Your Christian life ought to take on new wonder and meaning as you realize all that you have in Christ. And all of this is by grace—not by Law! You are an adult son in God’s family, an heir of God. Are you drawing on your inheritance?

Before faith in Christ came, people were held prisoners by the law. In a final image, Paul conveys the purpose of the law. In the KJV the second half of this verse states that the law was given as our tutor (NASB more literal than NIV, “was put in charge”). A better translation is “custodian” or “strict nanny.” In the Jewish culture a slave was assigned to each child to escort them to school and to assist in their supervision. This nanny was not a thirteen-year-old, sweet, little baby-sitter. This supervising nanny was more like a stern sergeant who had the bark of a German shepherd and the bite of a Doberman pincher. Every time the child took liberties without permission on the path to school (children like to play) or did something wrong, this authoritarian nanny pointed her finger at the child and in no uncertain terms told the child what it had done wrong and delivered the punishment. By correlating the law with this nanny image, we learn that the law was given to point out sin and to threaten a great punishment if God’s people didn’t straighten up. Man’s very inability to obey this law perfectly, and thus earn God’s approval, caused men and women to long for a better way to salvation and a relationship with God—by grace. God brought hope to mankind’s hopelessness in the most amazing way by sending Jesus Christ into the world. The law led us to Christ for forgiveness and righteousness.

But Paul does not have this thought in view here. He is thinking historically, stressing that the reign of law has ended for those believers who now through the coming of Jesus have become mature sons of God.