Gal 4:1–7 — No Longer Slaves but Sons

Review

The Apostle Paul is continuing his treatment of the history of redemption, which he organizes under three main epics of promise, law, and faith. Faith being his word for the new covenant. Before faith came, before the new covenant came, he says, the people of God were captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed.

That’s Galatians 3.23. But now Christ has come and redeemed us from the curse of the law. You might be wondering, so how does this relate to the question at hand? The question at hand is that the Galatian Christians are Gentiles who have come to know the Lord, they have believed in Christ and received Christ and received the gift of the Spirit, and yet they are being tempted to adopt the teaching of the Judaizers that being a Christian, being a believer in Jesus, and being baptized in the name of Christ is not enough.

That one must also commit oneself to keeping the entire law, not just simply the moral law, but the entire law of God that God gave to Israel in the Old Testament, all of the ceremonial laws, the distinction between clean and unclean food, all the ritual washings and ceremonies that had to be done. Circumcision as all of these things as being necessary for salvation. The Judaizers were teaching a false gospel. They were teaching that we are saved by keeping the law. We’re saved by submitting to the entire Mosaic system of commandments.

And the Apostle Paul then is addressing this particular question. That’s why he’s been giving these Gentile Christians this whole narrative so they can see the whole sweep of redemptive history, promise, law, and faith. And he’s saying to them that why would you go back to The time of the law, that’s what the Judaizers are asking them to do, as if the law is still in effect. Why would you go back to the time of the law when Christ has already come in the fullness of time to redeem us from the curse of the law?

And so he is now beginning to make his transition into the application. The last most of chapter 3 was very technical and theological and giving all of the ins and outs of redemptive history and understanding the relationship between these various covenants. The covenant with Abraham, the Mosaic covenant, the New Covenant. But now he’s beginning to turn back and apply it to his audience and to their specific situation.

And that’s why he mentions there, in verse three, that when we were children, when we were Gentiles, enslaved under the elementary principles of the world, we were in a situation similar to, analogous to, the Old Covenant people of God under the law. And so he’s using the situation of Israel under the law as an analogy to help the Gentile Christians understand they too were under bondage to something similar, not to the law, because they were Gentiles, not Jews, but they were under something similar. They were under the elementary principles of the world. And that when Christ came in the fullness of time, he not only delivered The people of God, from the Mosaic Law, he also delivered all of the Gentiles who believe in Jesus from their bondage to the elementary principles of the world.

He’s going to go on to say, we’re not there yet, but next week we’ll look at it. He’s going to go on to say in verse 8, Formerly, when you Gentiles did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world whose slaves you want to be once more? He’s saying that if they listen to what the Judaizers are saying, that you have to keep the Mosaic Law in all of its entirety, not just the moral law, but the entire Mosaic Law.

If you do that, it’s like going back to your previous bondage that you used to have before you became Christians, when you were pagans living under the elementary principles of the world. Now you might be wondering, what does that phrase mean? What do we mean by the elementary principles of the world?

it is a debated point and the commentators are not 100% sure how to interpret this. Some of you may have a translation that either in the main text or in a footnote suggests that it’s referring to the demonic spiritual forces. So like, for example, the NIV translates it as the elemental spiritual forces. Even the ESV in a footnote says it could be translated as the elemental spirits. That’s a plausible interpretation.

It does make sense, it especially makes sense of verse 8, when Paul says that they were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. That’s his convoluted way of saying enslaved to the false gods. Of paganism, which are not really gods, but they claim to be gods, or the people that worship them claim that they are gods. So that could fit in with that interpretation that it’s referring specifically to the demonic realm, and that the Gentiles were under bondage to demons before they came to know the Lord. The difficulty with that interpretation is that this phrase that’s used here in Greek, it doesn’t really mean that, and there are cases where it can mean that, where it can refer to spiritual forces or demons, but that usage is much later. Like, you have to get into the Church Fathers before you find that usage.

But in contemporary Greek usage, the word just simply means elementary principles. It’s an ordinary word that just means the ABCs of something, whatever it is. The ABCs of math, the ABCs of the Christian life. Whatever it is you want to talk about, it’s the elementary principles of something.

This usage of the word is also attested in the New Testament. For example, in Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 5, The author of Hebrews is a completely different context, but it’s the same word that’s being used here. But notice how it’s being used. In Hebrews 5, the author of this letter to the Hebrew Christians is saying that he has considerably that he wants to explain to them about the deep mysteries of the faith and about how the Old Testament points to Christ. But he says, it’s hard to explain this because you are dull of hearing. For by this time you ought to be teachers.

This is Hebrews 5.12. Though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need to go back to your ABCs. You need to go back to Christianity 101 and just learn the basics of what it means to be a Christian and what the Christian faith is all about.

That word basic, that’s translated as basic principles here in Hebrews 5.12, it’s the same exact Greek word that’s used here in our text in Galatians 4. And so therefore I believe that the best translation would be not the elemental spiritual forces, although there’s a plausibility to that because of verse 8, but really it should be translated as the elementary principles. The elementary principles of the world. And Paul is viewing the elementary principles of the world as the elementary principles of pagan religion outside of Christ.

As being analogous to the Mosaic Law. Now, of course, we don’t want to say that the Mosaic Law is somehow bad or negative or demonic or something sinful. Obviously, the Holy Law of God is good. And it’s a reflection of God’s holy nature. And so we wouldn’t look at the Mosaic Law as being something inherently bad or negative. But nevertheless, Paul is making an analogy here.

He is drawing an analogy to the Mosaic Law, with its extensive list of commandments and burdensome yoke of requirements. A pious Israelite under the old covenant had many obligations to fulfill.

You have to offer this sacrifice and that sacrifice. If you accidentally touch a dead body, you have to go and get cleansed and offer all of these sacrifices. There’s many work that’s involved in keeping the law. Now, of course, for those that were godly within the people of God, who believed in the coming Messiah, who were trusting in the Messiah to come, they were willing to go through all of that work in faith, and even though it was many work, they were thankful to the Lord that he gave them this system of regulations to point them to Christ, and they were able to do so. They were able to submit to this yoke graciously, out of love for the Lord, and with humility and faith. But at the same time, it was difficult. It wasn’t easy.

If you recall, in the Council of Jerusalem, which is mentioned in Acts 15, in the Council of Jerusalem, when the question is being debated, do the Gentiles who are now coming to Christ, who are now coming into the church, do they need to keep the Mosaic Law too? That the Apostle said, this was an intolerable yoke of bondage. And it’s wonderful that the Lord has freed us from that and that now in Christ we’re not obligated to keep this huge list of requirements and laws and clean and unclean and making sure you don’t eat pork and all of these detailed regulations that were honestly hard and not easy to do. And it’s a wonderful reality that we’ve come into the new covenant and now we’re free from that burden. So Paul here is making an analogy between what it was like for these Gentiles before they became Christians when they were pagans and their life of legalistic bondage under pagan religion. He’s making an analogy between that life and the life of the people of God prior to the coming of Christ.

Before faith came, as he says back in Galatians 3.23, before the new covenant came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then the law was our custodian until Christ came in order that we might be justified by faith.

But now that faith has come, Galatians 3.25, we are no longer under the supervision of the law. We’re no longer under this intolerable yoke of ceremonies and requirements.

And not only the ceremonial law, the ceremonial law is a wonderful picture of the work of Christ. All the sacrifices that were offered are a pointer to the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross. The Passover lamb is a picture, a type of Christ as our Passover lamb. But there was also this, there was another dimension to life under the law for the old covenant people of God. And that was this curse of the law that hung over them.

And Paul talks about that earlier in the text in Galatians 3.10. And I mentioned this earlier in the service in the call to confession.

The curse of the law was not only the punishments that came for God’s people when they disobeyed God. For example, God would sometimes raise up armies to come in and, cause widespread destruction and economic havoc and people being taken into captivity, ultimately the exile itself. Not only the punishments of the law, and those are recorded in Deuteronomy 28, where all the punishments and curses will come upon Israel if they disobey God and worship false gods, but also this constant threat. Whoever does not continue who does not persevere perfectly in all the things written in the book of the law, is under a curse. The curse of the law is not only the punishment of the law, it’s also this constant threat that if you don’t keep it perfectly, at any moment you then are going to be subject to its curse. And so that constant feeling of walking on eggshells and of not knowing if you’re right with God, That was another element of the curse of the law, of this intolerable yoke of the law that the Old Covenant people of God experienced.

And there was something similar in pagan religion. These Gentiles, before they came to know the Lord, they experienced something similar. Now, of course, it’s all tied into evil and sin and idolatry, but there’s a similar sense of legalistic bondage within pagan religion. You never know if this God or that God, if Poseidon or Demeter is angry with you. Something bad happens in your life, some tragedy happens in your life. Oh, maybe Poseidon is angry with me and he’s sending his illness and sickness into my life and causing shipwreck and causing economic havoc in this world.

And so, oh, I need to go and find out what offering do I need to give to appease the gods and make them happy. What do I need to do? Do I need to go to the temple and offer a very costly, expensive offering in order to buy off the gods? It was somewhat a quid pro quo relationship. They didn’t have a genuine sense of love for God and they didn’t have a sense of the gods loving them.

It was just, we have to do whatever it takes to make the gods happy so that we can have good luck. So that things will go well in my life. So that I can have children and have some economic success. Have some happiness in life. And sometimes you never know what’s going to happen in life. Sometimes terrible tragedies come into your life. And you just say, it’s just fate. Who knows? Who knows why this terrible thing is happening? It’s just fate.

And so even within paganism, although paganism is distorted by sin and mixed with false worship of false gods and idolatry and so on, even within paganism there is a sense of the curse of the law. There is a sense of we need to do these things in order to make the gods happy and if we don’t do them we are under a curse.

Exposition

Galatians 4:1–2: The Heir under Guardians and Managers

Paul refers first to the old covenant people of God in verses one and two, then transitions to the Galatians’ former life of paganism before they knew the Lord. In verse one, he reiterates what he has just said about God’s old covenant people.

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. The Old Covenant people of God, they had all the glorious promises, the promises that were made to Abraham of the coming offspring, and how he would secure the eternal inheritance for his people. The Old Covenant people of God were heirs.

They were owners of everything. The entire world belonged to them, at least in principle, according to the promise of God. And yet, they were like children. They were under the law, and therefore they are no different from a slave. Verse two, but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his fathers.

God gave this list of so many commands and so many rituals and so many ceremonies that the old covenant people of God had to do as a temporary arrangement until the coming of Christ, until the date set by the father. In order to be a supervisory custodial role for the people of God to prepare them for the coming of Christ.

Many within that system were not believers. Many within national Israel were not believers and they rebelled against God’s laws. They hated this requirement that they had to do all of these things and worship God in the temple and abstain from all of the idolatry of the pagan world around them. And they were not serving the Lord, not loving him, and not seeking to look for the Messiah to come. But the godly within the Old Covenant people of God, the godly ones whose hearts had been changed by grace, they were able to receive this yoke of the law as a gracious thing from the hand of God. It was hard, it was many work, but they were able to receive it from God’s hand and graciously submit to it, knowing that one day Christ would come and deliver them from the yoke of the ceremonial law and deliver them from the curse of the law.

Galatians 4:3: Enslaved to the Elementary Principles of the World

So, in Galatians 4, one to two, he’s simply going back to everything he has said about the law in the previous chapter, but then, in verse three, he then begins to apply it to his audience. He says, in the same way, we also, and he’s using the word we here in a rhetorical sense, because Paul, of course, is not a Gentile, and he never had this experience of being a Gentile, but he’s identifying with his audience when he says we. It’s a common we. It’s the preacher’s we. Where the preacher is identifying with the audience, even though he may not be exactly the same with them in every way.

So here this Jewish apostle, the Apostle Paul is saying, in the same way we also, when we were children, That is, before we came to know the Lord and we were living in paganism, we were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. We were in legalistic bondage under all of the ritual requirements and strict laws of pagan religion.

Galatians 4:4–5: God Sent Forth His Son

But, and then now in verse 4, he then transitions again to this great transition from the Old Covenant to the New, but he does so in a way that includes the Gentiles. So notice in verse 4, this wonderful statement. Verse 4 is amazing. But, when the fullness of time had come, Remember back in verse 2 he said that the heir, when he’s a child, is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father.

So in that analogy of a father putting his minor child, his son, under the discipline of the managers and the guardians, but it’s temporary. Until the date set by His Father. So also now He’s applying that analogy here to us. And the us here includes both Jews and Gentiles.

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son. When the time was right, When the appointed time had been fulfilled, yes, for ages God had allowed the pagans to worship their false gods and he had put Israel under this mosaic law with all of its requirements, but he did so with a purpose in mind. It was a temporary thing. But when the fullness of time had come, at just the right time in the history of God’s supervision of the world, God sent forth his son, born of woman, born under the law.

Of course, born of woman here is a reference to the virgin birth of Christ. You can read about that in the Gospels, Gospel of Matthew, Gospel of Luke. They will talk about how Jesus was born of a woman, born without the agency of a human father in order to show that he is not an ordinary man because he is the son of God coming into this world from the outside and taking upon him a human nature. But although he is not an ordinary man, he is the divine son of God, yet he is a true man because he’s born of woman. Now that statement, born of woman, not only reminds us of this doctrine of the virgin birth of Christ taught in Matthew and Luke, but it also points us to the reality that in becoming a man, Jesus was not simply becoming a Jew. So in other words, the Incarnation, when God sent forth His Son in the fullness of time, He didn’t simply send the Son in order to be a Jew and to live the perfect Jewish life and fulfill the Jewish law.

Meanwhile, the Gentiles are out of the picture. No, he was born as a Jew, to be sure, he was a Jew, but he was born as a man, and therefore he has a connection with all of us. He is a man who has our nature, and that includes even the Gentiles. When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, so that he could represent all of humanity, born under the law, And here we have to imagine that he’s thinking not just of the Mosaic law, but also of the curse of the law as it was expressed even within paganism, although in garbled form with all of the idolatry.

So what Christ is doing here is he is redeeming his people from the law. In general, not just simply the specific historical Mosaic law that was given to the Jews, but he’s redeeming God’s people from the law, however it was manifested, including even in paganism. Paganism was not the true law of God, but it still reflected in a somewhat vestigial form the remnants of the covenant of works with Adam in the garden. Even Gentiles have within them, because we’re made in the image of God, we have somewhat this recollection that there is a creator God, and we’re accountable to him, and we must obey him, and if we don’t, we will surely die. The remnants of the covenant of works are still there in the form of man’s conscience. And of course, it gets messed up with idolatry, but there is still that basic idea that there’s this obligation to obey God.

So Christ, in the fullness of time, is born not simply as a Jew, he’s born of woman that he might be a man to represent all of us, and born under the law to redeem those who were under the law, whether in its Mosaic form or in its pagan form, so that we all, Jews and Gentiles who believe in Jesus, might receive adoption as sons.

How wonderful that is. This is the gospel. This is the gospel, brothers and sisters. Notice a couple of key things here. Not only is Jesus a true man born of woman, also born under the law implies that he’s a man because God himself doesn’t have to keep the law. God is the author of the law.

So the idea that he became a man and was put under the requirements of having to obey the law shows that he’s a true man. Now he did that voluntarily. He wasn’t obligated to become a man. But once he became a man, he did so voluntarily in order to take up our responsibility under the law. That is not only to obey it perfectly, but also to take away its punishment. He’s born under the law.

This speaks of the active and passive obedience of Christ. The active obedience of Christ in perfectly keeping all of the requirements of the law. All of those myriad of regulations and ceremonial laws and clean and unclean, Jesus kept all those perfectly throughout his life. And the passive obedience of Christ is also indicated here. Because it focuses us upon his death.

For it was on the cross that he endured the curse of the law in our place. The active obedience of Christ is his keeping of the positive demands of the law, and his passive obedience is his enduring the negative curse of the law. And he fulfills both by being born under the law for us.

This is the heart of the gospel, brothers and sisters in Christ. And this is a truth, this is a doctrine, this is a wonderful gospel truth that applies to both Jews and Gentiles. It’s not just simply for the Jews who can say, oh, thank the Lord that we have a Messiah who took away the curse of the law for us so that we don’t have to be under all of these ceremonial laws anymore. No, it’s also for the Gentiles who believe in Christ. We, too, participate. We, too, get in on it because Christ was made as a man for us. He became a man for us. Not only does this passage teach us about the humanity of Christ, that He’s a true man, it also shows us the deity of Christ.

Notice the text there says that God sent forth His Son into this world to become a man. That implies that He existed before He became a man. He existed as the eternal Son of God. Oh, the love of God the Father, that He would send His own beloved Son into this world. He came into this world from the outside as the eternal Son of God, as the divine, powerful Son of God. And He was born of woman. He humbled Himself. He took upon Him our nature. He was born under the law in order to fulfill it for us.

And as a result, we are redeemed from the law. Verse four, verse five, to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons. And that we there is both Jews and Gentiles. All of us who believe in Jesus, all of us who receive this work of Christ, his active and passive obedience, all who look to the son as the only savior from sin, we are redeemed and we have received adoption as sons.

The idea of redemption is the idea of, it’s an analogy taken from the world of usually warfare, when captives are taken in war, but they can be redeemed if the price is paid. If someone pays the redemption price, this could also refer to slaves. Slaves could be redeemed if the price was paid to the owner. And then once the price is paid, what happens?

They’re released. They’re free from their captivity. That’s what Christ has done. He has paid the price, both His perfect obedience to God under the law that we could never yield, and His bearing the wrath of God and the curse of God in our place. He has paid the price by His obedience. And that’s the totality of His obedience. His active and passive obedience is the price that He has paid to set us free.

So we are no longer in bondage to the curse of the law. We are set free by the work of Christ. And having been set free, we now receive adoption as sons. Now the date that was set by the Father has come, and we’re no longer under managers and supervisors. We are now free sons to serve God in the power of Christ.

Galatians 4:6: The Spirit of His Son

Then in verse six, Paul, having mentioned the first two persons of the Trinity, God the Father sending His Son, now mentions the Spirit, the third person of the Trinity. Verse six, and the proof that you are sons is the fact that God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. This is the proof that we are sons, is the fact that we have the Spirit within us, crying, Abba, Father. If you find yourself being able to pray to God, not as a wrathful judge, but as a Father who loves you through Christ, that is because of the Spirit’s work in your heart. No one can call God Father through Christ apart from the work of the Spirit, opening our eyes, opening our hearts to receive the love of God and to call Him our Father.

This word Abba is simply the Aramaic word for father. And the reason why Paul quotes this word here, why he doesn’t just say crying father, but why he says Abba father, is because he’s alluding to the Garden of Gethsemane in Mark chapter 14. These are the words that Jesus himself used in speaking to his father. Mark 14 verse 36, in the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus said, Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me, yet not what I will, but what you will.

This relationship that Jesus has with his heavenly father, This Abba cry that he has is also taken up upon the lips of all believers in union with Christ. And specifically, Paul uses this verb cry there. He doesn’t just say that because your son’s God has sent the spirit of his son into our hearts saying or praying Abba Father, he says crying Abba Father. Why the word cry? Because this is the most common time when we call upon God as Father. It’s when we’re in our time of need and in our time of suffering and we’re crying out to God just like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Father, I’m in anguish, I’m in pain. Help me through this. Help me to submit to your will in the midst of this trial.

Martin Luther has a great comment on this word Abba, specifically as it relates to the word cry, the Abba cry. He says, this is but a little word, and yet notwithstanding, it comprehends all things. The mouth speaks not, but the affection of the heart speaks in this manner. Although I am oppressed with anguish and terror on every side, and seem to be forsaken and utterly cast away from your presence, yet I am your child. And you are my father for Christ’s sake. The Abba cry, it’s a cry of anguish. It’s like the laments in the Psalms and yet it also has within it this sense of trust.

Why would the Psalmists lament and cry out to God in prayer unless they believed that he was hearing their prayer? If they had completely lost all hope and all faith, they wouldn’t even lament. They would just go on their way. The idea of lament, even though it sounds like it’s coming from a place of total discouragement and abandonment by God, yet it is not. It is actually a cry of faith and trust, even in the midst of the most difficult time.

Galatians 4:7: No Longer a Slave but a Son

And then verse seven, the text concludes. So then, you are no longer a slave. That is whether talking about the slavery of being a pagan and living under the fear of the gods, or the slavery of being an old covenant Israelite under the yoke of the law. You are no longer a slave, but a son.

Doctrine

And if a son, then an heir through God. Something interesting in this text, I mentioned it before, but I’ll mention it again, and that is that the word God is used twice in this text. It’s used in verse four, when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, and it’s used at the very end in verse seven. If you’re a son, then you are also an heir through God. But the reference of those two words is different. In verse four, God refers to the father. Because it’s God, the Father, who sent his Son. But in verse 7, God here is being used to refer to the entire Trinity.

Because he has just said that the way that we become sons and heirs is through this work of the triune God. The Father sending his Son to redeem us, and then the Father sending the Spirit of his Son into our heart in order to apply the work that Christ has accomplished to our hearts. And so through the work of the triune God, we are sons and heirs. You are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir through the triune God. That’s how you experience and enjoy your sonship and heirship through God. It is through the work of the Trinity.

The Trinity and Salvation

The Father sends, the Son accomplishes, the Spirit applies. The Trinity is revealed in the Gospel. The Gospel itself has a Trinitarian grammar to it. You can’t really explain the Gospel to someone without talking about the Trinity. Now I know that the doctrine of the Trinity is a hard doctrine and there’s lots of academic discussions of it.

But really it’s not purely an academic doctrine. You can study it that way if you want to. But really it’s the heart of our faith. It’s our life. It is our Christian religion. That we believe in a Trinitarian God who is revealed in the gospel. The gospel itself cannot be explained correctly and properly without talking about all three persons of the Trinity. Now, at any given moment, you might be focusing more on one or the other of the persons. You might be focusing particularly on the second person of the Trinity and the work of Christ. But who is Christ? He’s the Son of God, and he was sent by the Father. And how can we know who Christ is apart from the work of the Spirit?

Opening our minds, opening our hearts, granting us faith, giving us that Abba cry. And so we turn full circle, don’t we? It starts with the Father, goes from the Father to the Son to the Spirit, but then the Spirit turns us back to the Father, because what is the Spirit doing in us? But helping us to cry, Abba Father.

Application

And so it’s a Trinitarian religion that we hold to. Let me just apply the text with that very thought. Just think about this. This is a wonderful thing to think about, that only the Christian religion has this way of understanding our relationship with God.

Trinitarian Redemption and Sonship

All other religions are not Trinitarian. All other religions do not have the Father sending the Son and the Spirit to apply the work of the Son so that we can call God Father. All other religions are a form of bondage. All other religions are a form of legalistic bondage under the elementary principles of the world. No other religion is a religion of Trinitarian redemption and Sonship. No other religion reveals the Father this way.

Even the religions that are the closest to the Christian religion, let’s say Islam, they do speak of God. They’re closer to us in terms of believing in one God only and in an Abrahamic form of faith. But yet, they don’t speak of God as Father. In Islam, God is just this absolutely sovereign God who has no intimacy with us, has no relationship with us. He doesn’t cry out, we don’t cry out Abba Father in relation to the God of Islam.

No other religion is a Trinitarian religion of redemption and sonship. The father sending the son. No other religion has a divine savior like the son who was born of woman and took upon him our human nature and undertook for us our responsibilities and obligations under the law. No other religion has the sweet spirit of God, the spirit of adoption by whom we cry, Abba, Father.

The Trinity can be studied as an academic doctrine and it is important to do so, but let us not let it stay there as an academic doctrine. The Trinity is our life. The Trinity is our religion. The Trinity is our hope. There’s no hope without the work of the Father sending the Son and the Spirit coming to apply the work of the Son to our heart and to bring us into that sweet relation to the Father. The Trinity is our life.

Living in the Consciousness of Our Standing as Sons

Notice also another application from this text is that God wants us to enter into the consciousness of our standing as sons. To really live as sons. There is a difference, isn’t there, between the objective reality of our sonship and the subjective enjoyment of it.

Objectively, in the sight of God, we are sons. Even when you’re asleep and you’re not really thinking about the Lord, you’re his son. Even when you’re struggling with something and you’re somewhat, your mind is somewhat turning towards the things of this world or towards sin even, And you haven’t yet repented and been restored in that relational sense to the Lord. Even then you’re objectively a son. But there’s also a subjective aspect to sonship.

And this is something that the Lord wants us to have. He didn’t just send the son. In order to objectively secure our release from the bondage of the law and to grant us our status as sons, he also sent the spirit. He sent the spirit of his son into our hearts. The spirit that lives within us. The spirit that helps us to not only know objectively that we are sons, but to feel it and to relate to God in that way. The objective reality that we have been redeemed out from under the curse of the law is absolutely true, and it’s a glorious doctrine that we must always remind ourselves of, but it must also enter our hearts. The ransom price has been paid, and we have been released, but let’s not be like those slaves in the past who still were mentally in chains, even though they had been released.

Too often I think we have that mindset. We relate to God in a slavish way, as if God is this mean, legalistic God of legalistic bondage, threatening us with a curse if we’re not perfect. That’s not how we are to relate to God. We have been delivered from the law as a covenant of works by which we could be justified or condemned. We are not justified. We are not declared righteous in God’s sight by the law. Nor are we even sanctified by the law.

Now, it is true that the law continues as a rule of obedience in the hand of Christ, showing us the way in which He wants His sons to walk. But we don’t achieve sonship through it. Actually, it’s just the opposite. We express our sonship the more we love the law and seek to please the Lord in reliance upon his grace. The law does not condemn us anymore. That’s why Paul says there in verse seven, You are no longer a slave, but a son.

And if a son, then an heir through God. Paul, you can see his preacher’s heart coming out here. He doesn’t just want them to say, he doesn’t just want them to know the doctrine that they are sons or the fact that they are sons, he wants them to feel it and to know it. And so he preaches it to them and he declares it to them and reminds them of it.

You are no longer a slave. You are no longer a slave. You are a son. And if a son, then an heir through God. And of course, that will then lead directly into his application to the situation here in Galatia, as these Gentile Christians are being tempted to go and listen to what the Judaizers are saying about how they should keep the law, the entire law, the Mosaic law, with all of its curses and everything. And he’s saying, don’t do that. You’re not a slave anymore. You’re a son. And so live as sons and rejoice in that reality.

Yes, there is still room for discipline in the Christian life, God’s fatherly discipline. He sometimes sends difficult things into our lives. He sometimes brings hardship into our lives. And we feel his fatherly discipline in our lives, but it’s not a discipline of wrath. It’s not a discipline of the curse of the law.

It is his loving, fatherly, gracious care for us, weaning us away from the things of the world, making us more like Christ, working in us those precious fruits of the Spirit. We’re going to get to that later in Galatians 5, but just think about the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Against such things there is no law. These are only things that come by the work of the Spirit in us. They don’t come by trying to please God by our fleshly efforts. They don’t come by putting ourselves under a yoke of bondage, whether it’s like the pagan bondage or the yoke of the law for the old covenant saints. They come by the work of the Spirit, this Spirit of adoption within us, who is transforming us and working in us.

And sometimes God allows us to go through very, very difficult times, through the valley of the shadow of death. Tremendous difficulties, whether it’s external things like illness or even just difficulties of the soul that nobody can even see from the outside. They don’t even know what you’re going through unless you tell them. But in their hearts and their minds, they’re going through some very dark shadows and darkness and difficulty and struggles and mental pain and suffering and anguish.

But the Lord is a gracious Heavenly Father who has redeemed us by the work of Christ and has given us the Spirit. And so even in the midst of our suffering, even in the midst of those dark and deep times and those deep waters that we sometimes go through, we find ourselves still crying, Abba. May not know exactly what to pray for. I may not be able to know exactly what the answer is to this problem. But I still cry Abba. I say, Lord, help me. That’s all I can do. That’s all I can muster at this time.

And if you find that cry coming from your heart, that’s the work of the Spirit in you. That’s the work of the Spirit applying to you the reality of your sonship in Christ, even though everything around you is hard and difficult and painful. Yet in the midst of that anguish and pain, just like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, you know the reality of your Sonship. And He’s using that then to sanctify you. He’s using that to burn away all the parts of your heart and soul that are not right. He’s using that to transform you into the image of Christ, to make you have these fruits of the Spirit of love. And joy and peace and gentleness, these Christ-like, wonderful, spirit-filled fruits that only come by the work of the triune God within us.