Galatians: You Are Heir Through God

So there was a great band in the 1960s and 70s, rock and roll band out of England.

They're called The Who.

Is anybody a The Who fan?

Do we have any Who fans?

A few of you.

There was this song in 1973.

It was written as part of their rock opera album in 1973.

And there was this song called The Real Me.

Does anybody know The Real Me?

Is anybody familiar with it?

Okay, Pearl Jam covered it in the 90s.

And that was kind of interesting too because it like 20 years or so passed, and you know, this incredibly huge band at the time, Pearl Jam, still a huge band.

They cop they covered it, and still this song is still relevant today, and people talk about this song even today.

It's been about 45 years.

Now, why would Pearl Jam cover a 20-year-old song by a rock and roll band out of England?

Why would we still talk about this song and people know this song today 45 years later?

It can feel kind of uh obscure, right?

45-year-old song, rock and roll band out of England.

And it's because this song resonates, this idea of the real me just keeps resonating.

And so the song is about this boy named Jimmy.

And Jimmy goes to a psychiatrist, he goes to his mother, and he goes to a preacher.

And he goes to each of them, he's trying to figure out, hey, like, do you know, can you see, can you see the real me?

And he's getting more and more frustrated with each of these people.

And finally the song just sort of concludes, just him crying out, can you see the real me preacher?

Can you see the real me doctor?

Can you see the real me mother?

Can you see the real me?

And we know what Jimmy's feeling.

Right?

We know what Jimmy's feeling.

He's feeling like, who, like, who am I?

Underneath, right?

Underneath everything we put on, who am I?

Underneath job or school or friendships or romance or not romance or religiosity or not being religious.

I mean, who are we at our at our core?

Who are we?

And it's easy to live life unsure of that.

It's easy to play a role in life with no foundation, and then to blow your life up three years later, five years later.

My hope this morning is for us to enter into some contemplation about this.

That you will contemplate with me, dare to kind of go under deep inside, underneath performance and roles and all that, into just who are you, apart from all of that and all the other stuff that we layer upon it.

And this is what St.

Paul is trying to get these Galatians to do, because this church in Galatia, we've been talking about this church in this letter.

These people knew the grace of Jesus, the grace of God.

They knew it.

They knew that their rightness with God was secured by Jesus' work, and then they reverted back to performing religious merit as to feel right with God.

And Paul is blown away, and he's writing trying to get them set straight, and he's been breaking down, telling them the grace of God, breaking down the inadequacy of law for their lives, and saying Jesus fulfilled the law, and then just coming to them saying, like, hey, here's your identity.

You're children of God by grace.

So chapter 3, verse 25, but now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.

We talked about that last week.

Guardian means schoolmaster.

You can listen to last week.

I don't need to repeat that.

Verse 26, for in Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God through faith.

And point number one is this, we have a few points to work our way through the passage.

Point number one is this, we've talked about this all the time.

Your identity is given, not earned.

See, we keep trying to live life by addition.

If I add something else, then I'll be somebody.

I'm not okay right now, not today.

I need to add some, I need life by addition.

And if I add her or add him or add that, or add whatever it is, you fill in the blank, and then I'll be somebody.

I'll be okay.

We can make it religious.

I don't feel adequate as a child of God, therefore, well, if I add this duty or this merit, then I'll be, then I'll be right with God.

Then finally I'll be right with God.

And Paul says, no, no, no, no, no, no.

You aren't a slave to that anymore.

You're you're a child.

He says, you're a son.

So Paul presents a life of subtraction, right?

He's trying to strip us back to the core self, to who we are by grace, by the grace of Christ alone.

Now that word son, he uses it over and over and over again.

It's not gender bias of the Bible.

Actually, it's kind of the opposite.

He's writing to men and women, and he's saying, you are sons, and at the time, a son would be the one receiving the inheritance.

So he's coming to a group of men and women, and he's saying, Hey, all of you are heirs.

All of you share in this wealth of identity and position with God.

A few months ago, a friend of ours in Atlanta, her and her husband are friends, they adopted a baby.

Their sixth child.

And so they adopted their baby, and one night Christy and I dropped in on them to see this new baby, and we get there because that's what friends do, right?

Drop in on your friends while they're getting all their children ready for bed.

We drop in at bedtime, is when we drop in on them.

And so they have been returning our phone calls, but, anyways, the point is we show up and we just want to see the baby, right?

Like we just want the baby.

That's the thing we want.

And so we get there, and one of the biological children is holding the adopted little boy and feeding her, feeding him, and just the cute and mom's over here making lunches.

All the other kids are upstairs getting ready for bed, all on their own.

You can hear that going on upstairs.

Eventually, Christy gets the little baby boy away from the little girl.

Christy just rips the baby out of her hands and she goes, she cries, heads off.

And this little this little boy, right?

This is what's so beautiful about adoption.

And this is the image here in this passage.

He's a little baby.

He has no resume.

He's really unimpressive if we stack him up in the world.

I mean, he he eats, he poops, he sleeps, he looks cute sometimes, and he cries a lot, right?

I mean, this is this is his existence.

And yet, because a family chose to love him, he is a child in their family.

Nothing else, no other reason.

Because he is loved, he is a child.

No other reason.

Right?

I mean, here verse 26 at that point, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons, heirs.

You are all heirs of God.

Then we jump to verse 27.

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

This idea of have put on Christ is the image of clothing, it's the image of being clothed and covered.

So, how many of you, confession time, are tidying up with Marie Kondo?

Is anybody else?

We talked about it last week.

Just raise your hand.

Go ahead.

Get up.

I want.

How many of you are against it?

You're like, I hate it.

I don't want to.

All right, so we all know this feeling though.

You go in your closet, you look at a pair of old jeans, right?

And you look at them and you pull them out, and you look at them, and maybe they're they're baggy jeans, or maybe they're slim jeans, or whatever, they're the opposite of what you like now, and you look at them and you go, Oh, I can't believe I wore these.

You show them to your roommate or your spouse, and you go, Can you believe I wore?

I can't believe I wore these.

That's so silly of me.

And you you put them in the goodwill pile and you're gonna take them and give them.

But there's nothing wrong with the jeans, right?

There's no hole in them, there's nothing wrong with them, except at some point, somehow, you moved on from this pair of jeans.

But you loved them at some point.

Well, what happened?

What happened?

Well, here's what happened.

This is what happens to me.

You're wearing those jeans, you're very happy.

Slowly you see a couple people wearing a different pair of jeans that look different, and then more people start to wear different jeans, and then more people, and then you look down and you go, I don't, I don't match that, and then suddenly you don't like these jeans, which you used to like.

I used to like them too, and then suddenly you don't like them anymore, so you go buy a different pair of jeans, right?

So that's what we do.

Right?

And this is our way of signaling, right?

This is this is our way, and that's the point.

Our clothing usually often becomes a uniform that we signal to each other.

And we all do this, even if you don't like clothing, right?

You go, I don't like clothing.

I would never do that.

Well, you're signaling that you don't do that.

That's what you're signaling.

Like, you know, I don't care, is what you're signaling.

So, whatever's important to us or not important to us, we we do signal that with our with our clothing.

And God does not see all that vanity we do in that area or any other area.

And isn't that good news?

Because we are signaling constantly with all sorts of things when it comes to identity.

And he didn't see any of that.

Because we are covered, we are clothed in Christ.

What a secure identity amidst a world, amidst us who are changing genes every few years, just because we see a group of people slowly wearing different genes.

Christ is our clothing, which is saying he is our covering, secure covering.

This leads us into verses 28 and 29.

Takes us kind of a deeper into this thought.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there's no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus, and if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise.

So there is right there, we see that in verse 29, right?

You're Christ.

How are you, Christ?

Well, you're Christ because a promise, because of because of grace to you.

Point number two is this your identity can become your secure viewing deck.

That's kind of metaphorical, I'll break that down for you.

But your identity can become your secure viewing deck.

Last summer, our family, our little family, went and visited the rest of our family in Seattle.

One day we went to the Seattle Space Needle.

We got our tickets, we get in line, long line, we're working our way up this ramp that kind of wraps around the base of the Space Needle along the way.

They entertain you with these billboards with information about the Space Needle.

At first, they tell you in 1962, it was built for the World's Fair, you get a little history in this, you're okay, okay.

And then 600 feet tall, you're looking up at it.

I started getting a little nervous.

I like escape routes, like, how do I get out of here?

How do I get my family out of here?

There's no out really visible, 600 feet in the air, a little needle.

And then the next uh billboard said it can withstand a 9.1 earthquake.

I could have done without it.

I hadn't even thought about earthquake.

Like that was a whole new, like, oh, I didn't I didn't consider that.

Thanks.

That's great information at this point.

But then you get to some other information, all of a sudden everything starts to sort of like like relieve and settle down.

You learn the concrete foundation of the space needle, the the foundation at the base, that concrete they poured into the earth, weighs the same as the entire structure going up into the air, which makes the center of gravity of the entire structure five feet off the ground.

Now, I'm not an engineer, but that feels very good to me, right?

That feels good, that feels safe, five feet feels safe.

And then you learn there's 72 bolts, four inches thick, that connect that structure into that foundation.

That felt good to me.

I figure we could lose a few bolts and we're still be okay.

So up we go.

Got this foundation connecting the foundation, feeling good about this, up we go.

We get up there, and they're replacing what to me felt like a very safe method of viewing with these just sheets of glass from the floor to the ceiling.

No bar, like I need a bar, I like a, you know, something between me and this glass, and you can sit and lean up against the glass, which I was not gonna do that.

All my children are doing this great, right?

But up there from the viewing deck, all of a sudden something was possible that wasn't possible when we were walking the streets of Seattle, and that was we could see Mount Rainier to the south.

We could see out to the San Juan Islands, we could see over Elliott Bay, we could see all over the Amazon headquarter campus right there in Seattle.

Like all of a sudden, we could see stuff, we gain new sight that we couldn't see from below.

And this is the point of your adoption, and this is the point of you being clothed in Christ.

You have a foundation greater than your performance, and you have a lens to see yourself, to see other people, and to see the world from a very secure place.

And then verse 28 says, hey, you don't have to label people.

There's no Jew, there's no Greek, there's no slave-free male, female, clerk, CEO, black, white, Canadian, Mexican, East Cobb, West Cobb, downtown Marietta.

We don't have to go around doing that.

We don't have to label one person to make ourselves feel more superior than them.

We don't have to do that.

Because you can see deeper.

Once you come into contact with the security of your, the wealth of your identity in Jesus, you can see deeper into other people without having to limit them for you to feel more righteous.

Because you know something.

You know that we are all these things in some way.

We have roles and we have uh we have race, we have cultures.

But we're deeper than those things.

We're all one in Christ Jesus.

Last section of verses, verses four through seven.

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those 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.

Point number three is this the source of your identity, which is Christ, the source of your identity becomes your power source for freedom and transformation.

The source of your identity, Christ, becomes the power source for freedom and transformation.

Steve Brown, a seminary professor and author who I love to quote, he wrote an article, Freedom Costs, but freedom has its rewards.

He wrote these, he wrote a whole handful of like bullet points.

I picked out four.

The free Christian finds that he or she is living a life of progressive sanctification, not because he or she has to, but because a joyous response to love.

The free Christian is no longer living in constant fear of other people, of being discovered, of failing, or of making a mistake.

The free Christian is no longer haunted by an overwhelming sense of guilt.

Guilt is replaced by the realization of being acceptable to God.

The free Christian is shed of empty religion, of meaningless acts of piety.

He or she doesn't have to pretend to be a Christian anymore.

See, Brown, Steve Brown, he deeply believes what Paul's saying and what we get to proclaim, and that is that Jesus fulfilled every law, every bit of righteousness that we should do, and yet we don't always do it.

And that's enough for you.

That's our sin being put upon the cross, the righteousness of Jesus be given to us, and we live in that great grace of Christ, and that frees the heart.

And once the heart is free, then the heart can begin to produce change in our lives from the inside out.

And that's why the contemplative life matters.

It's because it's not you earning something that you don't already have, it's you remembering and resting in that which you already have.

It's already there in Jesus.

And it is rich and it is incredible for you.

And the contemplative life is us coming into that to remember and rest in it.

Verse 6 says, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba Father.

So the Spirit of God is in you, helping you believe, proclaiming in you and over you, Abba Father.

I love this term.

We see it a few times.

Paul uses it twice, Jesus uses it once.

Abba means Papa.

It has the idea of unreasoning trust.

And then father means an intelligent apprehension of that relationship.

So you put these two things together and you get this idea of an unreasoning trust and an Abba and a Papa, and yet as we grow in grace, we're growing in the intelligent understanding of that Papa's character.

Author Brendan Manning, he wrote a great book years ago called Abba's Child.

And he wrote this, we'll close with this quote The gospel proclaims a hidden power in the world, the living presence of the risen Christ.

It liberates men and women from the slavery that obscures them, the image and likeness of God.

And then he writes, Define yourself radically as one beloved by God.

This is the true self.

Every other identity is illusion.

My brothers and sisters, God being your Abba Father, makes you beloved.

Every other identity is illusion.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you for the grace of Christ.

That our identity as a child of God is secure even while we walk around this world trying to form an identity in religion and also in the world.

Forgive us for all the ways that we walk away from, forget, dismiss, rebel against.

The identity of being followers of Jesus and your children.

And yet, for those of us who have placed faith in you, by your grace, we are always that.

Father, there's some of us in this room that have been trying to form identities for a long time.

And we are at the end of our rope.

And God, would you call them home to you this morning?

For most of us, we just simply keep wandering about.

And would you, by your grace, increase our faith in how good you are and how rich we are and the identity we have as your children?

Help us to see all the illusions that we are buying into about who we are and help us to rest and remember in greater ways that we are your children, your heirs.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.