Well do please take a copy of God’s Word in your hands and turn with me, if you’re using a church Bible, to page 974 and to Galatians chapter 4 and to what really ought to be one of the most precious passages in the New Testament for every earnest Christian. You will remember that Paul has been writing to expose the dangers of legalism in Galatia. And as we move today into chapter 4, in our ongoing studies in this letter, we’re going to see Paul develop the image of the law as a guardian that he mentions, you will recall back in chapter 3, although he’s using a slightly different Greek term here in chapter 4, he’s going to develop this image, this illustration, to explain the transition from life under the law of Moses to a life of faith in Jesus Christ. The great result of Christ’s coming, Paul says, is that we who once were slaves under the guardianship of the law, instead now receive the adoption as sons. And really all I want to do today is to spend our time lingering in particular over that core idea – the doctrine of our spiritual adoption as sons of God, heirs of God according to the promise. And I want to do it because adoption is the highest privilege and blessing of the Christian life. Adoption. The highest privilege and blessing of the Christian life. There’s nothing more wonderful than this – that sinners like me and like you should be called the children of God. So I don’t want to miss the opportunity to unpack that a little with you today.
Professor John Murray called the doctrine of adoption “the apex of grace and privilege. It staggers imagination because of its amazing condescension and love.” “It were much for God to take a clod of dust and make it a star,” wrote the Puritan, Thomas Watson. “It is more for Him to take a piece of clay and sin and adopt it for His heir.” And the late J.I. Packer makes the point rather directly when he says, “If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all.” So the doctrine of the believer’s spiritual adoption into the family of God is, though a much neglected, often overlooked truth, nevertheless one we ought to find fueling our worship and animating our Christian lives, expressing as it does the very pinnacle of our blessedness under God.
And our passage, Galatians 4:1-7, is one of the brightest and clearest New Testament texts that teach us the doctrine of adoption. Now a good deal of the glory of Paul’s presentation of the doctrine of adoption in this passage has to do with how richly Trinitarian it is. And so as we begin our sermon, I simply want to camp out there and explore the work of each person of the blessed triune Godhead in the accomplishment of our adoption. So we’ll look first at the initiative of the Father, then the sacrifice of the Son, and then the ministry of the Holy Spirit. And then once we’ve teased that out just a little, I want to highlight briefly as we close three main blessings that come to us as a result of having been adopted into the household of God. Paul says in this passage that we now have a new status and we have a new freedom and we therefore also have a new access to God. A new status, a new freedom, and a new access to God. Okay, so the initiative of the Father, the sacrifice of the Son, the ministry of the Spirit, resulting in new status, new freedom, and new access.
Before we get to all of that, let’s pause and pray and then we’ll read the passage together. Let us pray.
Lord our God, Your Word is spread before us just as our hearts and minds and lives are spread before You. You can see them in all their need, all their sin, all their confusion. You see every blind spot, every place where we remain ignorant, all the places where we are still hard hearted, reluctant to obey. You see our hurts and our sorrows, our woes. You know us altogether. Before a word is on our lips, You comprehend it entirely. And so as we bow before You, we cry out, “O God, would You match the truth of Your Word to the need of our hearts, for the glory of Your name.” Amen.
Galatians chapter 4, beginning at the first verse. This is the Word of God:
“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, but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father. In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.”
Amen.
The Initiative of the Father
Let’s think first of all then about the initiative of the Father. Verses 1 and 2 you will notice provide our opening illustration. They take us into the life of an ancient Greco-Roman family and household that I dare say it’s very different to the home life most of us are familiar with. A child growing up in that context would have been cared for and governed by servants appointed as guardians and managers of the estate. Even though he is the owner of everything, verse 1 says, the heir is actually not unlike a slave, in this respect – he lives every day under the restraint of many rules that are imposed upon him. He stands to inherit all the riches of his father’s great estate, but, verse 2, “he is under guardians and managers” who have been appointed to regulate and govern his life “until the date set by his father.” And so a time will come, which is written in his father’s will, when finally the son can inherit. We actually have an ancient letter from the early period here describing a situation where a father determined that his son would not inherit prior to his twentieth birthday. And in the meantime, he was to live under the oversight of others.
That’s the situation Paul is describing in this family. I hope you can picture them in your minds. This family, Paul says in verse 3, is an illustration of our condition before we were Christians. The Jews live – he’s been telling us this in chapter 3, hasn’t he – the Jews live in the old covenant under the guardianship of the law of Moses. But did you notice how in the text even people from Gentile backgrounds like the Galatian Christians themselves, Paul says were also under a sort of bondage and slavery too. They are both alike, Jews and Gentiles, subject to what Paul calls in verse 3, “the elementary principles of the world.”
Now let’s pause there for a moment to make sure we understand what Paul is saying because it would have been devastating for the legalists in Galatia, this clause here in our passage. He’s saying no matter whether you lived under the Mosaic law of God or if you lived under the invented superstitions of pagan religion, if you thought you could secure your own salvation under either system, you were in fact living in bondage to these elementary principles of the world. Now what does that phrase mean – to live in bondage to “the elementary principles of the world”? The Greek word is “stoicheia” and Paul tells us in verses 8 and 9 a little later exactly what he means by it in the context. Do you see how he uses the same language again in verses 8 and 9 where it clearly refers to elementary spirits, to false gods, to demonic powers? You see that there in verses 8 and 9? Paul says they were enslaved to those who were by nature not gods, “worthless and elementary principles of the world.” So “the elementary principles of the world” is really a way to speak about those objects of false worship that have captured the hearts of many.
And almost certainly Jewish people, especially the Jewish legalists who showed up in Galatia would have agreed, “Well, of course, pagans, they’re living in bondage to their stoicheia, to these elementary principles, these demonic spiritual powers.” But Paul here goes much further than that, doesn’t he? What a shock this would have been. He says, “Jews and Gentiles, we” – meaning me as a Jew and you, Galatians as Gentiles – “we are living under the same bondage, whether under the Mosaic law or under the false religion of your own invention. Anyone who looks anywhere except to Jesus Christ for salvation is enslaved to these elementary principles.” That would have landed with the legalists like a slap in the face. They wanted the Galatians, you remember, to become strict devotees of Jewish ceremonial law as a condition, a necessary condition of their acceptance before God. But here, Paul is exposing it all – paganism and Judaism alike. He is exposing man-made religion or even the true religion revealed by God and twisted by human beings into a works righteousness system. He is exposing all our self-salvation mechanisms for what they really are – nothing more than a set of iron shackles that hold us, chains that hold us in terrible spiritual bondage.
And so let me say here as clearly as I can before we go any further, that if you are not trusting in Jesus Christ today, no matter what you are trusting in – whether it’s your dedicated religious observance or your scrupulous, even atheistic morality or your esoteric, homespun spirituality or even one of the great ancient religions of the world – whether it is, no matter the claims that it may make to the contrary, the Word of God says it can only ever bring you into slavery and spiritual bondage. But God has not left us to languish in that condition, has He? No, Paul says He has acted to bring us out of slavery and into freedom.
And here’s what I want you to notice carefully – the initiative of God the Father in securing it for us. Look at verse 4. “When the fullness of time had come” – so here’s the date set by the Father for the child to inherit that Paul was talking about back in verse 2 – the fullness of time, at the ordained moment in the Father’s plan, when all the conditions were just right, when all necessary components of Old Testament revelation and global politics and cultural openness and spiritual need were ripe in order for the Gospel of salvation to break upon the world and spread like wildfire, when the fullness of time had come, when the moment of the fulfillment of the Father’s eternal decree and predestinating purpose had finally arrived, at that moment, then He acted. And what is it that He did? “He sent forth His Son.” It’s a staggering act on the Father’s part, isn’t it? To make slaves into sons, He sent His only begotten Son to die a death reserved for slaves and traitors, even the death of the cross. The coming of Christ was not Jesus’ intervention in the plans of the Father that had been going terribly wrong and He needed to correct them. That’s not what was happening when Jesus came. The coming of Christ was not “Plan B.” Your rescue, your liberation from spiritual slavery was the Father’s idea, purposed from eternity. It was His initiative and it was His work.
He sent His Son for you in history and then what’s more, verse 6, having sent His Son in history, He then sent His Spirit into our hearts. So the accomplishment of salvation, the basis of our adoption was secured by the Father sending His Son into history to die on the cross. And then the application of our salvation, the experience of our adoption becomes ours by the Father sending His Spirit into our hearts. So both redemption accomplished and redemption applied take place at the Father’s behest according to the Father’s initiative.
I think there can be a persistent fear lurking in the hearts of many of us that, yes, Jesus loves us, but the Father needed persuading. The Spirit is near to us, but the Father is distant and aloof; you know, cold and austere and reluctant. Paul says your adoption was His plan from the first. And He executed it at just the right moment in the fullness of time, exactly according to plan. Your salvation, your salvation was His idea and He sent Jesus to secure it and the Spirit to apply it. You are a Christian, if you are a Christian, it is all and only because God the Father has loved you from eternity and chose you to be His child in His sovereign, electing counsel and has done everything, taken every step, to bring you to Himself according to His purpose. The initiative of the Father. Do you see it here in our text? It’s the grounds of our adoption.
The Sacrifice of the Son
Then notice the sacrifice of the Son, the second person of the blessed Trinity – God the Son. Look at verse 4 again. “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law that we might receive the adoption as sons.” Jesus Christ, the Son of God, we are told was “born of woman.” Certainly that means that God the Son became a real human being with a human body and a human soul and a human mind. He was born into the world like a trillion other babies having grown and gestated for the usual 40 weeks or so in Mary’s womb. He nursed, He grew, He matured in all the ordinary ways that we do. He was born of woman. He is one of us, Paul is saying. And I think he means more than that. That’s certainly true, but he means more than that. I think he is alluding here to Genesis 3:15. He is the son of the woman. He is the seed of the woman who will crush the head of the serpent, come at last according to the ancient promise of God to bring salvation. The heir of Abraham, the seed of David, David the child of promise, the redeemer that God ordained from the foundation of the world.
And as wonderful as that is, the teaching here actually is more profound. Yes, “The eternal Son of God became man, and so was and continues to be both God and man in two distinct natures and one person forever,” as the catechism puts it. That is precious truth indeed, beyond comprehension, but did you notice Paul even goes further than that. This one, he says, God’s own Son, the heir of all things Himself, was born under the law. He who is Himself the law giver, of whose character God’s law is the perfect transcript, to whom all the types and shadows and ceremonies of the law point us. He was born as one of us and subjected Himself to that law and lived in complete submission and obedience to its every precept. God, the law giver, He came in Jesus Christ, man, the law keeper.
When Paul says He was born under the law, he means here that He willingly subjected Himself to at least two dimensions of the law’s requirements for our sake. First, He was subject to the positive commands of the law. He obeyed the law like no one else ever has or ever could. His record was unsullied by any blemish. There was no infraction, no transgression, never a moment in thought, word or deed or affections where Jesus failed to conform from the heart to the exacting demands of God’s holy law. And secondly it means that He was subject also to the penalties and the sanctions of the law which He endured not for Himself, having never broken the law, but for all whom He represented – for you and for me. “And so the Lord has laid on Him,” Isaiah 53, “the iniquity of us all. He was crushed for our transgressions. God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us.” And both aspects of being born under the law are necessary to secure our salvation. Both His positive obedience to the law’s demands and His passive suffering the penalties of the law that you broke and I have broken, both are required if we are to be saved. This is the price, you see. Not just the blood of Jesus in payment for your disobedience, but His whole life of obedience to cover the record of our unrighteousness.
Here’s the cost of your adoption, can you see it, to make you a child of God? It was not cheap at all, was it? It wasn’t free. It cost the obedience and blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It’s a price He gladly paid to make you a child of God. The Father sent His Son to make slaves into sons and the Son paid the pride of our manumission, of our being set free from slavery. And the price of our adoption, He paid it in full, as if we were infinitely valuable since there was an infinite price He paid, even though we are in fact wretched and damnable in our sin. It’s no small thing to be called a child of God, is it? I wonder if you’re beginning to see yet the wonder of your adoption. How precious this truth is. It demanded the humiliation and obedience and sufferings and crucifixion and death of the Son of God to bring you into His family.
The Ministry of the Holy Spirit
The initiative of the Father. The sacrifice of the Son. Then thirdly, the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Look at verse 6. “And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” Your sonship, your adoption, is rooted in the Father’s eternal purpose, it is secured by the Son’s perfect obedience, and it is yours in your experience because having chosen us to be sons, to be children of God, in due course God sent the Spirit of His Son into your heart. He gave us saving faith and enabled us to receive and rest upon Christ as He is offered to us in the Gospel. We were born again by the Spirit’s power. All the rights and privileges of our sonship have now begun to unfold in our Christian lives, but only because the Spirit of the Son is making us live like and feel like and look like the sons and daughters of God that we now really are by His mighty grace.
And before we notice some of the practical implications of all of that, let me just back up for a moment and say something about Paul’s Trinitarian theology. The truth is, sometimes we view the doctrine of the Trinity as abstract and difficult and impractical and we really don’t know what to do with it. Isn’t that so? We know we’re supposed to believe in it but that’s about as far as we’re able to go. And we rarely think about it, if we are honest. But that’s not at all Paul’s view of the doctrine of the blessed Trinity. No, he says the story of salvation, or our whole Christian lives, is penetrated by and shaped around and given its fundamental pattern and character as a result of the work of each person in the blessed Trinity. The Father’s sovereign initiative, the Son’s atoning work of obedience and sacrifice, the Spirit’s secret ministry in our hearts giving us new life and helping us live no longer as slaves but as heirs of God and co-heirs together with Christ. We have been swept up into fellowship with Almighty God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That’s the truth of your life, believer in Jesus – swept up into fellowship with the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. What a glorious privilege it is to be a child of God.
A New Status
Well very quickly as we close, notice the difference all of this can make. First of all, it results, Paul tells us very clearly, in a new status. What is the goal of the Father sending the Son in the fullness of time? Verse 5 – why did He do it? “That you might receive adoption as sons.” And why does the Father send the Spirit of the Son into our hearts? Verse 6 – He does it because you are sons. “Behold what manner of love the Father has given to us that we should be called children of God.” That is your new status if you trust today in the Lord Jesus Christ. You are not a slave anymore. You are not an outsider. You are no longer without status or privilege. No, miserable sinner though I continue to be, often doubtful, fearful, self-righteous, miserable sinner though I am, because of the Father’s initiative and the Son’s sacrifice and the Spirit’s work, today I am a son of God, adopted into His family. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is my Father now. The Son of God is my elder Brother now. The Spirit of the Son is the Spirit of my adoption now.
I sometimes worry that we can be like the prodigal son in Jesus’ parable. Wiley was talking about it last Lord’s Day evening. We’ve decided to come back home, we’re repentant, we want to be back with God again, but we are so aware of how badly we have sinned against Him, how utterly wicked our hearts have been. We think the only way back for us is to live as a hired servant and not as a son. “Father,” we say, “I’ve sinned against heaven and against You and I am unworthy to be called Your son. Make me like one of Your hired hands. That’s the only way back. I don’t feel worthy. I don’t really believe I’m welcome in Your affections. I mean look at me! Maybe the best I could hope for is some form of servitude. I don’t really expect sonship.” But that is your new status now. When you come back home by repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, you are a son, not a servant. And the Father welcomes you and it’s not stiff, is it, or grudging or cold. He runs to you and puts His ring on your finger and covers the filth of your sin with the robes of Christ’s righteousness and celebrates over you as He kisses you and He says, “Rejoice, for this son of Mine was lost and is now found, was dead and is alive again!” You are not a hired servant, looking in from the outside, merely tolerated but not welcome. No, you are an adopted, beloved, child of the Triune God, embraced forever in the bosom of His love. That’s who you are.”
A New Freedom
You have a new status. That also means you have a new freedom. Verse 5 says you were redeemed, you were set free by the payment of a price, even the obedience and the blood of Jesus. Verse 7 says, “You are no longer a slave, but a son.” Not a slave, a son. Is there sometimes a spirit of legal bondage about your Christianity than there ought to be? Is it all heaviness and added duty? Have you forgotten that you are free? Not free to live as you please, not free to ignore the holiness to which we are called, but you are free now and forever from the fear of condemnation. As a believer in Jesus, never again will God’s law bring you under a sentence of condemnation. And you are free from the bondage and mastery of sin in your life. Now, by the spirit of your adoption, you are enabled to say “No” to sin and “Yes” to obedience. You are no longer under the dominion and slavery of the sinful passions of your heart. You can now, more and more, live for Jesus. And you are free from the power and dominion of the elementary principles of the world, from the predations of the devil. You are now kept by the power of God, purchased by the Son of God and inhabited by the Spirit of God. You are free!
A New Access to God
New status. New freedom. And then thirdly and finally, you have new access to God because of all of that. This is really the principle blessing that Paul emphasizes in our passage, isn’t it? Do you see it in verse 6? What does the Spirit of the Son do in the hearts of those God adopts into the family? He cries, “Abba! Father!” Abba is the Aramaic word for “father,” not “daddy.” It is intimate but it is not irreverent. It is not casual or informal but it is intimate. You remember Jesus was praying once and the disciples are overawed to hear Him pray. What intimacy and tenderness there was and immediacy of access between Christ and the Father as He prayed. And they said, “Lord, teach us to pray,” and He told them, “Pray like this. Our Father…” Here is the ministry of the Holy Spirit. It is helping those who once were slaves really to believe now they are sons, and enabling us to pray with that same intimacy and directness and freedom of access to God that Jesus had. We can approach Him the same way Jesus approached Him and call Him, “Abba.” To everyone else He will only ever be the almighty, transcendent, sovereign, holy Lord and Judge, but to us He will forever be Abba.
When we lived in London, my principal study was at home rather than at the church. It was a place of work and busyness and prayer and sermon preparation and it needed to be quiet, but my children didn’t care about any of that when they were small. And the door would burst open and they would come. And that’s right. That’s right. We don’t have to stand on ceremony to come to Him now because you are His beloved child and you have His heart and you have His ear and you have a place forever in His affections that can never be forfeited. What is it that the Spirit does within you? He enables you to come to God with the freedom and boldness of a child and say, “Abba,” and know that He is listening.
A Christian that never prays is like a baby that never cries or a bird that never sings or a piano that doesn’t produce music. Something is awfully wrong. When the Holy Spirit lives in your heart, that’s the first thing you do. You come running to Abba. How many of us live well below our privileges, I wonder, living like servants instead of the sons and daughters of God that we really are? Well may the Lord help us all to remember, if we trust in Jesus, we are chosen by the Father, the Son obeyed and bled and died for us, and the Spirit of the Son lives in us. And so we are God’s children now, free from legal condemnation, free from sin’s dominion, free from Satan’s mastery with access, direct, free, uninhibited, unhindered, immediate access to the throne room of heaven. May God help us to live up to our privileges as the sons and daughters of God. Let us pray.
Father, we bless You for Your holy Word. Thank You that by the Gospel of Your rich grace You have made us Your children, heirs of God and co-heirs together with Christ. Bless us, we pray, and help us to live up to those mighty privileges. And for those amongst us who know nothing of them, who live still today under the spiritual tyranny of false religion and empty attempts as self-salvation, would You bring them to that place that the prodigal son reached where they come to themselves and resolve finally at last to come home. We ask it all, we pray for the glory of Jesus’ name, amen.