Children & Heirs

I would like to say a special thanks to all of the folks on our Safety & Security Ministry for all that they do week in and week out, and specifically for how hard the team worked over the past couple of weekends with the Aspire and REAL Women’s Conferences.

I want to mention something that our Children’s Ministry is starting that is very exciting. On Wednesday nights this school year, from 6:30 to 7:30, our “Father’s GYM” program for boys will be themed “Mimicking Dad,” and will be a combined father/son Bible study and activity time. The focus will be on fathers guiding their sons by example on a journey toward becoming godly young men. There will be 6 lesson topics: Embarking, Clean Hearts, Standing Strong, Leading Lessons, Working Well, and Manhood Myths. Each topic will be a six-week study. Dads with boys, please prayerfully consider coming and being a part of this great focus. We know it’s a school night, and that’s hard, but we believe it will be well worth it… not only for your sons, but also for our young men whose fathers cannot be there or for sons of single moms. We want these boys to come as well. There will be men who are willing and excited to step in on those Wednesday nights for those boys. 6:30 to 7:30, meet in the FLC.

We will initially meet in the gym at 6:30pm for some type of game/activity. Then we will move to room 202 till 7:30pm.

For our young men whose fathers cannot be there or for our single moms with sons, please come too. There will be men who are willing and excited to step in on those Wednesday nights for your sons. We will initially meet in the gym at 6:30pm for some type of game/activity. Then we will move to room 202 till 7:30pm.

On Sunday, October 20, following morning services, we will host a flu shot clinic for our church and school families, provided by Albertson’s Pharmacy. This clinic is free of charge, and you don’t have to have health insurance to participate. Shots will be available for all ages. If you want to save some time and fill out the required form before that Sunday, you can get one from the counter in the church office. Please note that the form mentions that pneumonia vaccines, but we will not be having pneumonia vaccines at this clinic.

On Wednesday, October 2, our church is hosting a lunch for students at the Christian Challenge at UNM (aka the BSU). We are in need of some yummy desserts for that day. If you can provide some, please bring them to the church office by 9 am on that Wednesday. The college students thank you.

Mission New Mexico State Mission Offering thru September and October. Goal is $8,000. Received so far: $5,440.

Opening

For those able to do so, let’s stand as we read our focal passage today, :

Galatians 3:26–4:7 CSB

26 for through faith you are all sons of God in Christ Jesus. 27 For those of you who were baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ. 28 There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female; since you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, heirs according to the promise. 1 Now I say that as long as the heir is a child, he differs in no way from a slave, though he is the owner of everything. 2 Instead, he is under guardians and trustees until the time set by his father. 3 In the same way we also, when we were children, were in slavery under the elements of the world. 4 When the time came to completion, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. 6 And because you are sons, God 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 God has made you an heir.

Pray

This is our 10th message in our series called “Dear Church,” and we’re studying Paul’s letter to the churches of Galatia, which I believe to be the earliest of Paul’s writings. This letter was written to a group of churches that were undergoing some “troubling” times according to chapter 1 of the letter, as some people had come in and had started trying to draw the believers away from a pure devotion to Jesus and into legalism: the belief that just having faith in Jesus isn’t enough to save, but that you had to work to earn it or to keep it in some ways.

Last week, we looked at the contrast that Paul made between the promised blessing to Abraham, and the law that had been given to Moses over 400 years later: that if the blessing to Abraham came through works, it wasn’t a promise, and if it was truly a promise, he couldn’t have earned it by working. The fact is that it is in Jesus Christ that we see the total fulfillment of both the law and the promise: and through faith in Christ, we are set free.

And this is a beautiful truth that we have studied over several weeks: that the blessing of Abraham, justification (being made right with God), is given by God’s grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.

And the doctrine of justification is absolutely central to the Christian faith. Our sins—the things that we do that dishonor God, or the things God wants us to do that we fail to do—our sins destroy the relationship between us and Almighty God, who made us and loves us. And without God graciously choosing to send His Son, Jesus Christ, to die in our place and take the punishment that we deserve for our sins, we could never be justified. We cannot be good enough to earn it. That’s why it has to be by grace. That’s why it has to be through a promise. That’s why it has to be through faith alone.

But in my studies this week, I came across an interesting quote in a book that I read a while back by J.I. Packer called Knowing God. Packer said this:

…We need the forgiveness of our sins, and assurance of a restored relationship with God, more than we need anything else in the world; and this the Gospel offers us before it offers us anything else. . . . But this is not to say that justification is the highest blessing of the Gospel. Adoption is higher, because of the richer relationship with God that it involves.

Packer goes on to say that the doctrine of justification makes us right before God the judge, but in the doctrine of adoption we are loved by God the Father. In justification, the picture is legal; we stand before a judge who makes a pronouncement. But in adoption, the judge not only declares us “not guilty,” but He also gets up off the bench, comes down to where we are, takes our chains off of us, and He says, “Come home with Me as My son.”

I’m not sure I completely agree with Mr. Packer’s position, but he makes a good point. This is what we’re looking at today: the Christian doctrine of adoption.

Galatians 3:26 CSB

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

I’m going to read verse 25 along with verse 26, as they form a sentence in the CSB.

gal 3:26-

In the CSB, this verse finishes the sentence from verse 25, however,

Galatians 3:25–27 CSB

25 But since that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, 26 for through faith you are all sons of God in Christ Jesus. 27 For those of you who were baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ.

Galatians 3:25–26 CSB

25 But since that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, 26 for through faith you are all sons of God in Christ Jesus.

Paul had previously said (3:7) that those who have faith in Christ are the spiritual sons of Abraham, who had faith. And since the blessing was promised to Abraham, then those who are his spiritual children will also inherit the blessing. But here, he ups the ante quite a bit, saying that through faith, not only are we the spiritual sons of Abraham, but we are, in fact, sons of God in Christ. This brings us to our first point:

1) All who have faith in Christ are sons of God.

Does the fact that it says “sons” here bother some of us?

In the offendedness culture that we live in today, it’s almost like its on our radar to find things that upset us. So we come to this word, “sons” and we declare chauvinism, or male privilege, or some other such thing. Is Paul a chauvinist? A misogynist? Just for fun, I’m going to leave this tension here for just a second. Try not to let it distract you, because we have to deal with verse 27 before we can cover it well.

First off, Paul mentions baptism. This is the only reference to baptism in Galatians.

Romans 6:3–5 CSB

3 Or are you unaware that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have been united with him in the likeness of his death, we will certainly also be in the likeness of his resurrection.

romans 6:3-

So, Paul is not saying that baptism is necessary for salvation, however, he is saying that all those who were baptized had made a declaration of faith. Baptism doesn’t save, but being baptized once you have been saved is that public declaration of your faith. Again, he’s creating an image for the Galatians.

Paul says that those who were baptized into Christ have been “clothed with Christ.” Here at Eastern Hills, when someone is baptized, we give them a t-shirt that says “Let the Future Begin!” on it. This is kind of the picture that he’s drawing from for the Galatians. In the Hebrew culture, when a Gentile became a convert to Judaism, they were expected to be baptized. However, they performed baptism without any clothes at all. After the baptismal candidate came up out of the water, they were given new clothes to put on.

When a Gen

Paul says that those who have been baptized (those who have faith) in Christ have been clothed with Christ, like a garment. In other words, we are covered by Christ. There is almost no personal property that you have that you keep closer to you than your clothes. So it is with Christ. Our clothes cover our nakedness (representative of shame in Genesis), as Christ covers our shame. We say that, “the clothes make the man...” They certainly do if we are clothed with Christ, as the Christian is a life that has been and is being radically remade from the inside out.

Now, back to our point: sonship. Paul in verse 26 intentionally used a word that meant “sons.” Not “children.” “Sons.” Why?

We might be tempted to lift verse 26 out of its context and be bothered by it. But what if, given some more consideration, we would all be glad that we are called “sons?” Tim Keller said this:

If we are too quick to correct the biblical language, we miss the revolutionary (and radically egalitarian) nature of what Paul is saying.

Consider verse 28:

Galatians 3:28 CSB

28 There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female; since you are all one in Christ Jesus.

This verse gives an additional meaning to the word “sons” in verse 26, and in what appears to be Paul’s intentional usage of “son/sons” in the rest of this passage. I titled this message “Children & Heirs.” In hindsight, maybe I should have called it “Sons & Heirs.” Here’s why:

Paul here says that in Christ Jesus, VERY IMPORTANT, there is no “Jew or Greek,” no “slave or free,” and no “male and female,” because we are all “one.” What he’s saying is that those who are in Christ, those who have believed the Gospel, have a unity that transcends other things that might divide us:

Jew or Greek: The Jews held that there were only two types of people in the world: Jews and Gentiles. “Greek” is synonymous with “Gentile” here, because the whole known world spoke Greek. So our faith in Christ transcends any racial divisions. Racism has no place in the Christian church. We come together in the Body of Christ. This would have been an especially important statement, given that the Christian converts in Galatia would have been mostly (but not entirely) Gentiles, and that the Judaizers were certainly Jews.

Slave or free: The unity that we should have because of our faith in Christ transcends social divisions. Because of Christ, we don’t just associate with those who are in some similar social strata as we are. We associate with each other in this family, in this body, regardless of where one might be in the cultural social structure. We belong to each other, according to .

Male and female: This is the one that is most likely to be misunderstood. Our faith in Christ transcends gender divisions. This was probably the strongest barrier in Paul’s day: women were considered absolutely inferior to men in every way. But in Christ, both male and female are called, both male and female are saved, both male and female are justified, both male and female are spiritually gifted. One is not better than the other.

This is not to say that there is no distinction in these three categories. For example, coming to faith in Christ doesn’t mean that our Russian-speaking brothers and sisters here should throw out their distinctive culture, for example. That would be a shame. It also doesn’t mean that in Christ there is no distinction between men and women. Regardless of what culture says today, that’s just not true. Men and women are distinct from one another. And as such, there is a distinction in roles that God has set up in His own sovereignty given His design of men and women.

But our distinctions in culture or class or gender are not what define us primarily. Instead, our primary definition is that we are Christians… Christians before anything else. This should be what unifies us.

This should create a great sense

A special side note: Paul here is dealing not with society at large, but with the church. Certainly, there are implications here for society at large, but that is not Paul’s goal here. He’s trying to get the churches of Galatia understand the unity that their faith in Christ brings.

So doesn’t this mean that Paul shouldn’t have said “sons” when referring to all those who have faith? No! We’d miss a massively important meaning for the Galatians, and thus for us, if we change it. In most ancient cultures, including Roman, Greek, and Hebrew, daughters almost never inherited property. Paul’s use of “son” here, especially in light of the removal of divisions in verse 28, declares that each of us is a “legal heir” of God in Christ. Women couldn’t be legal heirs. The Gospel declares that all who believe: the Jew and the Greek, the slave and the free, the male and the female, we are all “sons” of God… all “heirs.”

This is our second point this morning:

2) Since believers are sons of God, believers are also heirs of God.

The “heir” part goes with the “son” part. Paul makes this even more clear in verse 29:

Galatians 3:29 CSB

29 And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, heirs according to the promise.

If we’ve believed the Gospel, we belong to Christ. If we belong to Christ, then we are all Abraham’s seed. And if we are Abraham’s seed, then we are heirs according to God’s promise to Abraham that all the world would be blessed through him.

To this point, Paul has been working from a more “Hebrew” perspective, speaking primarily about the overall history of redemption that God had been orchestrating since the Fall. For the next few verses, he steps back, and shifts over to a legal explanation of what God has done in Christ.

Galatians 4:1–3 CSB

1 Now I say that as long as the heir is a child, he differs in no way from a slave, though he is the owner of everything. 2 Instead, he is under guardians and trustees until the time set by his father. 3 In the same way we also, when we were children, were in slavery under the elements of the world.

galatians 4:1-

In both the Hebrew and Roman cultures, a child could not inherit until they had reached a certain age. So a child could be an heir, and even be essentially the owner of everything, but be no different in status than a slave. Instead, this child would be under the control of slaves of the household, “guardians and trustees,” until the time that his father deemed to be right for him to come into his inheritance.

This idea of his father setting a time for him might also be an additional facet to what Paul said in verse 27 about being “clothed with Christ.” Paul’s readers would have been familiar with the custom of the day where a Roman youth, upon approval by his father, would stop wearing a crimson-bordered garment that children wore, and would instead put on what was called the toga virilis, an adult garment to mark him as fully a man. There’s a time element to this: a specific time set aside by the father.

In verse 3, we see Paul beginning his comparison to us: that for those in Christ, there was a time when we were “children…in slavery.” What were we enslaved by? The elements of the world. This could mean the law and our fleshly inability to keep it, or any other pagan form of worship, which would have been present in Galatia in that time, as it was throughout the Roman empire. Paul explains more of this in verses 8-11 of this chapter, but essentially, we find that all of humanity is in the same boat: we’re all spiritual slaves.

Romans 2:12 CSB

12 All who sin without the law will also perish without the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law.

In verse 3, we see that we

So how then are we to receive our inheritance? Paul addresses that beginning in verse 4:

Go through “extended parenthetical” 4:1-5

Galatians 4:4 CSB

4 When the time came to completion, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law,

child vs. slave.

“When the time came to completion...” At exactly the right time, God sends His Son, Jesus the Christ. What does this mean? It means that God had been directing history toward a particular moment when everything would be exactly right for His Son to come and die.

What made that the right time? We can suppose a couple of things:

Time set by his father - coming of age.

Go through “extended parenthetical” 4:1-5

It was the right time politically. It was the time of the Pax Romana, the Roman peace. Rome had essentially conquered and controlled all of the surrounding nations. Because of this, the government was able to focus on more domestic projects instead of military warfare. They built roads, promoted commerce, and had an increased governing presence throughout the empire. The spread of the message of the Gospel would have been much easier under these conditions.

It was the time of the Pax Romana, the Roman peace. Rome had essentially conquered and controlled all of the surrounding nations. Because of this, the government was able to focus on more domestic projects instead of military warfare. They built roads, promoted commerce, and had an increased governing presence throughout the empire. The spread of the message of the Gospel would have been much easier under these conditions.

It was the right time culturally. The Greek language had become very common, and almost universal. One could travel from one area of the empire to another and still find people who speak the language. As a result, spreading the Gospel would have been simpler, because there was no language barrier. Cultural barriers were few in the empire.

Also, in the same way that Paul spoke about “the time set by his father” for the heir to receive his inheritance, so also this, the coming of Christ, was at the time set by the Father. This is the most important reason it was the right time: because God had decreed it to be so.

We were in slavery under the elements of the world: enslaved to sin. Remember that the law pointed us to Christ.

So at just the right time, God sent His eternal Son, but “born of a woman:” so He was human, just as we are. Paul writes in :

Philippians 2:7–8 CSB

7 Instead he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity. And when he had come as a man, 8 he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death— even to death on a cross.

God Himself in Christ steps into our human condition: our physical weakness (such as needing food and sleep), our ability to be tempted, to be injured, to be killed. In this way, Jesus becomes the mediator between holy God and unholy us in God’s perfect timing:

1 Timothy 2:5–6 CSB

5 For there is one God and one mediator between God and humanity, the man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave himself as a ransom for all, a testimony at the proper time.

When the time was right. Go into this? Perhaps briefly.

Not only was He fully human, but He was also “born under the law.” Jesus was born, as all humans are, into a state of obligation to God’s law. But completely unlike us, our Lord Jesus didn’t fail to fulfill the law in its entirety as our representative:

Not only was He fully human, but He was also “born under the law.” But He fulfilled the law of God perfectly, which we could not have done.

Hebrews 4:14–15 CSB

14 Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens—Jesus the Son of God—let us hold fast to our confession. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin.

In this way, He can pay the debt that humanity owes for our sins.

My good friend Luke Miller once gave this illustration in our student ministry back when I was Youth Pastor. Say I owed $5 to someone. So I borrow $5 from someone else to pay the first person. Am I any better off? No. I still owe $5. The only way that the debt goes away is if someone who has $5 but doesn’t owe $5 pays it. Now, I know this might seem simplistic, but it’s a great picture of what Christ has done for us.

Humanity is enslaved to sin, and we owe a great debt because of it. And all the “good things” that we think we might do to get out of slavery isn’t enough. We can never be good “enough” because we are broken. We need someone to set us free, someone who isn’t enslaved, someone who doesn’t owe a debt. And that’s what Jesus did when He died in our place: He bought us out of slavery, paying the debt that we couldn’t pay because He didn’t owe it. Paul says it simply this way:

But he lived it perfectly. Why? To redeem those who are imprisoned...

To redeem

Galatians 4:5 CSB

5 to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.

3) Believers are sons and heirs of God by adoption.

We see the gospel in verses 4 and 5. Jesus died to redeem those under the law, us. To “redeem” a slave meant to purchase their freedom, to pay the price for them. And that’s what Christ did. But this verse says that He did even more than that. It says that He redeemed us not just to set us free (which He did), but to change our entire status and relationship with God.

3) Believers are sons and heirs of God by adoption.

“So that we might receive adoption as sons.” There’s that “sons” picture again. See why it’s so important? In adoption, we go from being prisoners on death row to being heirs of the greatest estate imaginable. Unless we remember BOTH parts of verse 5: that we’ve been redeemed AND we’ve been adopted as sons, we will fall in to the same trap that the Galatians were falling into: thinking that our slate has been wiped clean, but it’s up to us to write enough good stuff on it so that God will love and accept us.

But what has actually happened is that our slate has been wiped clean, and Jesus has written His righteousness all over it. Our inheritance isn’t a prize to be won. It’s guaranteed to us because our status has changed: we’re no longer slaves, we’re sons.

Let’s finish up our focal passage:

Galatians 4:6–7 CSB

6 And because you are sons, God 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 God has made you an heir.

Paul writes that we have received a special gift upon our adoption as sons: the Spirit of his Son, who is the Holy Spirit. Look at how Paul spoke about this transaction in :

He sent His Spirit into our hearts.

4:5-7 are the focus here.

Galatians 4:6 CSB

6 And because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba, Father!”

Paul writes that we have received a special gift upon our adoption as sons: the Spirit of his Son, who is the Holy Spirit. Look at how Paul spoke about this transaction in :

Romans 8:17 CSB

17 and if children, also heirs—heirs of God and coheirs with Christ—if indeed we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

Romans 8:14–17 CSB

14 For all those led by God’s Spirit are God’s sons. 15 For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear. Instead, you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father!” 16 The Spirit himself testifies together with our spirit that we are God’s children, 17 and if children, also heirs—heirs of God and coheirs with Christ—if indeed we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

romans 8:14-

Jesus’ redemption of us made it so that we could be adopted. In doing so, He made our adoption an objective reality. If we are in Christ, then we are adopted sons of God. Period. And God gives us His Spirit to live within us and guide us and speak to us so that our adoption is also experienced subjectively: individually and personally for each of us who believe. In fact, it’s by the Spirit that we can cry out, “Abba, Father!”

Romans 8:9–11 CSB

9 You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to him. 10 Now if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. 11 And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, then he who raised Christ from the dead will also bring your mortal bodies to life through his Spirit who lives in you.

He sent His Spirit into our hearts.

romans 8:

We often think of “Abba” as “Daddy,” and that’s not inaccurate, but in both of these passages, we CRY “Abba.” It’s the cry of a needy child, one who knows their father loves them and will care for them. This is the confidence that we have in Christ.

Abba Father

Galatians 4:7 CSB

7 So you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then God has made you an heir.

Full circle… no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir.

We’ve come full circle: We’re not slaves, we’re sons. And since we’re sons, we’re heirs. What an incredible gift God has given us in Christ!

Application

Adoption as a picture of the gospel?

Pastor, author, and former President of the International Mission Board, David Platt, and his wife Heather have adopted two children. Here is what he said in reflecting on this aspect of our salvation:

Adoption as a picture of the gospel?

Once you adopt a child, he or she takes a new position in the family, but this is not where the story stops. This is where the story really gets good, which is why we can’t be satisfied with an I-prayed-a-prayer-however-many-years-ago kind of Christianity. There is so much more! My children know that I’m their father and they’re my children, not only because of the love we showed them by traveling to the other side of the world to adopt them, but because of the love I show them today. Their status is based on what a judge in their country declared years ago, but their life is based on our relationship every day as we play cars and read books and run around the yard and go to Moe’s for dinner and sing songs on the way home. So too with God! Your status with Him was settled on the day you were declared righteous through faith in Christ. But there is more here than simply a change in status. You have new life, a living relationship with God in which He communes with you and sustains you on a daily basis with love, affection, and strength. Coming to Christ changes who we are.

Closing

He’s proven that by sending His Son to die in our place, even when we were His enemies.

We can’t earn God’s forgiveness, so Jesus had to purchase it with His blood on the cross, and he rose again, defeating

Closing

We are invited by God to believe the Gospel: that we place our hope for our now and for our forever in the fact that Jesus died on the cross in our place so we could be forgiven and adopted, and that He defeated death by rising again so that we have an eternal inheritance in heaven with God if we belong to Him by faith. We’re more than saved: we’re family.

One of my favorite hymns is “The Family of God”. So often, we focus on the chorus, which is great. But listen to the second verse:

Are you part of the family of God?

From the door of an orphanage to the house of the King, No longer an outcast, a new song I sing; From rags unto riches, from the weak to the strong, I'm not worthy to be here, but praise God I belong!

God wants to adopt you into His family.

Invite.

Already adopted, called to be a part of this church family.

Other things to deal with with God, or needing prayer.

Call the band down and pray.

Invite to the parlor.

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