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Our apostle having proved sufficiently the believing Christians freedom from the yoke of the ceremonial law; next endeavours to convince the Galatians how absurd and unreasonable it was for them voluntarily to put themselves under the obligation and obedience of it, and to look upon it as necessary to their justification and salvation: Now in the verses before us he tells them, that when they were Gentiles they were the worst of slaves, serving them that were no gods at all; whereas the Jews served the true God, though in a servile manner: These Galatians, being Heathens before conversion, served false Gods, and so were in a bondage much worse than that of the Jews. The apostle therefore justly blames them, that they being naturally Gentiles, and never under the ceremonial law, should now desire and choose to enter into that bondage: which was apparently to go backward in religion, or to return to those principles which they had already over-past.
Thence learn, that it is possible for a professing people to advance very far in the way of Christianity, and yet make a foul retreat afterwards in a course of defection and apostacy: After we have known God, that is acknowledged the living and true God, and been acknowledged by him, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements?
Here note, how contemptuously, or at least disesteemingly, our apostle speaks of the legal rites of the ceremonial law: He calls them elements or rudiments, because they were God's first instructions given to his church for his worship, to which he intended afterwards a more perfect way of worship: Next he calls them weak elements, because the law made nothing perfect, and the observance of it was impotent and unavailable to a sinner's justification before God: And lastly, he calls them beggarly elements, in comparison with that more rational and spiritual way of worship under the gospel.
Whence we may learn, that holy zeal will teach a saint to speak with a sort of contempt of any thing that encroaches upon the honour due to Christ, or any of his offices. True, the Levitical ceremonies were appointed by God himself as a part of divine worship leading to Christ, and as such to be religiously observed; but when the false apostles did urge the observation of them under the gospel, as a part of necessary commanded worship, and as a part of the Galatians righteousness before God, St. Paul is bold then to give them the name of weak and beggarly elements.