Immediately after expressing the amazing truth that Galatian believers are no longer slaves but children of God (vv. 6-7), Paul contrasts what they are now by God's grace with what they were before they believed the gospel: Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods (v. 8). Those who by nature are not gods were the objects that pagan Gentiles worshiped as gods. They might have been stone or wooden idols made by craftsmen. Or they have been the mythical beings, such as Zeus or Aphrodite, that the idols represented. Or they might have been demonic spirits that enslaved those who worshiped these idols and mythical beings. But whether the gods of the Gentiles were carved idols, mythical figures or demons, Paul rejects their divine status. They do not have the essential attributes of God; they are finite, created things, not the infinite Creator. In Romans 1 Paul expands his teaching on pagan worship: "They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator" (Rom 1:25).

People today, no less than the pagan Galatians in Paul's day, continue to worship and serve created things rather than the Creator. As a result of placing other things in the place of God, people, whether ancient or modern, do not know God. When Paul says you did not know God, he is not talking about theoretical knowledge. As we can see in the next verse, he is talking about the experiential knowledge of personal relationship. Human religious and philosophical efforts to know God are not able to lead us to an experiential knowledge of God. As Paul said to the Corinthian Christians, "In the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him" (1 Cor 1:21).