Galatians 4:1-7 - Adoption

As I said, church, we are in Galatians.

Galatians is about God's people being saved by God's grace through faith in Christ and not by works.

And in chapter two, Paul expounds on the doctrine of justification.

So chapter one, he kind of says his credentials, while he's an authority as an apostle.

Chapter two, he expounds on what justification means and how it happens, how we're made right with God.

He then explains the purpose of the law and how it reveals our sin and our need for a savior.

And that God gave Abraham a promise, a covenant with him, saying that from you I'll make many people, but from you will come an offspring who will redeem my people.

And then in chapter 3, he again lovingly rebukes the churches in Galatia for falling into this false teaching that they are saved by adding on to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

That the work of Christ was not sufficient.

Then he begins chapter four with identifying and clarifying this idea that those who are in Christ are heirs.

And we're gonna begin reading in chapter 3, verse 27.

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 or female, for you are all in Christ Jesus.

And if you are in Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to 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 a date set by his father.

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

But when the fullness of time had come and 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 forth, 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 passage in Galatians is a picture of adoption for those who have Christ Jesus.

Again, there was some confusion going on for this church about how you're saved, how you're justified, how you're made right with God.

The false teachers are saying, listen, we we take Christ and we're Christians, but we have to add into that parts of the old covenant.

It's not just Christ alone through faith.

We have to add to that.

And he's speaking and saying, no, no, no.

This is a picture of being adopted in.

What you were before is a slave.

You're like a minor, a child.

But then you've been freed from those things.

You've been brought into the family.

We're not only justified by the work of Christ on the cross, made right with God, but we are adopted into God's family.

There's a wonderful, robust Baptist confession, the 1689 Baptist confession, which wonderfully puts this in chapter 12 on adoption, this idea that God has adopted us.

And it says, God has granted that all those who are justified would receive the grace of adoption in and for the sake of his only Son, Jesus Christ.

For by this they were counted among the children of God, and enjoyed the freedom and privileges of that relationship.

They inherit His name, receive the spirit of adoption, have access to the throne of grace with boldness, and are enabled to cry, Abba Father.

They are given compassion, protected, provided for, and chastened by Him as a Father.

Yet they are never cast off, but are sealed for the day of redemption, and inherit the promises as heirs of an everlasting salvation.

This is what it means to be adopted into God's family.

Paul begins this passage with an analogy about sons with a promise.

He begins this in verse 1.

I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave.

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

So he begins this analogy, this passage with this analogy, sharing how, listen, you you might be an heir, but you're like a child under the law.

Essentially a slave.

You might inherit all of this one day, but it doesn't really matter because in this state, you still have these guardians over you, these managers over you.

You're not free to enjoy what is yours.

You're much more like a slave.

Now, Paul gets more into this in in verse 4 as well, this issue of timing.

But verse 3 says, in the same way, we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.

Now, what does Paul mean by elementary principles of this world?

There's a lot of commentary on this, and there's several different views.

Some people think that this means like the elements of the earth, like air, wind, and fire.

Some people think it means angelic beings, angels, and also demons.

Some people think it just means the gods of the age.

But either way, it's something that the people are enslaved to.

And you think about our own life.

What are the things that enslave us?

Well, if we're honest, it's things that we tend to put in the place of God.

Things that are not designed to be worshipped.

Things that we shouldn't be looking to for salvation or for fulfillment or joy, but we have these things and we put them in this place that is only for God.

And then we're enslaved by them.

And this is what the elementary principles of the world enslave us.

Comfort, wealth, consumerism, popularity or acceptance can all become things that we're enslaved to.

Because apart from Christ, we're looking to those things to bring us some kind of salvation.

The great theologian John Stott begins to point out how just as a father entrusted his child into a guardian, that guardian might abuse that child and terrorize that child.

That's not the father's intent, but that's what the guardian does.

He then goes on to explain how Satan has taken the law and twisted it.

Listen to what John Stott says.

God intended the law to reveal sin and to drive men to Christ.

Satan uses it to reveal sin and drive men to despair.

God meant the law as an interim step to man's justification.

Satan uses it as the final step to his condemnation.

God meant the law to be a stepping stone to liberty.

Satan uses it as a stumbling block to bondage.

You're familiar with the analogy of a hamster on a wheel.

Skits on there, goes, and goes, doesn't get anywhere.

All the effort, it goes, it doesn't get anywhere.

Round and round.

This is an example of the law.

You're submitting to it, you're trying to be obedient to it, you're trying to do everything it tells you to do.

You're following all the all the rituals, all the holy days, all the dietary things.

You're doing the thing.

But your heart is not changed.

You've been going to church for years.

You've been sitting in Bible studies for years.

You've been doing what you're supposed to do for years.

But you're looking, I should say, if you're looking to that work to do something supernatural in you, it will fail.

You'll be weary.

Your heart will wither up, and you will begin to be bitter.

Bitterness sows into our heart when we try to yield to the law and do salvation with the law.

Paul is good and gracious to remind us and to remind the churches in Galatians that they're under something.

That's the beauty of the law.

It reminds us we're under something.

We need liberated from this.

Dr.

Tom Schreiner points out that Paul constantly depicts the power of sin with under phrases in Galatians.

Those who are under the law in verses 23 and verses 4.

Under a curse, chapter 3, 10, under sin, under a custodian or a guard, under the elements of the world.

Sin has placed people under its tyranny and misery.

This is what the law reveals.

There's two things that we can do with that.

We can run to Christ, the grace and the mercy that He provides.

Or we can begin to adopt a performance mindset.

I gotta keep the performance up.

We gotta try, we gotta do better, we gotta be better.

And that's the only way to grow spiritually.

It's like you when you're just spinning your wheels.

Why have I not been coming to church?

Why am I not overcoming this sin?

Why am I still a part of the sin?

Why does it still have a grasp on my life?

Do you hate it?

Do you hate your sin?

Are you crying out to God to deliver you from your sin?

Are you just expecting, if I can just do the right things, then I will get the right results?

If I can just put enough safety stuff on my computer, if I can just not go to the wrong places, and if I can just keep away from those people, if I can do, do, do, do, then I'll experience life.

Now all those things aren't bad, those are wise things to do, but you cannot put them in place and do those things expecting those things to change your heart.

Christ alone changes the heart.

God has been working a plan to redeem his people, and he has to reveal to them listen, you are children of promise.

As I covenant with Abraham, and I will bring you, adopt you into my family.

And there is this exchange that we experience a salvation from slavery.

Look when at verse 4.

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.

So again, we have this idea of this fullness of time, going back to the analogy that Paul used about a father when the time was right.

So when the fullness of time came, God sent forth his son.

People want to know why did Jesus come when he came?

Why didn't Jesus come, like why didn't he wait and come now?

I mean, we live in this technology age, and like it seems like his ministry would have just been much more influential, and there would have been a lot more ways to reach people, or why did he why did he wait 400 years?

Why didn't he come 400 years earlier?

These are all questions that guess what?

We don't have the answer to.

And to be honest, we don't need the answer to these questions.

We trust in a sovereign and good God, that his timing is perfect.

He was born of a woman, born under the law.

This born of a woman isn't referring to the virgin birth, but rather to the deity or to the humanity of Christ.

That he came as God and as man.

That God the Father sent God the Son by a woman and under the law.

Under the law, like we are, like you are, without Christ, under the law.

Why?

To redeem those who were under the law, so that they might receive adoption as sons.

This idea of Christ coming for us, fulfilling the law.

Because this is what he said.

He said, I didn't come to abolish it, but to fulfill it.

How did he fulfill it?

Because he was born under the law and he kept the law perfectly.

And you know how Jesus Christ kept the law perfectly?

One, he did everything the law commanded perfectly.

He did all the all the doing things of the law, he did.

And that was the only standard that the Pharisees and the Jews had.

Keep the law meant to behave this way.

But what did Christ do?

He behaved that way.

But what did he do?

He worshipped God with his obedience.

He had a heart that longed to obey out of a heart that longed to worship him.

It wasn't about just keeping a commandment, it was about obeying the Father and living in a way that brings life.

And it seems like the Pharisees just completely missed this element in the false teachers that Paul's writing to and dealing with.

They miss this element.

Even if your desire was to find salvation by obeying the law, and even if, hypothetically, you could keep all the doings of the law, your heart cannot worship God as it should.

You're stuck.

So you need a savior.

So Christ came born under the law to redeem.

Come to bring those who were far off to him, those who had tried to live under the law.

Those who had tried to do the doing thing, and those who had just forsaken all those things and done their own thing.

We get a picture of this in Luke chapter 15, with the story of the prodigal son.

Luke 15 · chapter mention

If you're familiar, there's two sons, and the father's two sons, and the younger son says, Hey, I want my inheritance now.

So the father sells half of everything he has and gives it to the second son.

And he goes out and he just does whatever he wants to do.

He lives for himself.

He blows all of his inheritance.

He's got nothing monetarily left what his father gave him.

Ends up poor, destitute, hired by a farmer to feed the pigs in the field.

He's not even allowed to eat the pig's food.

Can you imagine a Jew whose job it was to feed and take care of pigs?

It doesn't get any lower than that.

And he finally realizes I can at least go back to my father's house and be hired as a servant.

Or be a slave to him.

I'm not worthy of being a son, but I can at least go be a slave under him.

And he goes back to his father, and his father sees him and embraces him.

And before his son can say, Can I be a slave?

Can I just be a slave in your house?

His father says, You are my son.

You will receive all of the inheritance I have, you will have.

He brings him in, he gives him his coat, and he fattens the calf, and they celebrate.

The son who is far off has returned.

There was no confusion for the father of the identity of his son.

There was confusion for the son.

He just wanted to, I'll be a slave.

I just, whatever.

The father restored him to sonship.

But then there is the older brother.

And I want us to see this.

The older brother's response.

He's the lawkeeper.

He's done it right.

He knows the law.

He's done the right thing.

Did it produce in him a heart of joy and mercy?

No.

It produced a heart of bitterness and hatred.

How dare you give to the son who desecrated your name and stole your wealth?

I've been here working, I've kept the law.

Where's my respect and inheritance?

The older son didn't care about those things.

And as Christ was teaching this to the Pharisees, these were the Pharisees.

They weren't excited that Christ had come to bring salvation to the nations.

They weren't excited that God was working plans of salvation for those who were lost.

They wanted to be acknowledged as law keepers.

Those who fulfilled the law, as if that could bring salvation.

Those who thought they were free by keeping the law were slaves to it.

And their hearts were bitter and wicked and without God.

But for those who God has redeemed, he's also given them the Spirit, the Holy Spirit.

Look in verse 6.

And because you are sons, God sent forth 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.

And this all the reality of the rest of verse 6 and 7 hinges on the first phrase.

Because you are sons of God, because, because Christ came as a sinless, perfect son, atoning for your sins and redeemed you back from slavery, you are sons.

You've been given the Holy Spirit by which you can cry, Abba Father.

Because you are far off, and Christ brought you back.

Christ is the good older brother, responding appropriately, rejoicing, celebrating, partaking in your redemption.

One commentator put it this way God's purpose was not simply to secure our sonship by his son, but to assure us of our, to assure us of sonship by his spirit.

He didn't just secure our salvation by Christ, but he then gives us the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit in us.

God gives us Himself.

He redeemed us through the work of Christ on the cross.

He adopts us as his children, gives us the Holy Spirit.

That changes our desires and affections.

It takes our hearts that worshiped other things.

Hearts that were enslaved to the elementary principles of this world.

Hearts that wanted nothing to do with God.

That at one point was an enemy of God.

He takes that.

And he puts a new heart in us by which we cry, Abba Father.

Abba is the Aramaic word for father.

This isn't as formal as it is in our culture.

I'm Will's father, but Will never comes and says, Father.

So it's not a formal word, but it's also not a trite word or a light and pithy word like daddy.

I love it when Will calls me daddy.

But the word daddy is childish, it's immature.

That's why he uses it.

So when we cry Abba, Father, there is a rich declaration of this closeness and the seriousness that we have with God the Father.

He is God, created all things, and he is our Father.

The only way you can believe in both those things is if the Holy Spirit works that into your heart.

You cannot naturally just come like, yeah, God created all things, and he's my father.

That makes sense.

It doesn't work that way.

One person said the only person who dare wake up a king at 3 a.m.

for a cup of water is his child.

That's the reality.

That's the closeness.

That's the intimacy we have.

We're not holding back, saying, well, he's got more important things to do.

He's got bigger things to care about than my needs, or that I have this little thing.

But rather, we are invited in.

Come, come to me, come to me with all of your cares and all of your needs.

For I'm not just a father, I am the Father.

I'm the loving Father.

I am love.

There's no more pure display of love for us than when we see the love in the Trinity of God.

We're not invited to become part of the Trinity.

We are invited to come and be a part of God's family.

When our hearts cry out, it reveals what we worship.

When our hearts cry out, it reveals what we worship.

Are we crying out to God the Father?

Our mouths can say all kinds of things.

Our words can be formulated to say all kinds of things.

But what our heart cries is what we believe.

It's where we're really at.

It's who we are.

What is a Christian?

He asks.

A Christian is one who has God as his father.

If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much they make of being God's child.

If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity and their faith, find out how much they make of being God's child.

Because the reality is, as verse 7 says, You're no longer a slave, but a son.

And not just anyone's son, but God's son.

An heir through him.

And so with this phrase, this verse 7, Paul returns to what he said in verse 29 of chapter 3.

And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring.

Heirs according to promise.

Some people who've put their faith in Christ.

They're seeking after the things of the Lord.

They're pulled, they're drawn to still live like a slave.

There are others who are just still under this enslavement.

They have not cried out to the Lord for salvation, they've not sought out Jesus Christ, put their faith in him, repented of their sin, followed after him.

But I want to remind you, if you are not a Christian, and I want to remind you this morning, if you are a Christian, you are not created to be lawkeepers.

You are not created to be lawkeepers.

You are created to be worshipers.

You are created to worship the Lord.

There's no joy in being enslaved to the things of the world.

There might be fun there for a season, for a moment, but it's poison.

There is joy in Christ and in Christ alone.

Only in Christ is there true life.

Only by understanding this and trusting Jesus Christ as your Lord and your Savior, turning from your sin, following after Him, can you experience this.

That the thing you were made to do, to worship God, you can now do.

Apart from salvation, you cannot worship Him.

Apart from salvation, a regeneration of the heart and the soul, you cannot worship God.

You can just worship the things of the world.

Worship yourself.

It's empty and it is dead.

So just as Christ came and his death on the cross was sufficient for our salvation.

And just as those who are in Christ have been redeemed and adopted in, it is so that we may enjoy him and worship him, forsaking the things of the world, no longer enslaved to those things.

For we are children who cry out to our Father.

Cry out to him because he is our Father.

Let us pray.

God, we pray this morning for those who are here who do not know you as their Lord.

Father, you are not their Father.

Pray that they would see their sin, the emptiness of it, the futility of it, just the darkness of it.

That they would see how good you are, that you bring life, and that your forgiveness covers all things.

You redeem us from all of our sin.

I pray that they would repent and believe, trust in you, that you would give them new life.

Pray for those who are here, Lord, who are believers, the church, that you would build them up in their faith, that we would read this, and that, Holy Spirit, you'd be working this truth into our hearts that we are your children.

It's by your power in us, Holy Spirit, that we can cry out to you, God.

And that we would cry out, that we would fight sin, that we would love one another well, that we would bear one another's burdens, pointing one another to you, fixing our eyes on you.

Oh Lord, we will have our eyes fixed on you for eternity.

What great joy in that.

That no matter the trials that are ahead, the things, the difficulties that come, that our eyes will be fixed on you.

We praise you for this, Jesus.

We thank you.

Amen.