You must be in fellowship prior to your Bible study, so that the spiritual information you receive can become a source, of blessing to your soul and produce spiritual growth.
4 And [de] that because of [dia] false brethren [pseudadelphos] unawares brought in, [pareisaktos] who [hostis] came in
privily [pareiserchomai] to spy out [kataskopeo] our [hemon] liberty [eleutheria] which [hos] we have [echo] in [en] Christ [Christos] Jesus, [Iesous] that [hina] they might bring [katadouloo] us [hemas] into bondage: [katadouloo]
KJV-Interlinear
4 But it
was because of the false brethren who had sneaked in to spy out our liberty
which we have in Christ Jesus, in order to bring us into bondage. NASB
False brethren, means those who professed to be Christians, but coming into the local church with false gospel ideas. Note the reference to the true gospel by Paul, from the previous chapter.
Coming in unawares or sneaked in, refers to their intent and motivation for becoming a part of this church or group. They came in with a prior commitment to their own ideas and principles, but did not let on that, it was their intent to spread their ideas using subtle means.
To spy out, to inspect, to learn what beliefs were being taught and learned and promoted by Paul.
Liberty refers to the freedom of decision, the freedom of action in ones own life.
And bondage, refers to the exact opposite, or slavery, dependence on someone else's ideas or mandates.
Therefore, there were those, persons not identified, who came among the local church groups of Galatia, they came in with premeditated intentions to counter Pauls teaching.
They would be labeled as obstinate, opinionated, perverse in secret, but otherwise presented themselves as good and decent people.
However, in presenting false doctrines, they were ignorant of the true doctrines taught by the Bible. People that lack knowledge of truth, come up with their own ideas out of invention, out of convenience, out of emotional principles, out of distorted tradition. They do not bother to learn truth, they are quite satisfied with what they have.
And their views were tied to works. A person had to do something before they could be saved. And they ignore that any unbeliever can so anything that a believer can do, but in the case of circumcision from the Hebrew tradition, only males can incur that action, not females.
When you make up your own rules, then you sooner or later have to come up with exceptions to the rule and then exceptions to that rule and then the bureaucracy of hypocrisy grows and grows out of control. Judaism was the example of that result. Islam followed with similar false rules and mandates. And when sin is interwoven into a belief system, then it is very difficult for its followers to figure out the right from the wrong.
Self-righteous people always have an agenda, and generally it is as simple as their ideas are sufficient to be acceptable to God. No standard is used to see the flaws.
And sooner or later, they become the worst representatives of Christianity as they distort true doctrine, and true spiritual function.
