[Prayer]
Today’s message is from Galatians 3:27-4:7. It’s about being adopted as sons (and daughters) by the Creator and Ruler of the universe. How does that sound—sons and daughters of God? We have this through faith when we choose to believe God’s promises. And it’s all a gift from God. Even our ability to choose to believe is his gift.
All of the book of Galatians is about the fact that salvation is a gift from God, not something that you earn by “being good”. And, in fact, the apostle Paul has been telling the Galatians (and us) that if we start to think that we have to do any more than to simply believe, we will be in serious trouble. You aren’t saved because you try to please God. You are pleasing to God because you are saved. You aren’t saved because you try to please God. You are pleasing to God because you are saved.
In last week’s passage, the apostle Paul talked about the fact that Abraham was counted as righteous because he believed God. He obeyed God and did what was right (most of the time, anyway), but that’s not what made him righteous. He was righteous because he believed God. He obeyed because he trusted God.
We are righteous not because we obey God, but because we believe that Christ died for our sins. We want to please God because we know he loves us. The false teachers were promoting the idea that you had to be circumcised and keep the Law of Moses in order to be saved.
In last week’s passage the apostle Paul talked about the fact that the Law of Moses was not meant to be the means of our salvation, but that it was given as a guardian until Christ came, so that we could be justified (made righteous) by faith. That was God’s intent from the beginning—that Jesus would sacrifice himself for our sins and that we would be made righteous because we believed it.
The last two verses in last week’s passage, verses 25 and 26 say, “But since that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.” In today’s passage the apostle Paul is going to tell us more about being sons.
As we read the passage, remember as always that we are reading the word of God. These things are not just human speculation or man’s ideas; they are the word of God. They are what God, through his Holy Spirit, led the apostle Paul to write so that we could read it almost 2,000 years later.
Also, as always, I encourage you to read and study the word of God every day (not just what Paul says, but the whole Bible). Have it in your heart. The more you read, the more you will understand—the more it will all fit together. (It’s the Holy Spirit who gives us understanding.) We need to have the word of God in our hearts and mind in order to discern between what is God’s truth and what are just men’s ideas.
Study the word of God and talk about it to your children and to others. Do you talk about the word of God to your children? When Moses repeated the Ten Commandments to Israel, this is what he said, “Listen, Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. These words that I am giving you today are to be in your heart. Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them be a symbol on your forehead. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” (Deut.~6:4-9) That was the Law of Moses which was to be our guardian until Christ. Now we have Christ. Now we have the words of God’s grace and forgiveness. Read them and study them and talk about them every day.
Let’s read the passage—Galatians 3:27-4:7:
3:27For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, heirs according to the promise. 4:1Now I say that as long as the heir is a child, he differs in no way from a slave, though he is the owner of everything. 2Instead, he is under guardians and stewards until the time set by his father. 3In the same way we also, when we were children, were in slavery under the elemental forces of the world. 4But when the completion of the time came, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. 6And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba, Father!” 7So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God. (Galatians~3:27-4:7)
The last verse in last week’s passage, verse 3:26, says, “...for you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.” The first verse in today’s passage, verse 3:27, says, “For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” “For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” What does it mean? We all have an idea of what it means to be baptized. It means “immersed”. Sometimes it means “washed” or “dipped”. We are baptized in water as a sign of our salvation. It’s symbolic—a sign of being washed clean of sin and becoming a new creation in Christ.
But in today’s passage, the apostle Paul says, “You have been baptized into Christ (not baptized in Christ or with Christ, but into Christ).” You have been immersed into Christ. This is not about the outward ritual, but about what happens inside of you. (When you immerse a sponge in water, it soaks up the water.) And you have “put on Christ”. “Put on” is like you put on clothes. You put on Christ. You are clothed in Christ. In 1 Corinthians 15:53, the apostle Paul, talking about immortality, says, “Because this corruptible must be clothed with incorruptibility, and this mortal must be clothed with immortality.” It’s the same word. To “clothe” is the same word as to “put on”. You are saturated with Christ and you are clothed in Christ.
The second part of verse 27 in today’s passage says, “There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Some seem to interpret this to mean that God didn’t establish any human authority—at least the impression they give. But we have in the word of God “slaves obey your masters” (Eph. 6:5, Col. 3:22) and “children obey your parents” (Eph. 6:1, Col. 3:20). (We don’t have slaves these days. But if you have a job, you do have a boss. “Employees obey your bosses.”)
We have “wives submit to your husbands” (Eph. 5:24, 1 Peter 3:1) (1 Peter 3:1 and 2, by the way, say, “Wives, in the same way, submit yourselves to your own husbands so that, even if some disobey the Christian message, they may be won over without a message by the way their wives live, when they observe your pure, reverent lives.” Wives, do your husbands observe your pure and reverent lives?)
We also have “Submit to the governing authorities.” (Rom. 13:1) These things are all Biblical. But the apostle Paul says that there is “no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” But there’s this idea that if you have to submit to anyone’s authority, that it somehow makes you inferior to that person. But in Christ, there is no difference. We are all one in Christ. In Christ there is no one who is inferior or superior in God’s eyes. (And who is the one who submitted most perfectly? He did everything his Father told him to do and nothing else. He said, “Father, if You are willing, take this cup away from Me—nevertheless, not My will, but Yours, be done.” (Luke~22:42) He went to the cross on our behalf in obedience to God the Father.) Furthermore, there are no ethnic or racial differences—“no Jew, no Greek,” and Paul also says elsewhere (Col. 3:11), “No Scythian or barbarian.” There is no distinction in Christ. All of us are sons and daughters of God and brothers and sisters in Christ.
Verse 29 says, “And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, heirs according to the promise.” Abraham’s descendants (his “seed”) are God’s chosen people. If we have Abraham’s faith, we are sons of Abraham spiritually. We are also God’s chosen people. We are one with Jewish believers, too. There is no Jew or Greek—no distinction in Christ.
Let’s look at chapter 4, verses 1 through 3: “Now I say that as long as the heir is a child, he differs in no way from a slave, though he is the owner of everything. Instead, he is under guardians and stewards until the time set by his father. In the same way we also, when we were children, were in slavery under the elemental forces of the world.”
Without Christ, we are still subject to the law. We are required to obey it as a slave is required to obey his master. (Do you want to try to be the first one to save himself by obeying the law?) Without Christ, we are without hope!
Let’s look at verses 4 and 5: “But when the completion of the time came, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.”
In our society, the time when a son or daughter becomes independent of his or her parents’ authority is set by law. But, according to what I’ve read, the Roman law (and the people Paul was writing to presumably knew what it was) was that the father set the time (that is, the completion of the time of the son’s childhood) when his sons would no longer be under the authority of the guardian. It was the father’s decision. (The guardian was generally a slave in the father’s household, so the positions of the son and the guardian would actually be reversed at that point. The son would now have authority over the guardian instead of the other way around.)
Paul says that at the completion of the time God sent his Son. Paul put it this way. But this doesn’t apply to us individually until we believe it—until we believe that we are sinners and that Christ died for our sins. It’s then that our position with respect to the law is changed. We are no longer servants of the law. The law becomes our servant.
Jesus came to redeem us from sin and death so that we might receive adoption as sons (that means daughters, too). When we accept Christ, we become God’s children. And there’s a special significance to being adopted (as opposed to just being considered sons), too. I’m going to read something that I copied from one website.2
7Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? 8If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. 9Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! 10Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. 11No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.
12Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. 13”Make level paths for your feet,” so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed. (Hebrews 12:2-12 –NIV)
Now, let’s look at verse 6 in today’s passage: “And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father!’” According to the various experts, the term “Abba” is the Aramaic or Syriac or Hebrew word for “Father”. But it was only used by little children. It was very intimate. There is no modern English equivalent for “Abba”, but “Daddy” or “Papa” are close. When Jesus was praying in the garden the night before he went to the cross he said, “Abba, Father! All things are possible for You. Take this cup away from Me. Nevertheless, not what I will, but what You will.” (Mark~14:36) (Do you ever call God “Daddy” or do you think that too disrespectful? We receive the Spirit of God’s Son into our hearts. By him we are able to cry, “Abba, Father.”
Verse 7, the last in today’s passage, says, “So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God.” We are no longer slaves, but sons (and daughters). And, as sons and daughters, we are also heirs. I’m going to read what the apostle Paul had to say to the Corinthians. There were divisions among them and they were boasting about which leader they were following. (How much we like to choose up sides and say that our side is better.) Paul was rebuking them. Here’s how he summed it up. This is from 1 Corinthians 3:21-23: “So no one should boast in men, for all things are yours: whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or things present or things to come—all are yours, and you belong to Christ, and Christ to God.”
How can “all things” be ours when “all things” are everyone else’s, too? I considered that a number of years ago. Here’s what I said:
“So, in terms of ownership and control, what does it mean that all things are ours? How can you have any sense of ownership of anything that you own along with one hundred (or one hundred million) other people? What if someone disagrees with you?
“On the other hand, what would it mean if you really could do whatever you wanted to do with, as Paul says, ‘all things’? It would have to mean that you would never, ever want to do anything that any of the other joint owners would not want you to do. Does this sound impossible? Well, when the Church first started in Jerusalem the believers were ‘all together and had everything in common’ (Acts 2:44). Also, ‘All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed any of his possessions were his own, but they shared everything they had.’ (Acts 4:32,33) They were certainly closer by far to ‘all things are yours’ than we are. When Jesus prayed his high priestly prayer, he prayed for believers to be brought to complete unity to let the world know that his Father had sent him and had loved all the believers just as he had loved Jesus. (John 17:23) We know that God heard this prayer because we know that God always heard all of Jesus’s prayers (John 11:42).
These concepts of unity seem impossible to us because we still see things through largely worldly, fleshly eyes. The concept of needing to control something (or someone) certainly doesn’t come from faith in God. It is from the flesh. Pray for us to begin to grow and become mature—to stop being mere infants in Christ. Jesus prayed for complete unity of believers—even for the world to see it. So it will certainly happen. God will bring it about. We can participate in this incredible (by human standards) miracle by praying. We will see God’s glory!”
Let’s pray to our “Abba, Father” in the name of our Lord Jesus.
[Prayer]