From Slaves to Sons | Galatians 3:23-4:7 | Sean Speakman

Our passage of scripture for today's sermon is Galatians chapter 3, verses 23 through chapter 4, verse 7.

Galatians 3:23

Galatians 3, 23 through 4.7.

Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed.

So then the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.

But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.

For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith.

For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise.

I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything, but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father.

In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.

And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father, so you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.

This is the word of God.

How could he possibly have three children?

The answer to that is we had two very close together, and then we adopted one.

The one who's adopted, uh, you can tell he's adopted because he looks nothing like us, and also his name is Carlos, right?

Dead dead giveaway.

The funny thing about having adopted a child is that you don't really remember that you've adopted a child.

That that may sound strange.

But what I mean is that when you when you adopt a child, you don't see that child as different from your other children.

It's not like I have my kids and then I have my adopted son.

No, Carlos, he's he's my son.

When I adopted him, he became legally my son.

And now he has every right and privilege that my other children do.

He gets every ounce of love that my other children have.

What we see in this passage today is that through Jesus, God has not only forgiven us of our sins, he also calls us sons.

He calls us children.

And because we are children of God, we have access to all the very great and precious promises of God through Jesus Christ.

Here are two points this morning that we're going to draw from the text.

First, we were slaves, now we are sons.

It's verses 23 through 29.

And then as sons, we now have an inheritance.

Verses 1 through 7.

We were slaves, now we are sons.

And as sons, we now have an inheritance.

So starting in verse 23, he says, before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the faith would be revealed.

It might seem weird to us that he starts here by saying, before faith came.

If you've been with us these last few weeks through the book of Galatians, Paul has just spent the whole last chapter explaining that it was always faith, right?

Faith was always God's method of saving people to himself.

He says in Galatians 3, 6, just as Abraham believed in God, it was counted to him as righteousness.

So when he says, before faith came we were held captive, he's not saying before faith in God was the basis for salvation.

It was always the basis for salvation, all throughout human history.

Instead, what he's saying is before Christ came, before we had a full picture of the gospel, before we could see it, before it was revealed to us, before then we were imprisoned and held captive under the law.

The law, the commands of God that he gave us, as summarized in the Ten Commandments, the law showed us our sinfulness.

We were imprisoned, enslaved in the sense that we were crushed under its weight.

We could try to follow it, and we could try to keep the commands, but we we never could.

We could never live up to it.

He says in verse 24, so then the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.

That word guardian is important here.

If you have a different translation, your Bible might say tutor, right?

In the Roman world, wealthy families would often have a guardian for their sons.

This guardian, he was a servant whose whole job was to instruct the young man of the house.

He was to teach the young man the air on things like morality and business so that when the child came of age and when he got his inheritance, he wouldn't blow it all, being unwise.

I remember a particular time I was in middle school.

I collected like$500 over the school year from like mowing yards and stuff.

I spent all 500 of those dollars on monsters and rice crispy treats in about two and a half months.

I'll let you do the math there.

But it is a lot of monster and rice crispy treats, right?

Children are notoriously unwise.

That's sort of the point he's making here.

By the way, if you are a child in here not calling you out or anything, but it's it's generally true as a pattern.

I'm sure some of you are really smart.

I'm proud of you.

But no, he was saying when we were under the law, we were immature, we were unwise.

And so the law was our guardian.

Its job was to instruct us.

It was to make sure that we would know what we needed to.

It's also important to note that the guardians, these servants, they were known for being particularly strict and heavy-handed.

Paul says before Christ the law was our guardian.

It wasn't there to save us, like the Judaizers and the church in Galatia were claiming.

It was there to teach us a really hard lesson.

It was to teach us about our sin.

It was to show us that we couldn't follow God's commands, that we were enslaved to sin.

It was also to teach us about the repercussions of our sin.

God created us to worship him.

And each one of us has turned away from God.

Has sinned.

It means we've broken his rules.

We haven't followed his commands.

The Bible tells us that because we have sinned against him, we deserve his wrath.

Punishment in hell.

That is what the law taught us.

It was a hard lesson.

It shows us that we're sinful and that we rightly deserve God's wrath.

Why?

Why did it teach us this lesson?

So that we might be justified by faith.

The law shows us that we are guilty of breaking God's law so that we can be forgiven for breaking God's law.

Jesus lived a perfect life.

He did keep the law.

He was the only person in all of existence to keep the commands of God.

That's good news.

The law points to Christ.

It is fulfilled in him.

The punishment that we deserved because of our sin was placed on the one man who hadn't done anything wrong.

So that we could be justified.

That word means declared righteous.

Because of Christ, we are forgiven.

We are forgiven.

How?

By faith.

We don't have to work for forgiveness.

Whereas the law crushed us under its demands.

The gospel, the good news of Jesus is given freely.

All we have to do is trust in Christ, that he accomplished it.

He then continues in verse 25.

But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.

The law served to teach us a harsh lesson, but if we are in Christ, the lesson that the law was teaching us has been taught.

He's saying this because the church in Galatia was having a problem where Jewish people were coming in and they were saying, hey, in order to have a relationship with God, you need to become ethnically Jewish, and you have to follow all of these regulations that God gave the Jewish people in the Old Testament.

Paul says, no, that's not the point.

We don't need those regulations anymore.

Those were to point you to the one who was to come.

Just to point you to Jesus.

We're no longer under the guardian.

He then says, for in Christ you were all sons of God through faith.

Christian, did you know that if you believe in Jesus, God considers you his child?

Whereas before we were enemies of God.

That's what the Bible says.

That we were his enemies, that we were enslaved to our sin.

Now we are sons through Christ Jesus.

God doesn't just forgive you, he doesn't just make you in right standing with him, he adopts you into his family.

We often think of God as cold and detached.

Like he forgave us, and then after that, he's indifferent.

How do you treat your children?

You love them.

You spend time with them.

You guide them and nurture them.

You take care of their needs.

Us being children of God, it means that He will care for us.

It means that He provides for us.

It means that He loves us and won't forsake us.

He then says, For as many of you as were baptized into Christ, have put on Christ.

He's not saying that baptism itself saves you, by the way, right here.

To be baptized was to be identified as one of God's people.

So he says, if you have faith in Jesus, you have put on Christ.

In other words, you are identified with Christ.

You have been given a new identity.

Whereas before you were defined by your sins and by your failures, now you are identified as a son of God through the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

So often as Christians, we forget that we have a new identity.

We're clothed in Christ's righteousness.

One beautiful thing this does, just practically, is it changes the way we look at the law.

It changes the way we look at the commands of God.

Whereas before Christ, we would have to strive to keep the law and just fail and fail, and we were crushed under the weight of it.

Now in Christ, we have freedom to follow apart the moral law for God's glory, not out of fear or compulsion, but because we love Him.

Because we are His children, because we are clothed, we are identified with Christ.

Having put on Christ also means that we have a new family.

Verse 28, he says, there is neither Jew nor Greek, nor slave nor free, nor male nor female, for all are one in Jesus Christ.

By the way, I want to make this clear.

He's not saying that there's no male, no female, right?

Paul, elsewhere in the New Testament, gives different commands to men and women.

He gives different commands to slaves and masters.

That's not what he's saying.

Rather, he's saying that now your biggest identifier is Jesus, and you have that in common with all other Christians.

As I was reading this passage, I think it was uh two Mondays ago, it was Jake and I, we were hanging out, um, and I read through the passage, I laughed because I'm pretty sure almost every passage I've preached since I've been here said something about us having unity in Christ.

I don't know if God's trying to tell you guys something or if he's trying to tell me something, right?

Like, hey, listen, right?

I don't know, I don't know the purposes of God, I don't pretend to know those.

If we are in Christ, we are one.

We have one father, one blood, one shared identity, fellowship, the same essence.

He then concludes by saying, verse 29, but if you are Christ, you are Abraham's offspring, an heir according to promise.

If you are in Christ, you are an heir to the promises of God.

We'll talk a little bit more about what that means in a bit.

If you place your faith in Jesus, God has taken you from slavery to sin, and he has made you a son of the Most High.

The good news of the gospel is that we have been set free from slavery.

The law condemned us, it taught us that we're sinful, that we're slaves to our own sinful desires.

It crushed us.

We've been removed from underneath that.

And now we're called children of God.

Christ bore the weight of the law for us through faith in him.

We who were once slaves become sons.

And we see that since we are sons of God, we are also given an inheritance by him.

Here's our second point this morning.

As sons, we now have an inheritance.

So chapter 4, verse 1.

I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different than a slave, though he is the owner of everything.

But he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father.

This is a callback to that guardian that we saw in verse 3.

This Roman slave would watch over and would instruct the children, and this child would remain under the guardian's teaching until the father decided he was old enough and mature enough to inherit the household.

He's saying, Well, a son who is under a guardian's teaching, you don't own anything.

You don't have anything for yourself.

You're like a slave in that instance.

You have nothing to your name, you have no inheritance to speak of.

He then explains why he's saying this.

He says, in the same way, we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of this world.

Before we believed in Christ, we were enslaved.

He says, enslaved to the elementary principles of this world.

He could mean two different things here.

There is some debate.

He could simply mean that we were enslaved to our religious practices.

In the Old Testament, there were strict guidelines that the Jewish people would have to follow.

Circumcision was one of those, but also laws on what to eat, what to wear, etc.

Even if you weren't Jewish, you generally worshiped a pagan god, you offered sacrifices to him, trying to appease these different pagan idols.

So he could be saying, hey, you were a slave to the elementary principles of this world.

You were enslaved to your legalistic religious principles.

He could also be referring here to demonic oppression.

I know that's heavy.

Ephesians 2 says that before we believed in Christ, we were dead in our trespasses and sins.

That we were following the course of the world and following the prince of the power of the air.

He means Satan.

This could be what he was referring to what he's referring to here.

He could be saying you were a slave to the elementary principles of this world.

You were a slave to the spiritual, dark spiritual forces at work in this world.

I think both are true of Christians.

I don't think it's either or.

Before Christ, we were slave to many things.

But, verse 4, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who are under the law.

This verse, like, this is the most important verse in this passage, okay?

It's almost the crux of his whole argument in this entire book.

Summed up.

When the fullness of time came, in other words, just at the right point in human history, God sent his son, Jesus.

Jesus was born of a woman.

Mary, by the way, if you are from like a Catholic background, we don't believe that Mary was sinless.

We don't believe that she intercedes for us in God.

But Jesus was born of the Virgin, Mary.

He was born under the law.

In other words, he was culturally Jewish, but also he was bound by the commands of the law, as all humans were.

He was not outside of the law.

And he followed the law perfectly so that he could redeem those who were under the law.

Notice that word redeem.

It means to buy back.

To buy back, particularly, it was used in reference to the purchase of a slave's freedom.

So when it says God sent his son Jesus to redeem us, he is literally saying he sent his son to pay the price, to pay the ransom for our freedom.

As Christians, we have been bought by the precious blood of Christ.

Why did he do this?

So that we might receive adoption as sons.

When Christ gave us his righteousness.

He not only redeemed us, paid the price for our sins, he also secured our adoption, our standing as sons of God.

The perfect son of God gave his life so that we could be called sons of God.

So that we could be adopted into God's family.

There was a fairly famous Christian author named J.I.

Packer.

He died a few years ago.

Before he died, he said, if you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God's child and having God as his father.

Being God's children, it's more than a nice sentiment.

It's the whole point of Christianity.

We are children of the Most High.

And it changes how we live.

First off, it means we can have assurance.

We're told in Romans that neither life nor death, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor anything else in all of creation can separate us from the love of God if we are his children.

Since we are God's sons, we can be sure he won't forsake us.

It means he takes care of our needs.

Matthew 6, Jesus says that our heavenly Father sees our needs, that he feeds the sparrow, he clothes the lily.

How much more precious to God are we than sparrows and lilies.

He takes care of our needs because he's our heavenly Father.

We've been adopted into his family.

It also means that he's going to make us more like him.

Look at the last two verses here.

It says, Because you were sons, God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba Father, so you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.

As proof of our status as adoption, God sent his Holy Spirit into our hearts.

The Holy Spirit spiritually empowers us to cry out, Abba Father.

That word Abba, it's an Aramaic word.

If you've been around Christian circles, you may have heard that it said that Abba translate to something casual like papa or daddy.

I don't like that for two reasons.

First off, I'm gonna be honest with you guys, it makes me a little uncomfortable.

So that's the first reason I don't like it.

The second reason is I actually don't think it's a good translation.

We believe it was used by people of all ages, and it was a term of relationship, but also respect.

So dad, father.

God is parting the as part of adopting us, sends his spirit to us, and his spirit changes our feelings towards God.

We cry out, Abba, Father.

We love and respect him.

Our demeanor towards him changes.

We start loving God and loving his ways.

Our desires change.

We want to please him.

Paul says that's the proof that you're his son.

He sent his spirit into you.

You have new changed desires.

You love God, you call him your father.

So often I see Christians discouraged by their sin.

And that's good in a way, right?

I don't want to just take the weight of sin away from you.

We should be grieved when we sin against God.

But when we are grieved by our sin, it's actually proof that we belong to God.

How beautiful is that.

That you're adopted, that you're a son.

And the passage concludes by saying, you're no longer a slave, but a son.

And if a son, then an heir through God.

I want you to notice something.

All throughout this text, it says that we're sons.

It keeps specifying sons.

We receive adoption as sons.

We have the Holy Spirit, so we are sons of God.

Why specifically adopted as sons?

Why would he have to specify that?

It's not a male or a female thing.

We already clarified that.

He said there's no male or female.

Everyone's one in Christ.

We all have the same standing.

That word, the son, is very important to understanding this passage.

In the Roman world, a son was the only child who could receive the Father's inheritance.

In fact, it was common that if someone didn't have a son, if he only had daughters, he would adopt a son so that the household would carry on.

So when Paul says Christ redeemed us from the law, that he paid the price for our sins so that we could be adopted as sons, what he's saying is that we've been given sonship.

We've been given an inheritance.

So the question then becomes, well, what's the inheritance?

What do we get?

What are we inheriting?

He says it twice.

Verse 29, he says, if you are in Christ, you are heirs according to promise.

Then he says it again.

If you have the Spirit, you're a son.

If you're a son, you're an heir.

What are we entitled to as an heir?

It's not just taking the tackling the elephant in the room here.

It's not stuff.

It's not material possessions.

It's not a healthy and wealthy life.

If you hear someone telling you that, you know, if you're in Jesus, all of your dreams come true and you're never sick again, run the other way.

That's a lie.

That's not what the Bible teaches.

Instead, Paul here is pointing us to an eternal reward.

He's saying, if you are a son of God, you have an inheritance that is waiting for you.

You have eternal life.

It has been secured in Christ Jesus.

1 Peter 1:6 puts it this way: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Peter 1:6

According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you.

This inheritance that we get from God, it isn't earthly.

It's kept in heaven for us.

It is eternal and perishable.

It means it won't degrade.

It lasts forever.

It's undefiled.

There's no sin in our inheritance.

It's unfading.

It's glorious, and its glories will last forever.

What is this reward?

It's God Himself.

He is our inheritance.

The good news of the gospel is that we get to be called sons of God and we get to spend an eternity as sons of God and right relationship with our Creator, our marvelous, glorious, gigantic creator, infinite creator.

In him there are pleasures that span the whole world a thousand times over.

His worth is incomprehensible to us.

Through Christ, we have been given a new relationship with our Heavenly Father.

You're an heir to the promises of God.

This means that you have an eternal hope.

Means that you will spend an eternity with your Creator and He will satisfy your soul more than anything else could.

The pleasures of this world are fleeting.

They die.

They perish.

God does not.

He is eternal.

And through Christ, we have him as our inheritance.

Let's pray.

God, we thank you so much for your graciousness.

Thank you for your goodness.

Because of your great mercy and love, you have secured our adoption as your sons.

God, you not only paid the price for our sin through the perfect life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

God, you also brought us into your family.

God, we trust you.

We pray that you would sustain us, you would fix our eyes on you, that as we go throughout this life, we would remember that we are heirs to a great inheritance, and that by your power we are being kept for that inheritance.

So in your name we pray.

Amen.