Galatians 4:11 - Printer Friendly

ESV: I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain.

NIV: I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you.

NASB: I fear for you, that perhaps I have labored over you in vain.

CSB: I am fearful for you, that perhaps my labor for you has been wasted.

NLT: I fear for you. Perhaps all my hard work with you was for nothing.

KJV: I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain.

NKJV: I am afraid for you, lest I have labored for you in vain.

Paul had successfully evangelized people in Galatia by preaching a gospel of faith (Galatians 1:6). To his dismay, he learned that those same Galatians were being deceived by false teachers who claimed that salvation also required adherence to the rituals and rules of the law (Galatians 2:4). Prior verses included his explanation of why this was such an absurd and unnecessary development.

Paul, sounding exasperated with his Galatian readers, suddenly makes his plea to them very personal. He is afraid that the time and energy he has poured into helping them to understand the good news about Jesus Christ was wasted. It may have all been "in vain." His frustration is understandable. After all, Paul had been commissioned by Christ Himself to take the good news of salvation by faith in Christ—and not by works—to the non-Jewish world. It would have been one thing to try to explain to a Jewish person, who had legalistically followed the law their entire life, the idea that those rituals could not save them. For a Jew, letting go of the idea that law-following was needed to be right before God would have been difficult.

In this situation, however, people who had never followed the law of Moses in their lives were beginning to think they needed to be circumcised and observe special days in order for God to accept them! The group of false teachers known as the Judaizers were so committed to the law that they could not abide allowing non-Jewish Christians to believe they could be saved without it.

Paul's fear of having wasted his time with the Galatians will spur him to write in the following verses an impassioned plea for them to trust solely in the grace of God.

Galatians 4:8–20 reveals that the Galatian Christians have already begun legalistically following the law of Moses, by observing special days. Why would they want to go back to slavery by following the law to be justified by God, Paul asks? Why have they gone from blessing him and trusting in Christ to rejecting him for telling the truth? The false teachers are only using them to bring glory to themselves, Paul insists. Paul is in anguish for them as a mother in childbirth. He longs to see Christ formed in them.

In this chapter, Paul uses three new methods to teach his Galatian readers an important lesson. It is futile to follow the law of Moses in order to be made right before God, since justification comes only by faith in Christ. First, Paul shows that the arrival of Christ made it possible for all people to become God's children through faith in Him. Next, Paul makes a more personal appeal, asking what has changed to cause the Galatians to turn on Paul's teaching of the gospel. Finally, Paul builds an allegory from Scripture, illustrating the difference between being born into slavery and being born into the promise by faith in Christ.

Galatians 3 ends with Paul stating, once more, that those who are in Christ are Abraham's offspring, just as He is, making us heirs along with Him. Galatians 4 continues that idea, showing how Christ's arrival signaled the moment all people could receive the inheritance with Him and be adopted as God's children. Paul makes his appeal personal, asking why the Galatians moved from blessing him to rejecting the message of Christ. The chapter ends with Paul's allegory about the difference between being born into slavery under the law and being born into freedom by the power of the Spirit through faith in Christ. Chapter 5 will continue by expanding on the freedom we have in Christ.

Galatians is sometimes called “a short Romans” for its similar themes of justification and sanctification through faith. A group of Christians known as “Judaizers” were preaching a gospel of legalism, rather than grace. Paul’s main purpose in writing the letter to the Galatians was to reiterate the true nature of the gospel: we are justified (made righteous) and sanctified (made more Christlike) through our faith in Jesus Christ alone. This letter was probably written shortly before the church elders in Jerusalem issued their official refutation of the Judaizers, commonly called the Jerusalem Council.