Galatians 3:26-4:7

  • David Fairchild
  • Oct 15, 2006
  • Series: Galatians

 

Galatians 3:26-4:7

 

"for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. 27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise. 4:1 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, 2 but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father. 3 In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. 4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. 6 And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!' 7 So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God."

 

INTRODUCTION

 

About five or six months ago we embarked on a journey at Kaleo that I said may be the most significant study of any book in the history of our church.  The reason I made such a strong statement is because I knew that if we really took the letter to the Galatians seriously, and if we unpacked what the Gospel is, how it changes us, and how all our problems arise from a fundamental misunderstanding or disbelief in the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we would experience a change in our personal lives, a change in our church and a change in our motivation to reach out to this world for Christ's glory in Christ's name.

 

Many of you have been radically changed at the very core of who you are.  I can not tell you how many stories and testimonies I have heard that you are beginning to understand the Gospel and it feels as if you have been reborn.  I also know that many of you have struggled through the implications of what we are preaching as you find your old tendencies and attitudes towards God, others, and yourself challenged at their foundation.  For some of you this feels unsettling, unnerving, perhaps even downright frustrating.  You are thinking to yourself, "if I can just go back to what made me comfortable, what made me feel secure, what made me happy, then I'll get back on track and grow."  Let me assure you from the bottom of my heart and what I believe to be the very heart of the Scriptures-if you have to go around, ignore, diminish, or downplay what we are discussing as it relates to the Gospel, you are placing yourself at odds with Paul, at odds with the Holy Spirit who inspired Paul to write this letter, with God the Father who sent Jesus into this world with this Gospel to accomplish the promises of the Gospel, and you will be at odds with Jesus Himself as you attempt to sidestep what Christ considers the very center, meaning, and purpose of all our history (Luke 24): His glorious Gospel of grace.  And, you are attempting to plant your feet in mid-air since you have absolutely no foundation for your Christian faith-at least not the foundation that our God intends. 

 

I also realize that as we have tackled this letter, many of you wished that I would talk about other things than the Gospel and all its lines and implications.  This is because you have looked at Scripture as a collection of interesting doctrines for you to explore to satisfy your intellectual curiosity, assuming that the Gospel is milk and whatever doctrine you are interested in is meat.  How much this departs from Paul and Christ who seemed to think that the Gospel was the milk, the meat, and was the very power of God unto salvation-not only to get into Christ's Kingdom, but to make any progress in this Kingdom which is to bear witness to this world.

 

Friends, we are forever looking for clever and novel ways to avoid Jesus using our religion.  It is the tendency of every human heart left unsaturated by the Gospel.  We will get on our hobbyhorses, ride our campaigns and push our agendas, all the while we ignore what our hope is for our lives, this world, and God's glory.  Why do we want to move on to steps and tips for living when we are told that this power, the Gospel, is the only answer for our growth and maturity?  Why is it that we are so driven by our consumerism that we think the Gospel is even about us in the first place?  Did God save us so that we could use Him as currency to purchase other things we desire?  Or did God save us from our sin so that we could have Him as our great treasure?  Only the Gospel of grace empowered by the Holy Spirit will grow us in holiness.  Only the Gospel of grace accomplished by Jesus Christ will free us from sin.  Only the Gospel of grace planned by the Father for His glory will bring Him glory and our joy.  We would rather fiddle around with other nifty looking religious trinkets that catch our attention like fishing lures into the error of the very ones Paul is countering in this letter.

 

Let me make this so very plain so that none of us can miss this: if you are trying to avoid the depth and richness of the Gospel of grace, you are trying to avoid Jesus, and I have a sneaking suspicion this will not work out well for you.  If you are unwilling to put in the effort and take the time to work through what we're discussing every Sunday as we unpack the big ideas of every passage, my fear is that you are going to end up on the receiving end of the scathing rebukes of this letter rather than the blessings and safety this letter has intended to bring. 

 

This morning, we are going to be looking at two main ideas in the passage we just considered.  Two similarities between two different verses which show us so much about the Gospel and how God works in us and on us. 

 

We need to look at the totality of this passage before we focus on what we're talking about so that we see how remarkable this parallel is between verse 5 and verse 6.  Please don't worry about catching every single point in every verse this morning, we'll probably go back next week and pull some of them out as we begin moving into chapter 4.  Let's look at the passages.

 

STUDY

Verses 4-6: "But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. 6 And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!'"

 

What we are seeing here are two activities by the Triune God in this passage. 

 

What we have in verse 4 is an agent, "God sent forth his Son."  Where did this agent go?  God sent His Son into this world.  Why was the Son sent?  To redeem the world.  Why?  What were the desired results?  That we might receive the full rights of adoption as sons.  The phrase, "adoption as sons" is actually one word, which means that we receive literally the "sonness" or "sonship." 

 

The NIV actually pulls this out and calls it "full rights" as sons because there isn't an English equivalent for the word, so we have to try to put it into a phrase. 

 

In the Roman world, there was a legal transaction that is not that common today, though legal, which took place at this point of history when adopting someone.  The idea of the giving of the full rights of sonship was when a wealthy person who had no children decided to adopt a son, an heir.  When the legal papers went through, at that moment the status of the adoptee changed and that person became an heir. 

 

Francis Lyle puts it this way: "The profound truth of Roman adoption was that the adoptee was taken out of his previous state and placed in a new relationship of sonship to his new father.  All his old debts were instantly cancelled, and in effect the adoptee started a new life as part of this new family.  One the one hand, the new father owned all of the new offspring's property and controlled his personal relationships and had the rights of discipline.  But on the other hand, the father was liable for the actions of the adoptee and each owed the other reciprocal duties of support and maintenance."  

 

This is a pretty incredible picture of sonship here.  We tend to miss the importance of such an idea.  Most of us understood when we trusted in Christ; we thought of our salvation as nothing more than saving us from the negative sins.  In other words, we viewed our salvation as stuff that's taken off of us.  The moment you became a Christian, you had some idea of a status change since you knew that your sins were taken away and your guilt was taken off of you, but how many of us understood at the very same moment there was another part of the legal transaction that something was put onto you?  You didn't just get a pardon, you were adopted and you now have this legal status that declares you are a son or daughter of God! 

 

You are now seen legally by God, as His own Son, Jesus.  You're now accepted and adopted and the Father has taken responsibility for you.  All your debts were cancelled and you were instantly given a new status.  You're guaranteed a new relationship with God which secures you. 

 

This is why it is "full rights" of sonship.  We're told in verse 5 that the Son went into the world to give us this legal status.  But now in verse 6 we're told something else is going on that parallels verse 5.

 

If you look you'll see in verse 6 that you have very similar language to verse 5. 

 

Verse 6: "And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!'"

 

We have the same outline that is in verse 5.  An agent is sent to do something and to bring out a desired result.

 

The agent is different than verse 5 because in verse 6 the agent is the Spirit and not the Son.  The second difference is that the Spirit is not sent into this world, but into our hearts.  The Spirit doesn't come to redeem, but to call out. 

 

The desired result is not the legal, objective status of sonship, but the subjective experience of sonship as we cry out, "Abba Father." 

 

Verse 6 is like a deep well that you could continue to draw from and never reach the bottom in all your days.  Let's see what this is teaching us.  What is promised?  What are the characteristic marks of it?  Lastly, how does it come to us? 

 

What is promised? 

 

An experience.  This is different than verse 5 because we already have it.  This is how verse 6 begins: "And because you are sons..."  You already have the status, you already have the identity.  You're a Christian now, and therefore you are already a child of God, an heir.  That transaction has already taken place, so this is speaking of something different.  What is it?  "God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts..."  You see the difference?  God sent His Son into this world, God sent His Spirit into our hearts.  This means that the Son goes out to procure something objective through this historical action that happened outside of us in history to redeem us as sons and daughters. 

 

But, the Spirit is dealing at a different level since it comes to deal with us inside and the Spirit's job is to provide us with a subjective experience.  Oooooohhhh, I can just hear the reformed brothers out there licking their chops!  Listen carefully, the text is telling us that salvation, adoption, and sonship is already secured by Christ's objective coming and action.  The text doesn't say that this experience grants us our salvation, nor is it saying that this experience keeps us saved.  But it is teaching us that there is a subjective working of the Spirit that comes to our very hearts and creates in us an emotional experience.  You can't get around that, and frankly you shouldn't want to!  It's the Spirit's job to make us feel like we're sons and daughters. 

 

It's the Son's job to objectively make us sons and daughters whether we feel like it or not, and it's the Spirit's job help appropriate that sonship subjectively.  You can claim what the Son does, but you can only experience what the Spirit does. 

 

This is actually great.  What if you're feeling like you're abandoned and in a desert, that things are really not feeling good, you're not experiencing the passion and vigor you once had for Christ even though you're still a Christian?  What do you do?  You can claim what the Son has done in confidence.  You can tell yourself that you know you're a child of the Father, that He loves you whether you feel it at the moment or not, that Christ loves you and came into this world to redeem you and has given His life for you.  What is this?  You're claiming this truth whether you feel it or not. 

 

But what we're talking about here in verse 6 is not something that you so much claim, as it is something you experience.  This is really powerful.  This is something that is promised to us as an experience of our sonship. 

 

Sinclair Ferguson writes about sonship in one of his books and says this about Luke 15.  When the Prodigal Son comes back in this chapter, his repentance isn't exactly perfect.  It's very ambiguous and vague:

"He comes back saying ‘Father, I'm not worth of being called your son.  Treat me as one of your hired servants.'  Now, although the story of the prodigal son is one of the best known and loved stories in Scripture, what it teaches us is often overlooked.  Jesus is showing us that the reality of the love of God for us is often the last thing in the world to dawn on us.  As we fix our eyes upon ourselves, our past failures and guilt, it seems impossible that the Father should love us.  So, many Christians go through their life with the prodigal suspicion.  Their concentration is upon their sin and failure, all their thoughts are introspective, and that's why in the Greek text, John's statement about the Fathers love begins with the word ‘Behold what manner of love the Father has given us that we should be called children of God' (1 John 3:1).  Like the prodigal we have a native inability to believe that salvation is purely by grace and love.  We're slow to realize the implications of this.  We have the status as sons, but we have the mindset of a hired servant."   

 

What the prodigal does is what we all do everyday.  The prodigal says, "I don't feel like a son, I don't feel worthy.''  He is saying that he doesn't want a Father/son relationship with God, he is asking for a boss/employee relationship.  That's all I ask, just give me a chance and I'll fix it.  Let me try to clean up my life so that I'm not embarrassed to present myself to you.  I'm not asking for much, just my daily bread. 

 

Sinclair goes on to say:

 

"In the parable we have a perfect example of exactly what every person who first comes to Christ is doing.  You may say in your head that you believe you're saved by grace, you believe you're a child of God, but you don't."

 

Why are you so sensitive to criticism?  Why do you feel like such a failure?  Why do you feel like when you've done something wrong it takes so long for you to start to live a normal life again?  Why is there never any joy when you have to ask for forgiveness, or when you have to repent is there never any joy to it?  Why does it feel like psychological death?  Why do you secretly compare yourself to other people all the time as you're filled with jealousy, filled with bitterness, filled with self-doubts?  "Ah yes," you say, "I believe in the doctrine of adoption, I believe that I've been adopted and that I'm accepted."  SURE!  No you don't.  You have the legal status, but you don't have the experience of it. 

 

What Sinclair, the parable, and this text in verse 5 and 6 is pointing out is that if all we had was the Son going into the world and getting us the status, that wouldn't be enough to change our lives.  We don't really believe it!  When the prodigal comes to the father, what is going on?  He seems so humble, "oh, I don't want anything since I don't deserve it, I'm not worthy," but this is an absolute insult! 

 

There is an incredible story about Alexander the Great.  He had a general who was about to get married.  He came to Alexander and told him the news and also said that he needed money to give the dowry and pay for the wedding.  Alexander said, "sure how much do you need?"  The general asked for an enormous sum of money, and those watching were stunned by the amount.  Instead of Alexander getting a grimace on his face, he got this radiant look and lit up.  With incredible delight he said to the man, "of course, go to my treasurer and he'll give you all that you've asked for."  Those watching came up to him afterwards and asked, "why did you give him so much money, and why were you delighted to do it?"  Alexander responded with a smile and said, "This man has done me a great honor.  By asking for such a ridiculous sum, he shows that he believes that I am fabulously wealthy and incredibly generous." 

 

Now, when the prodigal son comes to the father, he is basically saying that he doesn't believe the father is wealthy enough or generous enough to make him his son.  This isn't a compliment or humility; it's an insult. 

 

It looks like humility when you accept living like a hired servant instead of a son.  But it is first an insult to God because you don't really believe that He's rich or generous.  Secondly, in your heart, you don't want to lose that much control.  You don't know if you want to be in that deep with Him, that indebted to Him.  If you admit that He was willing to give you everything absolutely free without your earning one thing, means that you've basically lost control.  You'll owe him everything then, and that doesn't seem attractive to you.  This is what plays out in our wickedness because of our own self-esteem. 

 

The prodigal son won't believe in the depth of the father's love and forgiveness, he will not believe in sonship.  He's got it, and the father is willing to give it, but he won't ask for it, he doesn't understand it or expect it.  Sinclair goes on to say:

 

"That is why Paul, when he talks about the Holy Spirit here (in verse 6) Paul is saying that if it's a fact that God has adopted us into the family, then the Spirit must come and assure us that this is true.  The Spirit must enable us to live in the enjoyment of such a rich spiritual blessing.  So He sends the Spirit into our hearts, bringing us the deep spiritual and psychological security that rests on the objective fact that our sins are forgiven and we completely belong to the Lord." 

 

In the parable, it plays out like this.  The son does not believe in the Father's grace and benefit.  He just asks for the minimum and what does the Father do next?  He kisses him.  That is a metaphor for what the Spirit is doing.  The Spirit comes and helps you experience the love of God.  In this experience, by the Spirit coming into our hearts so that we cry out, "Abba Father," we are experiencing the kiss of our Father upon His children.  It's the Father embracing you.  We are talking about something that is in addition to the objective facts of our sonship.  You can be adopted and not experience how profound your adoption is. 

 

We're talking about a feeling.  I know this is rare that a pastor who likes theology would talk about feelings, but this is what's going on. 

 

Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones when describing the experience of sonship uses this example that he witnessed:

 

"Picture a man walking with his little girl.  Holding hands as father and daughter.  The little girl knows that the man is her father, and that her father loves her.  But suddenly the father stops, picks up the girl, lifts up her arms and embraces and kisses her.  Now, the girl is actually no more a daughter when she's being embraced and kissed than she was before.  The father's action has not changed the status of the girl, but oh the difference of the enjoyment of the status." 

 

That is what's being described here in verse 6 regarding our experience of sonship.

 

When Charles Spurgeon was preaching a message on Luke 15:20, he simply titled his sermon with four words, "The father kissed him."  He then preached on the spirit of adoption.

I know there is a danger in talking about these things because in our day everyone is looking for some kind of experience to validate them.  Of course we must never base our acceptance with the Father on an experience, but we still need to talk about this since Scripture does. 

 

It's dangerous to talk this way, but that's what we're offered. 

 

What are its marks and characteristics?

Let's take a look again at verse 6:

 

Verse 6c: "crying, ‘Abba! Father!'"

 

Passion and feeling: The word for "crying" in the Greek is "kradzo" which is much stronger than just a kind of announcement.  It is a very strong word that means to scream or cry out loud.  It is a word of profound passion and feeling. 

 

We're talking about something very deep in our emotions.  A cry is something you experience emotionally, not just something you claim.  Most of the time, if we understand the Gospel, we're claiming our sonship.  This is a good thing, we need to do this.  But when the Spirit is bringing us into this kind of emotive response, we don't have to claim it, we know it.  It's intuitive since we're feeling it.  We don't have to sit and work out how to claim it, it's known immediately.  Sometimes we're sitting down to tell ourselves the truth of the Gospel and our hearts cry out, "yes it's true!"  Yet often times we simply don't feel the depth of it. 

 

Intimacy and prayer: Notice that it doesn't just say that it gets your heart to cry out and that's it.  The work of the Spirit isn't just to get you to scream or be emotional.  The work of the Spirit is to get you to pray because you're crying to God.  This means that when the Spirit is at work your prayers are desired, not labored, and they are deep prayers to God from the soul, not surface niceties at dinner time.  The spirit of sonship brings you this freedom and access to the Father that causes these rich prayers.  There is a sense of intimacy.  But most of all:

 

It's a sense of assurance: What this really is, is a deep sense of assurance.  Every Christian has a certain degree of assurance.  Most of the times it is when you're living with some consistency in your walk, and this causes you to say, "I know I'm a child of God because I see my spiritual progress." To some degree this isn't a terrible thing if you lose all consistency.  You also lose your assurance, and you should be questioning and thinking about why you don't have any assurance.  When you lose your assurance, you want it back and it is a great motivator for you to consider why you're not feeling it.  Assurance is one thing that no one in any other religion has because they're not allowed to have it since they never know if they're good enough. 

 

Assurance is unique to the Christian life.  It's the experiential key to the Christian life. 

Abba is baby talk, abba is dada.  It is a way of dealing with God knowing that He cares for you.  A child has to learn to doubt the love of his parents.  When a child cries out and holds up his arms he assumes you'll come and pick him up and care for him.  A child just cries out and expects the parent to respond.  They just know you love them and they know you'll care for them.  This is what the Spirit will show you about God. 

 

If you believed it you wouldn't be defensive about criticism, you won't be driven to do things that would hurt other people.  You won't be obsessive.  You won't be filled with compulsive behavior.  You won't feel guilty all the time and you won't feel self-righteous. 

 

How do you get it?

The answer is very important.  In the beginning of verse 6 it says "because you are sons..."  You can not divorce verses 6 and 7 from verses 4 and 5. 

 

The Spirit comes on the basis of the work of Jesus Christ and the Spirit's availability is because of the work of Jesus Christ.  The Spirit's work in our experience will be on the basis of the work of Jesus Christ.  This means you have to meditate on who Jesus is and what He's done.  You have to take the objective truth and think it out.  You don't just take verses 4 and 5 and ask for some vague experience.  You and I are to go and mediate and worship and think about what God did for us through His Son.  You have to look at the work of Jesus, and as you're doing that, the Spirit will come. 

 

If you haven't experienced anything like this, the question to ask yourself is whether or not you're really praying.  Are you persistent?  The difference between a real Christian and a moral person, says Jonathan Edwards, is that a real Christian will sense God's beauty.  They way you know you're dealing with the real God is that you'll see Him as beautiful. 

 

What does this mean?  It means that something is beautiful to you if it's an end in itself.  This means that you're not using it to get something else.  For instance, some people get married because they're in love with the idea of getting married.  Getting married is beautiful to them, and the person they happen to be engaged to is going to bring them to that beautiful married life, but they don't necessarily believe that the other person is really beautiful because they're in love with the idea, not necessarily even with the person. 

 

When you get married in a healthy way, you don't say to yourself, "now I'm engaged and I can finally get married."  You'll say, "now I'm engaged, and I can finally get the person I desire and think is beautiful."  Now, what is interesting is that the beauty you find in that person should be what they reflect of God.  Since God is the beautiful One, and all beauty flows from Him, then what you find truly beautiful, rather than just attractive, will be what you see of God in them. 

 

Jonathan Edwards says this about heaven:

 

"The redeemed have all their objective good in God. God himself is the great good which they are brought to the possession and enjoyment of by redemption. He is the highest good, and the sum of all that good which Christ purchased. God is the inheritance of the saints; he is the portion of their souls. God is their wealth and treasure, their food, their life, their dwelling place, their ornament and diadem, and their everlasting honor and glory. They have none in heaven but God; he is the great good which the redeemed are received to at death, and which they are to rise to at the end of the world. The Lord God, he is the light of the heavenly Jerusalem; and is the ‘river of the water of life' that runs, and the tree of life that grows, ‘in the midst of the paradise of God'. The glorious excellencies and beauty of God will be what will forever entertain the minds of the saints, and the love of God will be their everlasting feast. The redeemed will indeed enjoy other things; they will enjoy the angels, and will enjoy one another: but that which they shall enjoy in the angels, or each other, or in anything else whatsoever, that will yield them delight and happiness, will be what will be seen of God in them."

 

Now, Edwards is talking about a fuller sense in heaven of what we should begin to experience here and now on earth.  As we mediate and contemplate the person and work of God, He becomes incredibly beautiful to us, and we begin to see everything else that is valued as having its source of beauty from God.  God is our objective good.  He is the great good which we can have now and which our hearts can sense now as we enjoy Him through our redemption. 

 

To find God beautiful means that you just want to adore Him for the person He is.  You're not there to ask Him for things, though you can.  You're to ask Him to remove whatever stands in the way of you being able to love and adore Him.  You're to ask for Him.  When the Spirit is at work in you, you'll find Him beautiful simply for who He is.  You'll find His holiness beautiful.  His love and grace will seem beautiful.  As you praise Him on the basis of His word, like verses 4 and 5, just praising Him based upon His objective truth to give Him His due instead of just asking for things, the Spirit of God will come and lead you to cry, "Abba Father." 

 

We need this, it's available.  The more we understand this, the more we'll experience the inward transforming power of God.  There are many other faiths which will promise you'll feel good, and may cause you to do good, but none of these other religions can dare claim this kind of assurance now based upon objective reality as we sense the very presence of God sent into our hearts. 

 

Let's go to Him, let's adore Him, let's warm our hearts with the Gospel so that we can say that the Spirit is causing Him to be beautiful to us. 

 

Aim at heaven you get earth thrown in, aim at earth, you get neither.  Let's aim at Him now in our prayers. 

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