Earning Favor with God by Observing Biblical Holidays? (Galatians 4:10 Meaning)

In this post we will explore Galatians 4:10, and the passage about becoming enslaved by observing certain holidays or special times. We will see that this is not about celebrating God's Biblical holidays or set apart times, and learn the truth behind this passage of Scripture.

"You are trying to earn favor with God by observing certain days or months or seasons or years." -Galatians 4:10

Many people believe this to be about Biblical holidays like Passover or the Feast of Tabernacles, and will tell others that taking part in God's holidays will somehow lead them away from freedom or that their intentions for doing so are actually motivated by fear that they have to somehow impress God in order to be accepted by him. At first glance, it's easy to make the assumption that this is what Paul is getting at.

But if we back up, we can see that the context here is not about keeping the Biblical holidays. Take a look at the verses just prior to this statement.

"Before you Gentiles knew God, you were slaves to so-called gods that do not even exist. So now that you know God, why would you want to go back again and become slaves once more to the weak and useless spiritual principles of this world?" -Galatians 4:8-9

Trying to earn favor was something people did with the gods of the Roman Empire. We see this throughout Roman and other types of mythology. The gods would be angry if certain things weren't done, and in order to have a good life you had to constantly appease them, or else they would punish you.

Galatians 4:8-9 tells us that verse 10 is not about trying to earn favor with the Living God. This is about returning to spiritual practices from before these people knew the Living God.

This fits with what we about legal issues of worship in the ancient Roman Empire. Most citizens were legally required to worship certain gods. This is because it was believed that the Roman gods and more localized deities would be angry if certain rituals, sacrifices, and festivals were not done to honor them. Citizens were expected to do their part to appease these gods, and it was believed that blessings like bountiful harvests, good weather conditions, and military success had to be earned from these gods. The favor of Rome's gods had to be earned.

Paul is warning believers against returning to these practices, otherwise they become "enslaved again"...something there would be no precedent for from YHWH, since the group Paul is addressing is new to the faith. They had been enslaved before to "so-called gods," but certainly not to the Living God. The slavery in question wasn't about physical chattel slavery. It was about spiritual slavery.

You see, when mankind sins the problem is not just that we aren't perfect in God's sight. Sin indicates that we have worshiped something in place of YHWH. And that means that we have given the power and authority that God has given us to other spiritual forces. These forces then run rampant. Human lives and the natural order and beauty of Creation are destroyed. And those are the powers that we risk becoming enslaved to if we return to ungodly customs.

This passage is not warning us that keeping God's law or celebrating his holidays would somehow enslave us to negative things. What Paul is speaking of here is returning to the Roman tradition of serving local gods in order to benefit from them. Scripture does not warn against celebrating God's work during the Biblical holidays. This is about not returning to the cultural holidays that a corrupt empire wanted its citizens taking part in.

Scripture tells us repeatedly that we are to take part in holidays like the Feast of Trumpets, and Shavuot in order to remember the things that God did for his people. Taking part in Scripture's holy days was never about "earning favor," with YHWH. The holidays were always about marking the year in order for God's people to learn of the miracles he did and to remember the story of how he redeemed them. Passover, for example, was never because God was angry and he wanted people to jump through hoops, it was always to fill people up with hope when they looked back on how he delivered Israel from slavery.

The biblical holidays are about celebrating that God delivered us from slavery...taking part in them is not what what returns us to slavery. Does it make more sense that we would be enslaved by celebrating God's provision during the holidays he created or that we would be enslaved by the holidays of our culture? The slavery that Galatians 4:10 is talking about comes from turning to things other than YHWH. 

How we know Galatians 4:10 is not about biblical holidays:

-The verses immediately prior speak of returning to customs the people participated in before knowing YHWH.

-The biblical holidays were never about appeasing or earning favor with God, according to Scripture.

-Historical evidence demonstrates that Roman deities did expect favor to be earned.

-Scriptural holidays are actually about remembering God leading his people to freedom! 

Related posts:

Why Everyone Should Celebrate Scripture's Holidays
Understanding the Shadow of Things to Come in Colossians 2:16-17
The Beginner's Guide to the Biblical Holidays

Legal Issues in the Book of Acts (That No One Talks About)

Discover the book of Acts from a different perspective, where we focus on what was pertinent to believers at the time: legal issues surrounding faith in the Messiah! The question of who could worship in what way was central to the response of people when they heard the Gospel. Examining the book of Acts through this lens will also help us to make sense of why Paul and other members of the early church were frequently in trouble with civic and religious leaders, often for conflicting reasons. Here we will mostly focus on events in Acts 16, 17, and 18 but this issue runs throughout the book of Acts and is imperative to understanding the New Testament and the world of the early church.

How do we know there were legal problems in Acts?

"These men are advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice." -Acts 16:2

"They are all defying Caesar's decrees, saying there is another king, one called Jesus." -Acts 17:7

"This man is teaching people to worship God in illegal ways." -Acts 18:13

While many of us take religious freedom for granted today that was not the situation the early church found itself in amidst the Roman Empire. In the culture of the time, worshiping the approved gods was considered a mandatory civic duty. Most citizens were legally obligated to make sacrifices and observe other religious customs. This observance was thought to appease the local gods, who in turn would provide good harvests, military success, temperate weather and so on.

This means that if famine struck your area, or if your soldiers didn't fare too well in battle, everyone thought the problem was that not enough had been done to appease the gods. Anyone not participating in local religious customs was believed to be to blame. Imagine the pressure you would be under if all your neighbors thought it was your fault every time there was economic hardship or a fire or a battle was lost!

However, one group had legal exemption from participating in the state religion of Rome. That group was the Judeans - people from the tribes of Israel who worshiped YHWH. They were allowed to worship God and participate in their own customs in place of Rome's. Other people groups generally did not have the option to not participate in the Roman religion or to pick a religion for themselves. 

And this is what so much of the fuss is about in Acts.

Two main debates raged:

1. Should worship of the Messiah be legally granted if it fell under worship of YHWH?

2. Who should be allowed to worship the Messiah? Could members of the northern tribes of Israel be included, along with those with no physical ancestry in Israel?

There was a huge amount of concern throughout the book of Acts that these things would not be permitted, which is why we see verses like:

"These men are advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice." -Acts 16:21

The illegal 'customs' would have been the new practice of non-Judeans or non-Israelites worshiping the God of Israel through the name Yahusha or Jesus. Roman citizens could not just decide to worship a 'new' god, because of their civic duties to local deities. They were worried they would be persecuted, or even killed, for worshiping the Messiah.

A huge portion of the events in Acts have to do with Paul explaining, or attempting to explain, that it was not illegal for anyone (even non-Israelites) to worship Jesus, because he was the goal that God's plan was getting at all along.

Why were religious leaders upset with Paul?

I used to assume that religious leaders just didn't accept Jesus, and that's why they were so mad at Paul. But that's not what was going on. Sure many people at that time did not believe Yahusha was the promised Messiah, but different sects disagreed all the time...we see that many times in the Gospel where the Sadducees and Pharisees argue about issues such as eternal life. That's not why they cared about what Paul was up to.

They cared because they believed it would cause them to lose their official permission to practice their religion. Let's take a look at what's going on...

In Acts 17, Paul and Silas had gone to Thessalonica where they preached and caused "certain Jews to become angry." These religious individuals were so upset, they leveled a serious accusation.

"These men have caused troubled all over the world have now come here, and Jason has welcomed them into his house. They are all defying Caesar's decrees, saying there is another king, one called Jesus." -Acts 17:6b-7

The religious leaders here are angry that Paul's teaching goes against...what? Scripture? No. They are angry he is teaching against Caesar's decrees. In fact, they charged them with what was known as heteron basileia - the declaration of there being another king. Which was not just having an obscure idea, but something considered to be treason. 

While sometimes Paul is accused of breaking religious rules, the concern here is that he's acting against Caesar's decrees. Scholars note that the implication of this is the above exemption we talked about above...that this specific group of people were permitted to to practice their own religious customs instead of the Roman way. While they had permission, they seemed concerned that the attempts of Paul to include others in this could land them in trouble with the authorities. Verse 8 tells us that the crowd and the authorities were greatly agitated by this, so it seems fair to say that Paul and Silas were pushing everyone's limits.

Then while in Corinth in Acts 18:12 a group of Jews made a 'united attack on Paul' and brought him to Gallio, the Roman proconsul, or provincial governor, in the Roman Empire. They told him that Paul was persuading people to worship God in illegal ways.

What is Gallio's response? Scripture tells us he blew them off before Paul could even start to defend himself.

Gallio said to them, "If you were making a complaint about a misdemeanor or serious crime, it would be reasonable for me to listen to you. But since it involved questions and words and names and your own law - settle it yourselves. I will not judge this." -Acts 18:14-15

Gallio saw the argument as one that involved the intricacies of a religious sect that was already approved. He really didn't care what they did or said - they were exempt from taking part in the state Roman religion. This is a viewpoint Paul shares, believing since it was legally acceptable to worship YHWH, it was also legally acceptable to worship YHWH in the form of the Messiah, and to thus abstain from idol worship. 

Rome agreed with Paul when Gallio declared this had nothing to do with him. This was transformative for the people of Corinth at the time. Paul saw this as official permission that it was legal to worship the Messiah there.

What's wild about this is that this is the last of the persecution of the early church that we see in Corinth! In every other letter Paul writes to churches, he mentions recipients being persecuted. But not in 1 or 2 Corinthians. Having established legal precedent through Gallio the proconsul, citizens of Corinth were not persecuted for worshiping the Messiah.

We see something similar happen not terribly far away in Athens, though this time it is not fellow worshippers of YHWH who are upset with Paul. This time he was disputing with "Epicurean and Stoic philosophers," (Acts 17:1). Paul is arrested and brought to trial at Mars Hill. There he is accused of advocating foreign gods. This was an issue not of xenophobia, but of genuine concern for what would happen if the official local deities like Athena and Zeus were not worshiped. We expect Paul to explain the importance of worshiping Jesus, because only he can forgive sins and grant eternal life. But Paul's defense is that YHWH is already being worshiped in the form of the unknown god, therefore he is not advocating for anything against the law.

We see Paul continue to insist throughout Acts that he "hasn't offended Biblical law, Temple law, or Caesar's law," (Acts 25:8). This isn't him crying that he should be left alone because he's not breaking the law, but an attempt at explaining there is no legal problem anywhere with worshiping the Messiah. I believe that is why he appeals to Caesar in Acts 25:11...his goal wasn't to get out of prison as quickly as he could, but to make the legality of worshiping Jesus known as widely as possible.

This helps us to see that spreading the Gospel was not just about sharing a strange new idea or trying to convince people to accept the Messiah. We can see better the challenges the disciples and adopters of the faith were facing when they chose to serve the Messiah.

Related posts:
Paul's Legal Defense at Mars Hill in Acts 17
The Two Houses: Israel and Judah in Scripture
Does God Offer a Covenant of Vocation or a Works Contract?