is there an inward call of God?
Later in the same letter,6 Paul makes the same plea again about them falling away. However, instead of talking about their having responded to the gospel, here he describes it as the mutual "becoming known" - them to God, and God to them. No mention of an "inward call" nor any caveat regarding the surety of that calling.
