Amazing News!

“But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.  Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’  Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God.” (Gal. 4:4-7, NASB)

Imagine yourself as a slave or an indentured servant.  You would be enslaved to someone else with no hope of being set free.  There is a purchase price, that if paid, ownership could transfer to another.  However, you would still be a slave.  If you could somehow pay the price, you could set yourself free.  There is no hope of that happening; after all, you are a slave and cannot own anything.

Now imagine someone very wealthy coming along and paying that purchase price.  Now that the ownership has been transferred to your new master, your new master says, “You are now free!”  Wouldn’t that be good news?  That would be amazing news! 

Let’s not stop there.  Now imagine your new master going further and saying, “I want to adopt you as my child.”  What?!  It is remarkable enough to be bought from slavery and set free, it is something all together more marvelous for that former slave to be adopted as a child.  Now that you are adopted into this wealthy family, you are an heir.  You have all the benefits of being in this new family.  You have gone from being a slave to being an owner.

This is the word picture Paul was painting for the believers in the churches of Galatia.  He wanted them to understand that they were slaves to sin and were unrighteousness creatures needing to be guided and maintained by a law system, but no longer.  He wanted them to understand that they are now joint heirs with Christ (Rom. 8:17) with the full benefits of being children of God. 

Paul continued to say that God has put His Spirit in their hearts.  So, God redeemed or purchased the slave, made them a child, and then put His Life into that child.  All three aspects are extremely important.  However, the third aspect is the most important because it is the ultimate goal of God.  Putting His Life into the creature is what God desired more than anything.  Before the creature can have God’s Life, it must first be a child, before that creature can be a child, it must be purchased out of slavery.

You may be thinking, “Why did God have to purchase anyone out of slavery?  Why didn’t He just create a new race of “free” creatures to make his children?”  I don’t really know the complete answer to those questions, but I do know that God chose to redeem Adam’s race.  He did not give up on Adam’s children, but demonstrated His love for them through Christ.  This is good news for us because we are all from Adam.  We are all Adam’s race.

Without a complete understanding of what Paul is saying to these Galatian believers, we (as the contemporary church) can spin off into an incomplete awareness of who we are as believers. 

If we stop at just being redeemed, that can lead to a continued slave mentality.  At best we may recognize that we have a new master, but we may find ourselves trying to please the new master through self-effort.  This can lead to a constant sense of failure because I can’t be “good enough” that gnaws at us day and night.  Or it can lead to just the opposite, a sense of pride that says, “Look at what I can do!”  The Bible does use the slave imagery in describing a believer (Rom. 6:18,22; 1 Cor. 7:22; Eph. 6:6; 1 Pet. 2:16), but even in those passages there is the implication of freedom. 

If we see ourselves only as redeemed and set free, we may attempt to get our needs met through our old “slave” ways.  This incomplete understanding of who we are leads to believing that we are still sinners to the core.  Our mantra could become, “we are just forgiven sinners!”  If that is the case, then our hope (at best) is future and not present.  Nothing has changed except for our destination (heaven instead of hell). 

Let’s add the next layer: being adopted as a child and becoming an heir.  At this point we can see that our identity has changed from slave to child.  We begin to see our rights as a child of the King.  However, if we stop at this point, we can build a belief system based on what we perceive to be Godly behaviors and then judge ourselves accordingly.  We also judge those around us.  We think or say things like, “If they were really a Christian, they wouldn’t ________.” Or “they would ________.”  This way of thinking causes us to compare and contrast.  Everyone may have a different understanding of what it looks like to be a Christian.

We need the full understanding of what God has done.  He has redeemed us from being slaves to sin and set us free from the bondage of living under the law.  He has made us His children and we have become joint heirs with Jesus.  The best news is, however, we have been given His Life.  None of us can live the Christian life without God’s Life.  Because we have been made alive through Christ, we can cry out from the deepest part of our being, “Abba, Father!”

This is the heart of God for us.  This is true freedom and true life.  Enjoy Him forever!