In the book of Galatians there are several crucial phrases. The first is in 1:4, which says, “Who gave Himself for our sins that He might rescue us out of the present evil age according to the will of our God and Father.” The apostle Paul uses two modifiers, present and evil, for the word age. According to the traditional religious concept, Christ gave Himself for our sins that He might deliver us out of hell and bring us into heaven. However, the actual issue of Christ giving Himself for our sins is not merely to deliver us out of hell and bring us into heaven but to deliver us from this present evil age. We may suppose that the word age in the Bible refers to the secular age, or world. However, in the New Testament there are two kinds of ages: the secular age and the religious age. The book of Galatians deals not with the secular age but with the religious age.
God created the heavens, the earth, and man for the fulfillment of His purpose, and He ordained many things for man’s existence, such as food, protection, and a place to live. However, when Satan came in to cause man to fall, he corrupted all the things created by God for man’s existence, and he formed the world to ensnare man and distract man from God’s eternal purpose (Gen. 4:16-24). This is the secular world that we see before us today, in which people are ensnared by the things in the world and kept away from God’s purpose. After the fall God came in to bring man back to Himself. To this end, God gave man the Scriptures to tell man how to come to Him, how to be one with Him, and how to take Him as his life and living that man may fulfill God’s purpose. However, after man was brought back to God through the holy writings, Satan came in again to cause man to use his fallen mentality to form different kinds of religions based on these writings. In this way the second kind of world—the religious world—came into existence.
Satan’s goal is to keep man away from the fulfillment of God’s eternal purpose. Originally, it was the first kind of world, the secular world, that kept man away from God’s purpose, but after God brought man back to Himself, Satan formed the second kind of world, the religious world, to once again keep man away from God. It may seem that the secular world keeps man away from God and that the religious world helps man to come back to Him. In actuality, however, both aspects of the world, the secular and the religious, keep man away from God. The age mentioned in Galatians refers not to the ordinary, secular world but to the particular, religious world. When we speak about the secular world, many people understand what we mean, but when we speak about the religious world, people may question our meaning. They may say, “Do you mean that religion is a world? Religion helps people to worship God, please God, and serve God. How can such a thing be a world?” The book of Galatians, however, reveals that religion is indeed a world. In particular, the term the present evil age in Galatians 1:4 refers to the present evil age of religion.
Galatians 6:14 says, “Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.” The world in this verse is not mainly the secular world but the religious world. This is proved by the following verse. Verse 15 begins with the word for, indicating that what follows is an explanation of what has just been mentioned. Paul said that the world had been crucified to him, “for neither is circumcision anything nor uncircumcision.” By this we can see that the world mentioned in verse 14 refers mainly to the religious world. To be sure, a world consisting of circumcision is not the world of restaurants and theaters. Circumcision is in the religious world, a realm of religious regulations and rituals.
There is a difference between an age and the world. The world is the entire satanic system, but an age is only one section of the world (Rom. 12:2; Eph. 2:2). The world is composed of many ages. Paul spoke of the evil age of the first century. If he were living today, he would speak of the evil age of the present century. Paul was in his present age, and we are now in our present age. The present evil age in Paul’s time included Judaism, the religion of the Jews, with its circumcision and the law. This was the prevailing religion of that time, a religion that charged and compelled people both to be circumcised and to keep the law continually for their whole life.