Sermon: First Sunday After Pentecost - Galatians 4:1-11, May 31, 2026
Scripture: Galatians 4:1-11
Preacher: Ryan Slifka
Sermon: First Sunday After Pentecost
“Look,” wrote the great Reformer Martin Luther about today’s scripture passage. “Look how [the Apostle Paul] feverishly sweats as he calls on the Galatians to turn back.”[i]
We’re now in chapter four in our sermon series on the Apostle Paul’s letter to the churches in Galatia. As Luther says, Paul is feverishly sweating to get the Galatians to turn back. Turn back from what?
In the previous chapters we’ve heard that the Galatians have come under the influence of false teachers. Ones who insist that in order to be a part of the people of God, Gentiles–non-Jews–must follow the Law of Moses. Including–our word of the month: circumcision. And in doing so, they have missed the point of the gospel: faith in God’s grace in Jesus Christ. This has been the source of Paul’s sweat up until this point.
While that made Paul sweat, though, here we might have Paul at his sweatiest. Why? Because in turning back to the Law, the Galatians aren’t simply getting the gospel wrong. They are turning back towards slavery. Slavery.
“Formerly,” he writes. “Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to beings that by nature are not gods. Now, however, you that you have come to know God, or rather be known by, God, how can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental spirits?”
Now, you’ll remember, that most if not all of the Galatians are not Jews by birth. But Gentiles—pagans. When Paul says that thing about “elemental spirits,” what he means are powers like earth, wind, fire, and water. What we might consider nature, but more than that. They are personal beings. Gods with a little g.
Of course, for any good Jew, this is idolatry. A violation of the first and second commandments. The worship of “non-gods” rather than the true God.
But there’s also the effect that it has on the worshipper. The idea in the Greek and Roman world is that there are gods out there, and human beings are there to do the whim of the gods. We must sacrifice to them, and serve them. And if we please them, they will bless us, if not they’ll unleash their wrath.
Which sounds like what, exactly? Slavery, of course. Back before they found Jesus–or more correctly, before Jesus found them, they were exploited. The Galatians were used and abused. Not only were they idolaters. They were slaves. Slaves of false-gods. “Weak and beggarly” ones, ones who promised them life, but only took life. Wrapping them in chains instead.
Now, here’s what might be the strangest part. Paul says that by turning to the Law of Moses–very much not pagan–they’re headed right back into that same kind of slavery. Which seems kind of weird. Because the Law–remember–is a good thing. Given by God to keep God’s people on the rails. But the law is also not God! It’s a non-god, in fact. And as good as the Law may be, the law isn’t God, so the law can’t give life.
In fact, if you think you’re gonna find life and freedom by serving the law, you’ll find nothing but servitude. Why? Because its regulations are endless. You do all the right ones over here, you miss some over there. Not only that, but you’re also a broken imperfect human being, so you can’t possibly do everything it asks of you. So you toil and toil to try to do it all in the hope that you’ll avoid wrath and end up blessed, but in the end you end up just like one of the pagans trying to please their gods. A slave who just gives and gives and gives… with nothing to show for it in the end.
In turning back to the law, Paul says, they may not be turning back to paganism, but they might as well be. But slavery by any other name is still slavery.
Of course, our first instinct as modern people is to think that this isn’t something that applies to us. We don’t worship “elemental spirits,” nor do we think much about the law of Moses. [Buzzer noise]. Wrong.
Back to Martin Luther, the guy who I started the sermon with.
Beyond commenting on Paul’s perspiration, he said that we don’t have to believe in God or gods to have a god, or to worship. He said that: “a god is that to which we look for all good.” That we to which we look for all good. “And in which we find refuge in every time of need. To have a god is nothing else than to trust and believe [that god] with our whole heart.”[ii]
Or if you’d like a more contemporary example: David Foster Wallace, the late great novelist, David Foster Wallace.
In a college commencement speech, Wallace said something very Lutheran: “Everybody worships,” he says.
“Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship… If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you.”[iii]
We could add a million other things to the list, couldn’t we?
Worship your career and when you retire, the free-est schedule will feel like a cage. Escape through drink or drugs and soon you can’t imagine a moment without them. Worship your freedom you’ll be imprisoned by loneliness. Worship your righteousness and you’ll be crushed by failure or blinded by self-righteousness. Set your emotional agenda by all the ways you’ve been wronged and you won’t even be able to see or be grateful for what’s right. Put all your self-worth into preaching great sermons and every time you preach a bad one you feel worthless. At least for an afternoon.
Whatever it is, Wallace says, “I’ll eat you alive.”
I gotta be honest, Wallace not only sounds like Luther here, he sounds like Paul. Because all this sounds like slavery to me. And that’s what Paul’s getting at. It may not be elemental spirits or the law of Moses. But we all worship, it’s who or what we worship that’s the question.
The question is for you and I, is who is our God? Who’s your god? Who’s your true master? Where do you look for life? What’s eating you alive?
Now, I must admit. For a long time, church, Christianity, were the last place I’d have looked for an alternative. Some of you know what I mean.
I figured it was just another version of the same old. Like an exhausting set of burdensome rules I needed to follow to avoid wrath and obtain blessing. Another form of slavery.
What changed my mind was passages like this one. Especially the image Paul uses here, the image of adoption.
“We were slaves to the elemental spirits” he says. “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.”
There’s no greater contrast here.
Whereas all the non-gods we worship make us serve them, they suck the life out of us, eat us alive and spit us out. Paul says, that the true God, the Creator of the universe, is nothing like that. No. God sends the Son. God doesn’t stay on a throne in heaven, becomes human, like us. For the purpose of our freedom, not just another version of slavery.
The true God is no slave owner, but parental. “And because you are children,” he continues, “because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” Look at that! It’s Trinity Sunday and there’s the Trinity—I didn’t even plan it like that! But notice! There’s no terror. No groveling, bargaining, pleading, like a slave to their master, no. But just like you when you were a kid, scared of the dark—with God’s own Spirit crying out in you and answering the call when you do. Not slaves–but sons and daughters of the living God. Recipients of God’s own Spirit herself.
And the whole adoption thing takes it even further. A few years ago the Catholic ethicist Gilbert Meilaender, published a series of letters titled “Dear Derek,” written to his newly adopted son of the same name. The series all about the positive image of adoption in the Bible. In one he cites our Galatians passage, and then points out that biological parents are—in a way—obligated to love their children. But adoptive parents aren’t obligated. “Why, then, does God love us?” Asked Meilaender.
“Why, then, does he love us? Well, how can I answer that question except with another? Why do I love you? Just because I do. And—likewise—just because God does. We have no claims on God. We cannot plead the importance of biological kinship. We can only learn to be grateful that, for his own mysterious reasons, he has adopted us as his children.”[iv]
“He has adopted us as his children.” Which is to say that God doesn’t love us out of obligation, because we’re the same genetic material, that he gave birth to us so he’s gotta, no—God made us in God’s image, but completely other from God. But it’s like the mother whose adopted daughter thinks she’s lesser reassures her with words like “Of course we love you–we chose you.” That’s what baptism is all about, really. Accepting the fact that God chooses us. Receiving God’s name as our own—Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Given to us freely out of love.
Which is to say God’s love is totally unconditional. God needs nothing from us, but gives everything to us. Not only life itself, but forgiveness—on the cross, our past has been taken care of, and eternal life—in his resurrection our future is secure. The true God is not a life-sucker or slave-driver, but a love-bestowing, gift-giver, the best kind of Father we could imagine. This is not a God who’ll eat you alive, but one who has given his very own body and blood to bring life to you and to me and the whole world. Not based on any merit or earning of our own, but purely by grace. “I came that they may have life,” says the Lord in John’s Gospel. “I came that they may have life abundant, that they may have life in the full.” And all we gotta do? Receive it. And believe it’s ours.
On account of him we are no longer slaves but sons and daughters! Why would any of us want to go back to anything else?
Dear friends, why go back? Why go back to what cannot love you? Why go back to what only takes and takes and takes?
The truth is that you’ll want to, be tempted to. Each and every day.
But when you do, remember this: in Christ, you are no longer a slave but a son, daughter, children of the king of Creation. God has redeemed you, has adopted you as his own. Though the old gods will still call, they have no claim on you. Though they’ll promise you life, remember not only that it’s not theirs to give, but you’ve been given all things already in Jesus Christ. When they do, may you hear the Lord’s own words:
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Remember that it’s for freedom Christ has set us free. And there’s no turning back now.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. AMEN.
[i] Martin Luther, Commentary on Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians: Lecture Notes Transcribed by Students and Presented in Today’s English, trans. Haroldo Camacho (Irvine: 1517 Publishing, 2018, 316.
[ii] Martin Luther, Large Catechism https://www.ccel.org/ccel/luther/largecatechism.i_2.html
[iii] David Foster Wallace, “This is Water,” Commencement Speech to Kenyon College, 2005. https://fs.blog/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/
[iv] Gilbert Meilaender, “Adoptees: One and All: A Letter to Derek,” in The Christian Century, September 6, 2003. https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2003-09/adoptees-one-and-all