The Gospel and Adoption into God’s Family: Galatians 4:1-7

Welcome to Episode 3 of Series 2. It is good to have you with us.

Recap and Background

Series 1 was about Paul’s life, as far as it connected with the people in Galatia, the Roman province in modern day Turkey, where Paul had been evangelising. Paul had started his great missionary work from the city of Antioch and from there, with Barnabas, his first journey had been to Galatia, where, according to Acts 13 and 14, he had planted about six different churches. It was a wonderful breakthrough in the evangelisation of the Gentiles. But, as we find out in the book of Galatians, after Paul and Barnabas had left, some other Jewish Christians came from the Jerusalem church and started preaching against Paul; preaching a different message, encouraging the Gentile converts that they actually needed also to become Jews. To become a Jew, they had to follow the Law of Moses. This is the point of conflict that gives rise to the letter of Paul to the Galatians. He has been arguing very firmly against it.

In Series 1, he describes, the background and some of the events that happened leading up to writing this letter but in Series 2, where we are now, he is explaining more thoroughly and more carefully why we cannot go back to the Law of Moses as Christians. It is not part of God’s will for us to be obeying all the rules of the Law of Moses. This has led Paul also to try and explain more clearly to the Galatian Christians, most of whom were Gentiles, what it means to be in relationship with God. What is their status? What has actually happened to them? He is trying to help them understand that, as they have believed in Christ and been justified by faith, so they have become part of a new community, a new family, a new spiritual reality – the church. He has been trying to encourage them by helping them to see how wonderful and how marvellous it is to belong to the church.

Adoption and Inheritance

He is now going to talk about two important themes. The main one is spiritual adoption into God’s family and associated to that, the idea of inheritance. What are we receiving when we become Christians? First, let us remind ourselves of that wonderful statement that we saw Paul making in Galatians 3: 28, in our last episode. He says, ‘there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.’ This is a wonderful statement of the family of God. It is clear to Paul that they haven’t really understood the depth of what it means to be a Christian. That can be a problem today; we can have a very superficial understanding of what it means to become a believer. Maybe some people think in your mind, ‘Yes, Jesus was the Son of God. Yes, he was raised from the dead. Yes, he died on the cross. Yes, I can join the church and enter into the Christian community that way.’ Maybe people think it is going to church meetings that make us a Christian. But Paul says it is far deeper than any of these things. Something fundamental happens to us. A whole new reality opens up to us. We belong to a new family; we are in the family of God. It is a wonderful teaching that Paul gives about adoption and inheritance.

The Law of Moses as Guardian

“What I am saying is that as long as an heir is under age, he is no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate. The heir is subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his father.”

Galatians 4:1-2, NIV

Paul is using here the analogy between an heir, a son in a family, who is going to inherit the estate but has to wait until he is old enough to inherit, and what we are - the situation we were in before Christ, before we enter into the reality of believing in Christ. He said in the last episode, we are under the control of the time of the Law of Moses. The Jews were under the control of the Law of Moses in a direct sense; they were literally trying to obey its rules. The Gentiles were under the control of the Law of Moses because it says they were outside the Kingdom of God, they were not participants. It is controlling us until the time comes when we inherit.

Inheritance

In every culture in the world, there are different traditions about how people inherit property and money within the family. Paul has this in mind, as he is using this example. There are certain traditions in my country here in the United Kingdom. There are laws and regulations about wills that are written down, and the process by which they are validated and enacted, and the money is distributed and property is handed over or sold, and the finances shared amongst those who inherit that estate. But it is different in different countries. For example, as a young person I lived in Pakistan, an Islamic country, and the laws of inheritance there are very strict and the customs are very strict in terms of the need for the older son to be the prime person who inherits, and secondly that adopted children are, generally speaking, not considered able to inherit property. That is one view of inheritance in an Islamic culture.

Paul is here saying something rather different to that. He is saying that we are being adopted and are going to inherit blessings. He is introducing quite a radical idea that in some of our cultures in the world we won’t find very easy to understand. But what Paul has in mind is the traditions of inheritance in Greek and Roman society, the sort of places where he was writing to, like in Galatia. In those societies if the family owned a house and had wealth then, roughly speaking, the father would be the owner - very rarely would the mother actually own the estate – and he would make a will. His will would be preserved until the time that he died and, normally he would designate the oldest son as the heir to receive the property, although property could be divided between sons and indeed daughters, or handed over to his wife. Various possibilities existed. Imagine that it is being handed over to the oldest son and, in that society, the oldest son would inherit at about the age of 18. If we imagine the situation that the father dies before the oldest son is 18, what happens in that intervening period? He is under the control of guardians and trustees. Guardians were probably household servants, or household slaves, whose main responsibility was the education of this son. Education was often done at home and slaves became very well-educated so they could be teachers in the family home. The son would have education until he inherited the estate. There were also trustees - people who are actually looked after the property and the finances. That might be the mother, or the mother might appoint someone else to look after the estate, the finances, the property, the land, the animals, the businesses and everything else associated with the home. There is a time of waiting. Paul said that until Christ came, humanity was in a time of waiting, because we couldn’t inherit until he came. We were still under the authority of the old system, the Law of Moses. But when Christ came, the inheritance took place. You can come into everything that God promised, just like the son in the Greek or Roman family at the age of 18. The will would be read and the trustees and guardians would say to him, ‘Now this belongs to you and we are working for you. Do you want us to carry on working for you?’ Paul says, spiritually we inherit God’s Kingdom and all the blessings of his Kingdom, when we believe in Jesus Christ. We are not going to go back to the time of the Law of Moses, which was like a guardianship time, like an infancy or a childhood or a waiting time until Christ came.

Slavery to Sin

“So also, when we were under age, we were in slavery under the elemental spiritual forces of the world. But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba, Father.’ So you’re no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.”

Galatians 4:3-7, NIV

Paul is thinking of the inheritance situation from his culture in the Greek and Roman society; he is making a comparison between the situation there and our situation. When we are waiting to inherit, in what he describes as childhood, we are slaves, he says here, to ‘the elemental spirits of the world’. This is a very strong expression.

Humanity, before Christ comes and delivers us, is, according to Paul here, in the control of spiritual forces of darkness. That is what he means, ‘elemental spiritual forces of the world.’ He uses a similar expression in Ephesians 6: 12, ‘the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.’ Basically, he is describing the fact that we are in spiritual bondage. If we are Jews, we are in spiritual bondage because we can’t obey the law fully and we haven’t exercised faith as we should have done. If we are Gentiles, we are in bondage because we are excluded from God’s purposes; we are outside the pathway to salvation, ‘until Christ comes’. Then it all changes, according to Paul.

He is quite serious here in telling us that, before we come to Christ, we are in spiritual bondage. What was that spiritual bondage for most of the people who were reading this in the Galatian churches? They were worshiping pagan gods. In every city there were three main opportunities to worship: one was in the temples to particular pagan gods; one was the shrines on the street; and the other one was the household gods that would be in many homes. They could worship in different ways all the time. Paul says this is like being a slave to the spiritual forces of darkness.

But, it all changed.

Verse 4: ‘when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law.’ Paul sees an incredible event happens with Jesus Christ. At a certain time in history that God set, mysteriously to us - we don’t know exactly why it was at that particular time. But, at the time that God decided, Christ would come into the world; he would be a Jew; he would be born under the law. Why was he a Jew? Because he came from God’s chosen people; because he was from the family of Abraham; because it was the call on the Jewish people to be the race through which salvation would come. Jesus had to be born as a Jew. He was born of a woman. He was both the Son of God but also fully human. Paul refers here to the mystery of Jesus’ incarnation. He speaks of Mary, the mystery, the amazing miracle that Mary conceived Jesus without a human father. This was the great event that was going to change the destiny of human history. He was born under the law. He obeyed the Jewish law, and he was going to redeem those who were under the Jewish law.

Adoption

God’s plan was to give humanity an opportunity to join his family, to experience adoption. Adoption was something that the Greeks and the Romans understood. Young children were often adopted into families and it could be a legal process of adoption. They would become the sons and the daughters of particular families. That was a very powerful reality. Adopted children could inherit the estate when the parents died. There was a tremendously good example in the history of the Roman Empire at around this time, in that the Emperor Augustus, who was the emperor in the time when Jesus was born, was actually emperor only because of adoption. He was adopted by Julius Caesar and as a result inherited the whole Roman Empire when Julius Caesar died. He even adopted the title Caesar as his imperial title. So the Greeks and Romans understood that adoption was a very powerful issue and could change your destiny totally. That is exactly what Paul has in mind here. Our destiny changes totally because we are adopted into God’s family. We become the heirs; we will inherit everything that God has - not just the benefits of salvation now but Paul is looking into the future and saying, in eternity we will inherit all the blessings of God’s Kingdom as he makes a new heaven and a new earth. We are sons; we are heirs; we are adopted in his family.

Paul wants the Galatians to understand the enormity of what God has done for them, so they are not tempted to go back to Jewish rules and regulations and think that is the way to salvation. Paul says, ‘Don’t look backwards, look forwards.’ The Christian faith is primarily orientated towards the future, not the past. God deals with our past. He lays to rest the things that are wrong in our past. He forgives, once and for all, if we allow the power of the cross to influence our lives fully. If we turn away from the things we have done wrong, they are forgiven. God is not looking backwards to define our lives; he is looking forwards. We have received salvation and we are going to receive his eternal Kingdom. Paul is encouraging the Galatians not to look back to Judaism, but rather look forward to the coming Kingdom and their eternal destiny.

God as Father

He also encourages them to realise what a great thing has happened to them when they believed. It is a great miracle which isn’t spoken of enough, but isn’t it amazing? I have experienced in many countries all over the world, that Christians of different cultures in different places, find it so easy and natural when praying, to pray, “Our Father”, to speak of God as a father. This intimate connection with God; this understanding of him as our spiritual father, which Paul speaks about here, is completely different to the pagan religions of the Greek and the Roman world. God sent his Spirit, ‘the Spirit of his Son, into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.”’ The Holy Spirit has come into your heart. So, if you are able to say, ‘God you are my father’, and have a sense that you know what that means, that is the work of the Holy Spirit; that is a sign of salvation, says Paul. It is not just a sign of a good relationship with God being at peace with him now, it is a sign you have been adopted into a family which has a future, a destiny: ‘heirs according to the promise’,

Galatians 3: 29. Paul speaks of that more clearly in other places such as in Romans 8. We don’t just experience the blessings of being a Christian now, we experience eternal salvation, as God remakes the universe, the new heavens and the new earth.

Paul is trying to get the Galatians to think more deeply about what their salvation really is, so that they don’t compromise it by taking a superficial view of it and maybe adding in legalism. That is a very profound lesson even for us today.

Reflections

As we come to think of things that we can learn and some reflections from this passage, let me say that it is good for us to reflect on the depth of what we have inherited in God: we have been remade; we have been born again; we have started a new life and we don’t want to be confused or compromised about the significance of what that is. Sometimes Christians don’t really live in the reality of what God has done for them.

Paul writes on a similar theme with wonderful words in another book, Titus 3: 5, ‘he saved us, through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit’. We have started a new spiritual life and the Holy Spirit is renewing our life: ‘the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Saviour.’ Paul always emphasizes the work of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit living within us that makes real our salvation: ‘so that, having been justified by his grace,’ (that is the theme Paul has been talking about here) ‘we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life. This is a trustworthy saying.’ There is an orientation to the future here. That is really important for the way Paul thinks. The Galatians are tempted to look backwards to Judaism, but Paul said, look forward to the Kingdom of God. You are heirs. That means that when God remakes creation, after the second coming of Jesus and the eternal judgment, we will be part of that new creation, a new heaven and a new earth. That is what our inheritance ultimately means. We will experience the resurrection of our bodies, so that we can fully participate in that new creation. All of that is guaranteed at the point where we believe and repent and we are born again; we become Christians.

Paul wants to create a big vision of what it means to be a Christian. Sometimes, we find it difficult to really believe that God should be so kind and so gracious to us. One of the reasons for that is that in life we experience difficult relationships with fathers, mothers, teachers, authority figures, and family members that crush our confidence. It is hard for us to believe that when we call God, Abba Father, that he is a good father, a loving father, a forgiving father. Even though we might be Christians, sometimes deep down there is a sense of uncertainty about that. So, if you have felt some of that as I have been talking, there will be a clash between your feelings and what the Bible is teaching you. That is something to get someone to help you with - a pastor or a friend to pray with you, that God may give you more revelation of how gracious and how kind he truly is, how his salvation has a wonderful destiny for you.

My final point of reflection here is the fact that we can call God Abba Father, means that access to God is always clear and easy. We can always pray; we can always come to him and he is always there. Christ has made the way into the presence of God.

Thanks for listening to this episode and I hope to welcome you back to the next one.