There are times when we can have a strange tendency to look back at things God once delivered us from and remember them more kindly than they deserve.
Time can soften the memory of bondage in a way that makes us forget how badly we once wanted out, and if we are not careful, we begin remembering whatever temporary pleasure or relief a sin gave us while losing sight of the shame, fear, secrecy, or misery that eventually followed it.
This is why Galatians 4:9 is such an important question :
“But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage?”
Paul is clearly dealing with a particular doctrinal problem in Galatia, where believers who had known the liberty of Christ were being drawn back toward religious bondage, and that context matters.
Yet the question itself reaches into something much broader about the human heart because, even after we have known freedom, we can still make choices that lead us back toward the very things that once held us.
“Whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage?”
That is an uncomfortable question because I do not think most of us would ever say we desire bondage.
Still, our choices can reveal how quickly we forget what sin actually does.
Proverbs 5:22 says, “His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins.”
Scripture is very accurate in this description because sin rarely feels like a cord when we first reach for it.
It usually presents itself as something we can manage, something that gives a little pleasure, dulls a little pain, satisfies an appetite, or allows us to indulge a feeling we do not want to bring under control.
The cord becomes visible later, after repetition has made the choice easier, conviction has become easier to ignore, and the thing we thought we were freely choosing has begun exercising an influence we never intended to give it.
Anyone who has struggled with a besetting sin knows how miserable that place can become.
There is a point where a person may sincerely hate what he keeps returning to, while still feeling pulled toward it strongly enough that another promise to do better seems almost useless.
This is why Scripture’s language about bondage matters.
Sin does far more than give us a list of bad decisions to regret; it entangles.
But— Praise God, Christ meets people in exactly that kind of place.
Galatians 5:1 says, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.”
The words “stand fast” assume that liberty should be valued enough to guard.
Once God has taught us where certain roads lead, wisdom does not need to keep revisiting them simply to prove we are stronger now.
There are things some of us should remember with enough honesty that we no longer romanticize them.
We know what those cords felt like.
We remember what it was like to carry guilt into ordinary days, to hide something, to promise ourselves that this time would be different, or to realize that an appetite we once considered harmless had taken up far more room in us than we ever meant to give it.
Sometimes deliverance came quickly, although for many Christians it has been a slower work of repentance, Scripture, confession, accountability, and learning over time that the old master no longer has the right to command us.
Biblical liberty can be misunderstood if we make freedom mean simply doing whatever we please.
First Peter 2:16 says, “As free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but as the servants of God.”
Peter joins liberty and servanthood in the same sentence, which makes sense once we understand what sin actually does.
The freedom Christ gives does not hand the flesh a longer leash.
It brings us out from under one master so that our lives can belong fully to God.
Psalm 119:45 puts the idea another way:
“And I will walk at liberty: for I seek thy precepts.”
We see here that the psalmist sees no contradiction between liberty and obedience.
He walks freely while seeking what God has commanded, having learned that God’s ways lead toward life rather than toward the cords from which so many of us have had to be untangled.
I think we understand that more clearly after we have lived long enough to experience the consequences of our own choices.
When we are young, boundaries can feel restrictive because we imagine freedom primarily as the ability to choose for ourselves.
A little more life teaches us that choices have destinations, and some roads become prisons long before the person walking them realizes where they have arrived.
God’s commands begin looking very different once we understand that He sees the end of a road while we are still admiring its entrance.
This is also why Christian liberty reaches much deeper than the kind of freedom we commonly talk about in America.
I am grateful for civil liberty, and I do not think we should ever become careless about freedoms people throughout history have sacrificed greatly to preserve.
Yet political freedom still belongs to the outward circumstances of life, while the liberty Christ gives reaches a place no government can grant and no government can finally take away.
Christians have carried that liberty into prison cells.
Believers have gone to their deaths possessing something their persecutors could never touch, because even when their bodies were restrained and their earthly lives were threatened, the deepest part of them belonged to Christ.
The martyrs who went to the stake did not cease to be free when chains were placed around them.
They carried a liberty all the way to death that reached beyond circumstance because its source was the One who had already conquered the grave.
Second Corinthians 3:17 says, “Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”
That is the freedom we should want to understand more deeply.
It reaches the conscience that has been washed by the blood of Christ.
It reaches the sinner who once believed he would always be defined by what held him.
It reaches into our fear of death because Jesus Christ went into the grave and came out again, and it reaches farther still because death, hell, and the grave do not have the final claim over the person who belongs to Him.
A Christian can lose earthly comforts, rights, possessions, health, reputation, and eventually the body itself, while still possessing this liberty.
“For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another.”
Our liberty has a direction to it.
The freedom Christ gives us should make us useful to other people, particularly to those who are still sitting in cords we recognize.
When we remember our own bondage accurately, it becomes harder to look down on someone who is still fighting his way out of theirs.
We remember how patient God had to be with us, how many times truth had to reach the same stubborn place, and how much grace it took before something that once seemed irresistible began losing its hold.
That memory ought to create compassion in us.
Jesus read in Luke 4:18 that He was sent “to preach deliverance to the captives” and “to set at liberty them that are bruised.”
The gospel has always moved toward captives.
There are people all around us who look perfectly free from the outside while living under appetites, fears, shame, bitterness, or sins they no longer know how to escape.
Some of them have grown so accustomed to their bondage that they hardly remember another way of living.
Those of us who know what Christ can do should be people who understand how to talk about liberty.
We should be able to tell the truth about sin without enjoying another person’s shame, because we remember enough of our own.
We should be able to speak about deliverance with conviction because Christianity is far more than learning how to manage ourselves respectably while the same cords remain wrapped around the heart.
Christ makes people free.
And Galatians 5:13 tells us that one expression of that liberty is serving one another through love, which means the freedom we have received should begin touching the people around us.
Sometimes that will mean helping another Christian carry himself through a difficult season of repentance.
It may mean patiently speaking truth to someone whose bondage has become obvious, or simply refusing to give up on a person who has fallen again because we know the Lord did not abandon us the first time we stumbled.
Still, there is a warning running through all of this that I do not want to lose.
Paul asked believers why they would desire to be in bondage again.
That question should make us willing to examine whether there are places where we have begun playing with old cords.
Sometimes enough time passes that we forget the full story of a former sin, and nostalgia starts editing out everything that made us miserable.
We remember how something felt before we remember where it eventually took us.
If that happens, we need to remember the whole thing honestly.
Remember the loss of peace.
Remember what secrecy did to you.
Remember how exhausting it became to make excuses.
Remember how often you told God you wanted out.
Then remember the grace that met you there.
There is something deeply sad about being freed and then voluntarily wrapping the old cords around ourselves because familiarity made them look harmless again.
I also think some Christians need to hear the other side of this because they are living as though the chains remain even after Christ has opened them.
They have repented, yet they continue defining themselves by the sin.
They have been forgiven, while condemnation still shapes the way they see themselves.
They know what Scripture says about eternal life, though fear of death still speaks loudly enough that they sometimes live as though Christ never walked out of the tomb.
Christian liberty does not mean the absence of struggle.
I know my own heart too well to say anything that tidy.
It means Christ has changed who owns us.
It means sin no longer possesses the rightful claim it once did, condemnation is answered by the blood of Jesus Christ, and death itself no longer stands at the end of the road as though it has won.
That is why Paul could tell us to “stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free.”
I want to take that seriously.
I want to remember old bondages accurately enough that I do not mistake them for freedom when they call again, and I want to understand Christ’s liberty deeply enough that I do not spend my life dragging around chains He already broke.
I also want the freedom He has given me to make me more useful to people who are still trying to find their way out, because liberty received from Christ was never meant to end with us.
There is a world full of people who know something about bondage.
Christians ought to be people who know something about being made free.
So maybe Galatians 4:9 is worth carrying with us for a while:
“But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage?”
If Christ has made us free, there is no old chain worth returning to.
And if the Spirit of the Lord dwells within us, we have every reason to walk today in the liberty He has already given.
Share this with someone in bondage today. There is freedom. There is hope. There is liberty—In Christ.
Biblical Womanhood
If you enjoy this post please ♥️, comment, or share—These simple gestures help share this message with others who may be encouraged and blessed by this ministry.
If you want to go deeper into what Scripture says about uprooting resentment before it costs your home its peace, join me for a week-long devotional study on bitterness.
The Bitter Root: How Bitterness Destroys the Heart and Home
Over seven days, we look honestly at bitterness through a biblical scope and walk through practical, scriptural ways to keep your own heart tender before the Lord so that what grows in your house is grace instead of an old family wound.
