Galatians 4:9-10 - Sabbath or Feast Days

This is yet another one of the many abused passages that is applied to the wrong law by those who do not understand scripture well or are looking for a way to avoid spending time with their Creator on His holy day being the fourth Commandment the Sabbath.

Galatians 4:9 “But now, after that you have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn you again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto you desire again to be in bondage?”

Galatians 4:10 “You observe days, and months, and times, and years.”

What ever Paul is referring to is bondage and so cannot be the moral law as James 1:25 and James 2:10-12 state, the Ten Commandments are the perfect law of liberty, and liberty of course means freedom, which could never and should never be referred to as bondage. Loving God and loving others should never be referred to as bondage and anyone who feels that doing so is bondage knows not God. (1 John 4:8)

So how do some conclude once again that the word day in verse ten refers to the Sabbath day when it is one of the Ten Commandments? The Bible never refers to the Lord's Sabbath as just a day. It is always called The Sabbath or Sabbath Day.

The other factor that many choose to ignore is that Paul is referring to something that had days, months and years and this also rules out the Ten Commandments or the Sabbath.

Paul said in Galatians 4:10 “You observe days, and months, and times, and years.” So what was bondage that had days, months and years at certain times or seasons as the New King James Version correctly translates? There is only one thing, and that was the sacrificial law which was very much considered bondage and ended at the cross. Can you imagine what it would be like if you had to take an unblemished animal such as a lamb to the temple priest every time you sinned and have it sacrificed?

This law had feast days, monthly new moons and yearly sacrificial Sabbaths such as Passover and the Day of Atonement and five others. This is exactly the same issue as Colossians 2:16 which Paul said in verse 14 was contrary to us, (bondage) and against us (bondage) and was the “ordinances” that were nailed to the cross.

Note: The word times is translated to seasons in some Bibles, which is correct as these feasts occurred in different seasons of the year.

There is now a growing group of Churches that came from the collapse of the Herbert Armstrong movement that insists that we still need to observe the feast days without the sacrifices that were in the Mosaic Law that ended but scripture shows this movement is in error. See do we need to keep the feast days for seven reasons that inform us that these feast days ended with Christ forever.

You will note by comparing the following passages that it was the sacrificial law that involved taking an animal sacrifice to the temple every time you sinned. It should require no explanation as to how much bondage this law was that used to be practiced to make reconciliation for sin. With this in mind now compare Colossians 2:16 and Galatians 4:10.

Read Albert Barnes and People's New Testament Commentaries and Galatians 4:9-10 for an even more detailed exegesis on this passage. See also Galatians and the Mosaic Law.