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THE GOOD NEWS OF GOD'S GRACE TURNS SLAVES INTO SONSGalatians 4:1-7INTRODUCTION All of us either know people or are aware of people who have escaped from some bad habit like drunkenness or drug addiction or indebtedness or over eating only to have them fall back into their old destructive lifestyles. Or perhaps we’ve heard of or know of a woman who left an abusive husband or boyfriend but now she’s returned to the man without any evidence that he has changed. Most of us have a hard time understanding how people can return to situations or lifestyles that were so destructive, especially after they have experienced the freedom and joy of sobriety or normal relationships. When we find out about these kinds of things we are dumbfounded, befuddled, mystified why someone would prefer such misery. If we know and love those who have fallen back into destructive lifestyles we will seek to persuade them to leave behind the misery and adopt a better way of living. We will do this by seeking to enable them to understand how bad their situation is and by showing them how much better things could be. In many ways this is exactly what the apostle Paul is doing in his letter to the churches of Galatia. The false teachers have told these professing Christians that they need to obey the OT laws if they are going to live like Christians and make it to heaven. As we’ve seen Paul is befuddled that they would abandon Christ and choose to live under the dictatorship of the law. If you just look a couple of verses past our text for this morning you can see one of those expressions of his exasperation. Read 4:9-10. However, not only has Paul expressed his frustration but also he has been seeking to show them that living under the authority of the law is a life of misery. He’s done this by showing how the law, rather than saving a person, only condemns and imprisons people in sin more deeply. He has shown that the law was temporary in that it was given to reveal Christ and now that Christ has come we don’t need the law in that way anymore. However, not only has he shown them the negative qualities of a life lived under the authority of the law but he has also shown them how great Christ is and the life that he offers. He is out to show the glory and beauty of Christ and his gospel so they will abandon this effort at law keeping. He is out to show that Christ is a superior treasure, a better savior than the law keeping in which the false teachers are seeking to engage them. In our passage today he is using a powerful contrast to seek to persuade these professing Christians that their allegiance should be to Christ and nothing else. He is out to convince them and us that the coming of Jesus Christ into the world is the best thing that ever happened and thus Jesus should be at the center of our attention and our affections. MAIN POINT We should regard the coming of Jesus Christ as the best thing that ever occurred because…I. All humans are helpless slaves (vv. 1-3) In verse 1 Paul picks up on the language he has just been using to make a different point than the one he made in 3:26-29. In vv. 26-29 he has emphatically proven that every Christian shares equally in all the benefits that Christ has won for us without any regard for the racial, social, legal, political, or sexual differences that exist among us. We are all equally sons of God, clothed with Christ, one in Christ and heirs of the promises made to Christ. Then he makes this comment, that when an heir is still a child, he is really no different than a slave, even though he owns the whole estate. How is the heir who is a child no different than a slave? Just like a slave he is ruled over by guardians and trustees until the time his father sets. In other words, an heir, like a slave, can’t make any decisions regarding the disposition of the property. He cannot give orders to the servants of his father’s household but rather he is the one who must follow the directions and orders of others, just like a slave. This is a temporary condition, because he is an heir of the estate and there will come a time when his father will remove the guardians and trustees and he will become a partner in managing the estate with his father. In both Jewish and Roman culture there were formal/legal ceremonies that sons went through at which time they were considered adults with all the rights and responsibilities of adulthood. Our high school graduation ceremonies are probably the closest thing to the cultural practices at that time. In Jewish and Roman culture it was at these ceremonies that the children were set free from the oversight of guardians and gained the privileges of being the heir to their father’s estate. That is the word picture that Paul paints. Now in v. 3 he applies the word picture to the spiritual reality we live in. He says, “So also, when we were children, we were in slavery under the basic principles of the world.” The fist question we have to ask is who is the “we” referring to? Is Paul only referring to “we Christians who are of Jewish decent”? I don’t think he can be referring to just Jewish Christians for two reasons. First, the entire word picture is based upon 3:26-29, which is referring to all Christians, Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female. Second, Paul explains what he means by the phrase, “in slavery to the basic principles of the world” in vv. 8-10 and he is talking about the worship of false gods, not keeping Jewish laws. The point that Paul is making in v. 3 is this: every Christian, prior to their conversion to Christ was chosen by God to be one of his sons. Ephesians 1:4-5 says, “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ according to his pleasure and will.” As far as God is concerned we are his elect children prior to conversion and thus we are heirs. However, prior to conversion we are children who are like slaves in that we are under guardians and trustees until that time when the father decides to make us into sons. Spiritually, who or what do the guardians and trustees represent? If you’ll look at the end of v. 3 you will see that the metaphor actually changes and intensifies. Paul says, not just that we are children who are like slaves but that we actually are slaves to the “basic principles of the world.” The guardians and trustees are, “the basic principles of this world.” What are these “basic principles of the world” to which all humans outside of Christ are enslaved? Paul is not primarily thinking about sin at this point. In Romans 6 he says numerous times that outside of Christ all humans are slaves to sin. However, that is not what he is thinking about here. In vv. 8-10 it is the slavery to the false worship of false gods. The Galatians who were Gentiles, worshipped the idols of the Greek gods. They celebrated feast days to Zeus and Aphrodite and the other gods, all of whom were represented by idols in massive temples. All false worship of false gods is full of regulations and commands. However, he’s not just thinking about Gentile idolatry with this term. In v. 5 he says that Christ came to redeem those “under the law,” which is a clear reference to law keeping Jewish people. Thus he would say that a law abiding Jew was also enslaved to the “basic principles of the world.” Therefore, it seems most likely to me that these “basic principles of the world” are the man made, false ideas about God, about man, about how to worship God, about how to go to heaven, about how to please God, etc. Every human being who is not trusting in Christ is enslaved by the lies and distortions they believe about God and everything else. All humans, apart from the good news of God’s grace are under the rule and control of false ideas about the nature of reality. Until the father’s set time, we remain under their direction and cannot free ourselves from them. As we heard read earlier, Jesus says that Satan is a liar and the father of lies. Paul in Ephesians 2 says that all human beings “follow the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time gratifying the cravings of the sinful nature…” 1 John 5:19 says, “We know…that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.” (See also 2 Timothy 2:24-26) Ultimately every human who is outside of Christ is a slave of Satan. He holds us in slavery by his lies and deception. We are gullible and willingly believe the lies that he feeds us. We believe that we are able to do things that will make “god”, however we define him, like us. We believe we are free to choose to do those things that will obligate God to us. Many are persuaded that all faiths are equally adequate, that it doesn’t matter what you believe only that you believe. Most believe that we are free to define God as we want, no matter whether our description conforms to the Scriptures or not. However, we are not free. Our supposed freedom is only slavery. We are enslaved by the lies and deceptions that are common among all men. What is most astonishing about v. 3 is that Paul is saying that the Jewish worship of Yahweh is no different than the Gentile worship of idols. In both cases humans believe that they can make the god like them by performing certain rituals or obeying certain laws. As long as you believe that it is within your power to do something that will make God like you, then you will have no interest in Christ. Christ is a Savior for helpless sinners and slaves, not for free men. Everyone who is seeking to impress God or to please God by obeying laws is a slave and not free. Our slavery is not an unwilling slavery. We naturally believe that we are free and able to do those things, which will obligate God to reward us with heaven. It is the one thing that all human religion holds in common. Whether it’s Judaism or Islam or Hinduism or nominal/formal Christianity or Native American shamanism, all adherents of these various religious systems believe they have the ability to do things that will gain salvation for them. All human religious systems teach that men can save themselves by doing the right things at the right time. All teach that we are able to obligate God to reward us by our good behavior or religious performance. This is the slavery of humanity that Paul is describing in v. 3. We are held captive by the lie that we can manipulate the deity to be kind to us. If you believe that God likes you just fine the way you are or with just a little bit more religious performance, then you are enslaved to Satan and will have no interest in Christ. That is the condition of every human apart from Christ. The coming of Jesus Christ into the world is the best news you will ever hear because…
II. God the Father sent God the Son to make slaves into sons (vv. 4-5) Before we dig into the glory of Christ revealed in the details of vv. 4-5 I want you to get the big picture. The whole world of men has been living, like drug addicts live as willing slaves, as willing slaves to the false worship of false gods. As each new day comes men and women and children get out of their beds and go out into the field of the world in the service of Satan, under his control by believing his lies. We are chained and helpless to escape as we labor in the sweltering mines and disease infested swamps in the service of our great tormenter. But then, one day, a new man arrives and joins in our slavery. He lives in the same conditions, bearing the same miseries our slavery creates; yet he does not obey the commands of our master. He lives as a free man while voluntarily taking on the labor and wretchedness of our condition. He has come in order to free us from our slavery and to make us into free born, adult sons of the ultimate and final ruler of the universe. Does this story sound familiar? This is the plot line to scores of movies and novels. It’s the story of the hero who comes to live among the slaves, the prisoners in order to set them free. Neo lives in the matrix in order to set the human race free from the slavery of the Matrix; Sparticus the slave sets the slaves free from their Roman oppressors; the misfit reindeer, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, saves the misfit toys; the rejected toy, Woody, sets free the tortured toys from the despotic neighbor boy in “Toy Story”. This persistent story line that appears throughout the world’s art and literature exists as an echo of this ultimate and only true story of God sending his Son into the world as a slave to redeem slaves and make them into sons. I want you to see the glory of God and of our Savior Christ that Paul compresses into these two short verses. First notice that the coming of Christ into the world is at the time determined by God the Father. “When the fullness of time came” points back to v. 2 where the heir who is a child becomes an adult heir at “the time set by the father.” We do not live in a random universe where evil men and demons are controlling what happens. We are living in a world that is ruled over by a sovereign God who is working out his perfect plan to redeem all of his people. The birth of Jesus Christ came about in exactly the manner and at the exact time that God determined before the world began. All of the myriad of individual human choices that led to the existence of a virgin named Mary who was engaged to be married to man named Joseph, a descendant of David in the town of Nazareth were determined by God. The Roman Empire with its decree by the emperor Caesar Augustus that all should return to the town of their ancestors to register and pay taxes was decreed by God before the world began. History is “His Story”. God is ruling now as he ruled through those long millennium to bring his son the first time. He is bringing all things to that day when his son will come again, not as a redeemer but as judge and king. When Paul says, “God sent forth his son,” he is telling us that the Son exists prior to his coming. This is just another of the subtle and offhand ways that the NT continually points to the divinity of Christ. He is the eternal Son of God. He did not begin to exist when he was conceived in the womb of the virgin Mary. He existed prior to his coming as the second person of the Trinity. This also points to the submission of the Son to the Father. Our salvation is the result of the mutual love and admiration of God the Father and God the Son. The Father loves the Son and glorifies him by sending him as the Redeemer of his enslaved people. The Son loves the Father and glorifies him by submitting to his will and finishing his work of redeeming his people. But notice that the eternal Son of God did not come in just the fullness of his divinity. He was born of a woman. Thus Paul tells us that the divine Son took on human flesh. As he says in Philippians 2, “Who, being in very nature God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped but made himself nothing, being made (born) in human likeness…” Or as the author to the Hebrews says, “Since the children have flesh and blood he too shared in their humanity… for this reason he had to be made like his brothers in every way…” But this clause, “born of a woman” also connects the coming of Christ to the promises of the OT. It calls to mind the promise God made as he was cursing the serpent for his deception in Genesis 3:15 when he said that the male offspring of the woman would crush the head of the serpent, thus destroying him. Jesus is that male child of the woman who destroys Satan. What an awesome portrait of the glorious God that Paul paints with these few words. God the Son is sent by God the Father, taking on human flesh in order to destroy the despot Satan who holds his people in willing slavery. But also, notice that the divine Son who is born of a woman is also born under the law. The God who wrote the law now submits himself to that law which he gave. However, what it means for the Son of God/Son of Man to be under the law and what it means for us to be under the law are two different things. As Paul has said in chapter three, for us the law condemns us as sinners, decrees that we deserve hell for our sin, provokes us to sin more and reveals to us the promised Savior. For Christ, to be under the law means, he freely and willingly obeys the law perfectly. He loves God and his neighbor every moment of his entire life. He fulfills in his life, death and resurrection every prediction and every foreshadowing contained in the OT regarding the Messiah. But above all, he takes upon himself the curse of the law that is due to us. While he is the only human being who does not deserve to die because he has done nothing deserving death, he freely, for the glory of his father and the love of his people bears the curse due to us for our sins. In this way he redeems all who are under the curse of the law. That is what the first part of v. 5 means. Christ was born of a woman, born under the law for the purpose of redeeming those who are under the curse of the law. No human being has ever obeyed the law and therefore, as Paul said in 3:10, quoting Deuteronomy 27:26, “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the book of the Law.” Every human being, rather than using the life God gave us to pursue our joy in loving him and loving others has spent our God given life seeking other pleasures. We have preferred the pleasures of sin and of this world to the pleasure of knowing and loving God. It is no accident that Paul says that Christ redeems us from under the law. The idea of redemption is very strongly connected to the idea of slavery but in a way that most of us are not familiar with. Much of the slavery that existed in ancient days was economic slavery. Imagine that you are a farmer with about 40 acres of land. You and your wife have three young children. You decide that you want to purchase a team of oxen and buy a new plow to help you till the ground and grow your crops. You don’t have the resources to buy the oxen and plow outright. So you go to a wealthy neighbor and you borrow the money you need to make the purchase and agree to pay him back with 10% of your crops over the next ten years and by giving him the offspring of the oxen each year. You buy the oxen and plow and work your ground and plant your seed but that year there is a severe drought and you get no crops and your oxen die due to no food or water. You and your family barely survive the year. You are in debt to your neighbor and now have no ability to pay what you owe. Therefore, you and your family become the slaves of the wealthy neighbor in order to pay off the debt you owe by your labor. In the economic system of Paul’s day the only way out of your slavery was to have a wealthy relative buy your freedom or redeem you by paying off your debt. That is the condition that every human being is in. We have invested the life God gave us for serving him by serving other gods. We have squandered all the resources he has given us and we have a debt that will take an eternity to repay. Therefore, “when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law in order to redeem those under the law.” But now notice that the ultimate goal of God in sending his son is not simply to free us from our slavery but to make us into sons. Again, as I said last week, Paul is not being a sexist when he keeps referring to all Christians, male and female, as sons. He is using the conditions of his day to show the exalted position of all Christians. Only sons could be heirs of their fathers in the fullest sense of that word. Daughters did not have the right to become full heirs of their father. Therefore, Christ, by redeeming us from the curse of the law which condemns us to eternal slavery sets us free from that slavery and gives us the status of sons who are no longer children but full heirs of our Father with all the rights and privileges of that status. It would be like that indebted farmer having his wealthy uncle not only pay off his debt but legally adopt him as his son and make him a full heir of his so that he would never have to be afraid of going into debt again. We are the sons of the wealthiest being of all, the creator and owner of the entire universe and thus are secure. What better news could you hear than that? The coming of Jesus Christ into the world is the best news you will ever hear because…
III. God sends his Spirit to enable us to live like sons (vv. 6-7) But God did not only send his Son to change our status from that of slaves to sons but he also sent his Holy Spirit to enable us to experience the freedom and joy of that new status in our present life. I don’t want you to fail to notice that it is the great, Triune God who is accomplishing your salvation. God the Father sent God the Son to redeem us from our slavery and make us his sons and he also sends God the Spirit of his Son into our hearts to enable us to live like sons now. What Paul does here is tell us the primary work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. He says that the Holy Spirit who has come into our inner being cries out “Abba, Father.” In Romans 8:15 Paul tells us that the result of the Holy Spirit’s coming into our hearts is that we cry out “Abba, Father.” Which is it? Do we cry out or does the Spirit of his son in us cry out? The beauty is that it is both because the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ, the Son of God who lives in us and who is the new life that enables us to consider God our Father. This is that most amazing of all realities, we, slaves and sinners have become partakers of the divine nature by the work of the Holy Spirit. Thus the Spirit crying out and our crying out are one because our spirit and the Holy Spirit are inseparably and eternally united. What does this mean that we cry out “Abba, Father?” First, the term “Abba” is a word from the Aramaic language, which is the actual language that Jesus spoke. It was his mother tongue. All of the words of Jesus in the gospels are in Greek and are a translation of what he actually said in Aramaic. It is the intimate term for father from the Aramaic language. In our language it would be most similar to our term, “Daddy”. It is the term that Jesus used in addressing God. It is the term that he taught his disciples to use at the beginning of the Lord’s prayer. What is the significance in our lives that we by the Spirit of Christ living in us, cry out “Abba, Father?” To answer that question we are going to think about when young children cry out, “Daddy!” and compare that to when Christ cried out “Abba, Father.” The first thing to note here is that many people claim God as their father but they do not cry out, by the Spirit of the Son, “Abba, Father.” Here is the unfailing evidence that you have a true and living faith in the true and living God. You cry out to God, calling him by the most intimate of names, “Daddy.” On a daily basis my daughter Jaimee cries out, “Daddy!” She does this when I come home from work. It is the expression of her delight in me, her love for me, her desire to be with me. Her cry is almost always followed by, “Let’s go outside and play.” She tells me every night when I put her to bed, “Daddy, I love you.” We see this same affection and delight expressed by Christ in the gospels. In Matthew 11:25 he says, “I praise you Father, Lord of heaven and earth…” In Luke 10:21 we are told that Jesus, “full of joy through the Holy Spirit said, “I praise you Father, Lord of heaven and earth…” All who are born of God, who are trusting in Christ regularly cry out by the Spirit of Christ to God the Father declaring their delight in him. This is not some manipulative and formal expressions of delight but the spontaneous cry of joy in God that arises in the heart of the Christian by the power of the Holy Spirit. It is the cry of love of the child for her father. My daughter Jaimee also cries out, “Daddy!” when she is frightened or in trouble or hurt. She spontaneously cries out to me for help when she is confronted by difficulties too great for her to handle. We see this clearly expressed in Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane when he said, “Abba, Father, everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not as I will but as you will.” (Mark 14:36) So Christians, in times of great trouble and temptation cry out to their father in heaven for help. This is not some forced or dutiful or formal prayer or some magical incantation but the desperate cry of a child for the help of her powerful father to come to her assistance. Notice, it is not a demand that her father do her will but a plea that he help her in accordance with his will. Jesus is able to ask God to help, not as Jesus wills but as the Father wills, because he knows that God is his Daddy and loves him and will do what is in his best interest. Thus do we cry out to our daddy in our times of distress. There is a third way in which my daughter Jaimee cries out “Daddy!” She cries out “Daddy” when she is sorry for her wrong behavior. She often will tell me, “Daddy, I’m sorry for when I got mad at you for not playing outside with me.” There is no corresponding example of this in the life of Jesus, as he never sinned. Though there is an example of this cry to his Father as he was hanging on the cross and he cried out, “Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” So the Christian, trusting in the death and resurrection of Christ cries out to God for forgiveness, in the name of Christ, the Savior. Finally, this crying out is a cry of confidence. We cry out to our loving Father in heaven because we know that he loves us and hears us and will come to our aid. The Spirit of Christ who has come to live in our hearts is the one who gives us confidence that God himself is for us and not against us. He it is that persuades us that we are indeed the heirs of God and can freely go to God to express our delight in him, our need of him and our sorrow to him for our sins. Here is the unfailing evidence that you have been redeemed from slavery to the basic principles of the world and made a son and heir of the God of the universe, you cry out, “Abba, Father.” Your relationship with God is one of the intimacy and the confident dependence of a child upon her father. The coming of Jesus Christ into the world is the best news you will ever hear because…
© Copyright
2005 John Swanson.
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