Please turn with me this morning to Galatians chapter 3. We're going to begin in verse 27 of Galatians 3, and we'll read through chapter 4 verse 7 today. Galatians 3 beginning at verse 27. Hear now the word of the Lord.
For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you were Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise. 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 were 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. Let's pray. Father, what a tremendously underappreciated privilege it is for us that we can call you our Father. We who deserve wrath are not merely forgiven. We are accepted. We are loved. We are protected and provided for by you through this incredible act of divine adoption. As we meditate on Your Word this morning, please open our hearts and minds to fully appreciate the gift of adoption that's ours in Christ, and may we go from this place in just a few moments with a renewed zeal and understanding with which to cry out to You, Abba, Father.
We pray this in the name of Jesus, the One through whom all the blessings in heavenly places are given. Amen. Well, I doubt that anyone here this morning believes like Paul's opponents in Galatia that one of the prerequisites for salvation is obedience to the Old Testament ceremonial law of circumcision.
We know better. And so as we read Paul's letter to the Galatians, we may perhaps identify ourselves more with Paul and his indignation at these misinformed false teachers than we do with the false teachers or even with these susceptible Galatian believers themselves who were tempted to believe these false teachers. In other words, I wonder if we sort of unconsciously think of ourselves more as apostles than as susceptible Christians who need apostleing, if I can make up a word. We identify with the person who's in authority and who is right more readily than we identify with the person who is foolishly following incorrect doctrine and stands in need of correction. And why do we do that? Well, quite frankly, because we don't like to think of ourselves as needy or foolish or misinformed. We like to think of ourselves as intelligent and wise and influential.
And I'm sure there are areas in which we are intelligent and wise and influential. But the text before us today is not a text on how to be a good apostle. The text before us was written and preserved for the church to warn us against a common error to which Christians are prone. And that error is the sin of boasting about one's status before God. Why were there already false teachers in the very first decade or two of the church?
Why were there professing Christians in that first generation of post Pentecost church who were believing these false teachers? Well, there were false teachers and willing followers of these false teachers precisely because sinful man has a pride problem. We like to claim credit for things we did not accomplish. We like to think more highly of ourselves than is actually true. We have a pride problem.
We have a tendency to boast. What perhaps we don't realize, however, is that if we come to Christ with pride in our hearts, we are forfeiting the very security God intends us to enjoy as his children. If we insist on taking credit for God's grace in our lives, we forego the assurance that comes with unmerited grace. So in these verses before us today, Paul addresses that tendency, which we all have, of boasting in that which we did not accomplish. And in addressing this tendency, Paul shows us how to move from being those proud boasters to being joyful children of a gracious and heavenly Father. In Christ, our enslavement to proud boasting is replaced with joyful assurance of sonship. In a good family, a son does not brag his way into a good relationship with his father.
Rather, his good relationship with his father teaches him to love his father more and more. So it is in our relationship with God. We don't work our way or brag our way or assert our way into God's good graces.
No, we are made sons of God by the sheer unmerited and fatherly grace of God. Well, Paul convinces us of this grace in two steps. First, by affirming what the ground or the basis of our salvation is. And then secondly, by describing for us the consequence of our salvation. First, we see the ground of salvation in verses 27 through 29.
And just as Paul has been saying throughout his letter, the sole ground of the sinner's salvation, the only basis a sinner has for being saved from the wages of sin is the atoning work of Jesus Christ. Verse 27, for as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. Now, the word baptized here in verse 27 is not suggesting that baptism does the saving. Rather, Paul means that the thing that baptism points to, the thing it signifies, does the saving. The act of baptism does not save a person from God's wrath any more than the act of circumcision. And the Old Testament could save a person from God's wrath.
These signs are important only because of what they signify. In the case of baptism, it signifies a sinner's union with Christ and all that comes with that union. And so verse 27 means that anyone who has been united to Christ by faith possesses all the benefits that Jesus Christ offers.
The ground or basis of our salvation is our union with Christ. And this is true of any and all sinners who find themselves saved from the wrath of God. If a sinner is right with God, he or she is right with God on the grounds of Christ's death on the cross. He or she is not right with God on the basis of ethnicity or gender or social status or anything other than Jesus Christ and him crucified. Verse 28, there is neither Jew nor Greek.
There is neither slave nor free. There is no male and female for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Christ is the common denominator of all the redeemed. Paul says, and because Christ is the common denominator of all the redeemed, all the redeemed are equal in Christ. No one sinner has bragging rights over any other sinner. No Christian has grounds for boasting or thinking more highly of himself than others because no Christian has any grounds for having been saved other than Christ. Christ is the great leveler, the equalizer among redeemed sinners.
What this means is that any boasting on the part of a sinner is excluded. There is no basis for pride in the Christian heart because no Christian has contributed anything to a salvation. I'm not included in God's family because of my superiority. Others are not excluded from God's family because of their inferiority.
In Christ, all the redeemed are equal. Now for Paul's audience, the issue was seeing Jewishness as a superior trait to that of being a Gentile, or more specifically of being circumcised versus being uncircumcised. This was the issue in Galatia that was assumed to give some sinners a head start, a sense of entitlement, a feeling of spiritual superiority. But in verse 28, Paul broadens that Galatian category so as to exclude any false division within the body of Christ, so as to exclude any cause for boasting within the body of Christ.
So circumcision is not really our issue anymore, right? But what kind of spiritual boasting do we engage in? We certainly invent plenty of other reasons to feel superior or entitled or better than other sinners. We invent our own standards by which to measure the spiritual status of others.
What are some of those categories that we set up? For us, it may be gender distinctions, ethnic differences, generational categories. We may not say it out loud, but perhaps we think to ourselves, well, I'm smarter, I'm nicer, I'm older, I'm a man, I'm more absolute in my morals.
Well, I'm more nuanced and generous in my morals. Maybe we think that because we read better books or listen to the right preachers or raise our children the right way or use our money and time for more eternal purposes that we somehow have a step up on that other Christian over there. And sometimes we're so slick and sophisticated in our bragging and hiding our arrogant pride that perhaps we boast not in the things that give us a sense of spiritual superiority to others, but in areas where we're clearly inferior to others. We even turn our flaws and shortcomings into reasons to boast. We wear our lack of intellectual sophistication like a badge of honor.
Well, at least I'm not a proud smarty pants like that person over there. It's the same pride as the smarty pants version just with dumber clothes on. Or we excuse our immorality or worldliness by maybe boasting about how authentic, how real, how down to earth we are.
I'm not perfect, but at least I'm not some goody two shoes like that Christian over there. Again, it's the same root of pride, just masquerading under a different banner. But if in Christ we are all one, if the only ground of my salvation is what God has done for me in Christ, then it excludes the pride of boasting about myself and belittling others. It excludes the pride of belittling myself and envying others. It insists that I acknowledge that all boasting is futile.
Why? Because the ground of salvation is Christ. Now, before we move on, I should perhaps point out what may be obvious to some, but missed by others, and that is that this equality between Christians, which Paul asserts in verse 28, has to do with the justification of sinners before God. It does not in any way override or nullify or cancel out legitimate biblical distinctions between people. For example, when it comes to the roles of husbands and wives in marriage, there is most certainly a difference between male and female. Paul himself describes these very differences in Ephesians 5. There are differences between parents and children, between masters and servants, between rulers and subjects. The Bible upholds these distinctions in the home, in the church, in society, and it even gives us ethical instruction for navigating the challenges of these distinctions. But when it comes to the basis for which God forgives a sinner and makes him his child, none of these human distinctions amount to anything.
Why? Because when it comes to the salvation of sinners, the only category distinction that matters is this, are you in Christ or are you not in Christ? Well, not only does this truth give us a rebuke, it also gives us assurance.
Not only does it exclude all of my proud outbursts, it also ensures God's promised outcome. Verse 29, and if you are Christ's, then you are, Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise. You see, these categories that we invent to make us feel like we have just a little bit of an edge over others are not only rooted in pride, they also obscure the sufficiency of Christ. We are in effect trusting in ourselves if we think that our maleness or our femaleness or our blackness or our whiteness or our wealth or our poverty somehow qualifies us to be children of God. If we're putting our confidence in these manmade status symbols, even if we're subtle about it, we are obscuring the absolute and exclusive sufficiency of Christ. Our salvation is not based on what we do or who we are, it is based, Paul says, on the promises of God. If we are heirs of God, we are heirs according to promise, God's promises, not according to our worthiness.
So when you're lying in bed at night consumed with doubts about your eternal destiny, or when your life bumps up against someone who is far more godly than you are or biblically knowledgeable or evangelistically effective than you are, do you bolster your ego in those moments with accolades of your own invention? Or do you run and hide in the only place a sinner can ever hide, in the blood-stained hands of Jesus Christ? He is the only ground of salvation.
But what a ground that is. If our salvation is grounded in Christ, then it is a secure and unwavering salvation indeed. Well, having made it clear what the ground of our salvation is, Paul now moves on to the consequence, the result of that salvation. And we discover the marvelous consequence of salvation in chapter four, verses one through seven. In these verses, Paul describes who we were, what God has done, and finally who we have become.
So first we discover who we were. Verse one, 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. So Paul begins with an analogy, that of a slave and a child. Paul says that the child of a wealthy man, while he is a child, seems to share the same status as the wealthy man's slaves or servants. The child's status is different, it is distinct, it's more privileged than the status of a mere servant, but that status distinction is not evident at first.
Why is that? Well, because the child has not reached sufficient maturity yet to rightly use and rightly appreciate the father's wealth. That wealth is held in trust.
That wealth is rightfully the child's, but the child doesn't have full access to it until the time is right, until maturity has been attained. Likewise, Christians, prior to Christ's coming, Paul says, possess the full status of being children of God. However, because the progression of God's redemptive plan had not been fully revealed, the Old Testament church was like a young child who from all outward appearances was treated like any other servant.
Their privileges, their status, their blessings were present but hidden. Paul describes this state of the primitive church as one of being, verse three, enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. That's an odd description, but it seems to refer to the way in which pre-incarnation, pre-Calvary Christians, whether Jew or Gentile, sought to be saved by means of law keeping or by means of just trying harder to be good.
They sought to alleviate their own guilt by keeping the law. They lacked an understanding of the substitutionary atoning work of Christ. Now if we stop and think about it for a second, I think we have to admit that humankind has not changed. This tendency to work our way out of guilt and work our way into righteousness is not a tendency that was unique to the pre-Christ era. It is in fact a tendency of all the sons and daughters of Adam without Christ. Without the gospel, we are left to our own devices.
And our own devices can never fix what is broken in us. So the elementary principles of the world which say things like be a better person, be true to yourself, work hard, be nice, help others and on and on, these elementary principles of the world are immature, ineffective and enslaving, Paul says. That's who we are without the grace of salvation. We're just another slave to man's best efforts at self-redemption. But then Paul tells us about what God has done. Verse four, but when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law to redeem those who were under the law so that, listen to this, so that we might receive adoption as sons.
And because you were sons, God has sent his spirit, the spirit of his son into our hearts crying, Abba, Father. God in his mercy sent his only begotten son into the world, not to just justify sinners, but to adopt sinners into his family. God makes sinful slaves his sons, his beloved children.
J.I. Packer calls the doctrine of adoption the highest privilege of the gospel. The doctrine of adoption the highest privilege of the gospel. He says that any traitor can be forgiven but adoption is reserved for those who are loved as one's own flesh and blood. When was the last time you stopped to contemplate your adoption into the family of God?
Have you ever stopped to consider what it means for you that God the creator has adopted you, the creature, into his very own family and counts you among his children? I suspect if we were asked what is the greatest act of mercy and grace that God has done for you, most of you would be tempted to say my justification, of course. And to be sure what an incredible act of grace justification is. God forgives our sin and our guilt and he gives us the holiness, the purity, the moral goodness of Christ.
That is an incredible mercy. So why does Packer say that adoption is an even higher privilege, even more incredible act of grace? Well think about it. God could have justified us and then just left it at that. He could have wiped the slate clean and pronounced us innocent in his sight, but where would that leave us?
It would leave us having escaped hell and that would be great, but church what is an eternity without the love and affection and attention and kindness of God? That's where adoption comes in. God not only forgives the hardened criminal, he welcomes that hardened criminal into his home. He lets that criminal sit at his supper table. He treats him as a son. The Westminster Larger Catechism asks what is adoption?
Let me just read the answer. Adoption is an act of the free grace of God in and for his only son Jesus Christ whereby all those that are justified are received into the number of his children, have his name put upon them, the spirit of his son given to them, are under his fatherly care and dispensations, admitted to all the liberties and privileges of the sons of God, made heirs of all the promises and fellow heirs with Christ in glory. What an incredible, amazing grace that is.
Church God has done far more than merely wipe the slate of your sin clean. He has embraced us as his own children. And there's so much we could say this morning about the doctrine of adoption. I encourage you to study and meditate on this amazing grace of divine adoption. But to sort of prime the pump for you, let me just draw your attention for a few moments to 1 John chapter three, verses one and two.
In fact, would you just turn there for a moment? 1 John chapter three, verses one and two. These verses describe to us some of the benefits and privileges that are the direct result of our adoption into the family of God. And I'm gonna read them from the New King James Version, because there are a couple of features of that translation that I prefer.
And I'll just make a few comments as we read. 1 John three, verses one and two says this. Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us that we should be called children of God. So the doctrine of adoption should first of all cause us just to stop and contemplate the manner of God's love. What kind of love causes a father to adopt a child? Well, it's a gracious love, isn't it? It's a self-sacrificing love. It's an unmerited, unnecessitated sort of love. Parents who adopt a child are not obligated to adopt. No, they freely choose to welcome a helpless, unrelated stranger into their home and make them a son, make them a daughter, make them an heir, a member of the family.
What manner of love is this? It is, as John Murray said, the apex and epitome of grace. The apostle John continues, therefore the world does not know us because it did not know him. Now this sentence implies that not every sinner is adopted into God's family.
And so while there are no category distinctions between Christians in terms of the ground of their justification, there most certainly is a category distinction between sinners and it's this, those who are not in Christ are not the children of God, those who are in Christ are the privileged children of God. And this privileged status that God bestows upon some creates a fundamental distinction between those who are gods and those who are not gods. If you belong to God, as a member of his family, you are unique, you are distinct, you are set apart.
And so the world will not get you. The world will not, in fact it cannot, understand your relationship with God and its effect on your morality and values, on your thinking, your world view, on your emotional and psychological response to life situations. You're different, fundamentally different because you share the distinguishing marks of a family resemblance with God. John goes on, beloved, now we are children of God. The privilege and grace of adoption is not something we have to wait for, it's not something that will become a reality one day in the new heavens and the new earth.
No, it is currently, presently, immediately effective. Right now, all who are in Christ are children of the Heavenly Father. I remember years ago applying for a job that required a certified birth certificate to prove that I was who I said I was. And I had somehow misplaced my birth certificate, so I contacted the county in which I was born, paid way too much money to have them send me a piece of paper that said indeed I was born. Well, it took several weeks for this birth certificate to arrive. I took it to my potential employer, only to find out that the document I had requested did not have the proper certification on it. I had to start the lengthy laborious process all over again, and this time make sure the official certified version of my birth certificate was what I requested.
It eventually got all sorted out, but it took many weeks and many dollars to resolve. Christian, when Jesus Christ poured out his life's blood on the cross and said it is finished, he put the official seal on your birth certificate. Everything that was necessary to secure and prove and preserve your status as child of God was signed, sealed, and delivered on the cross. So now, at this very moment, we are children of God.
John then concludes with this statement. He says, it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when he is revealed, that is when Christ returns, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Have you ever noticed that even adopted children begin to bear family resemblance to their parents? They're not always genetically related to the parents, but even so, in their dress, in their appearance, in their style, in their taste, in their mannerisms and vocabulary, in their character and beliefs, they begin to take on the family resemblance. We are God's children, and because we are God's children, we will slowly but inevitably take on that family resemblance. We will be like him, John says, in our conduct, in our thinking, in our truthfulness, in our joy, because children inevitably look and act like their father. God will give his perfect character to every one of his children, and with that perfect character will come all of the perfect fruit of that character, joy, contentment, a clean conscience, lack of fear, an ability to rightly communicate and rightly think and rightly behave. We will be perfectly conformed to the image of Christ, and it all stems from the gracious reality that we have been made sons of God through Christ.
What a sweet, sweet grace it is to have been adopted by God. Well, let's jump back to Galatians four and see how Paul concludes this section. Paul has described who we were before Christ.
He's described what God has done for us. Finally, Galatians 4, seven, Paul describes who we have become. Verse seven, so you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God. Remember, Paul is defending the true gospel against the false gospel that was being preached by his opponents in Galatia. The opponents were saying that to become a member of Abraham's family, you needed faith in Jesus and compliance to the law, and for several verses now, Paul has made it clear that the only prerequisite to being a member of Abraham's family is to be a member of Christ's family.
This is a spiritual family, and one that is formed not through physical birth, not through religious ceremonies, but through faith, through belief in the promises of God in Christ. By the time Paul concludes his arguments, and he's almost reached his conclusion, it makes the false teachers assertion so anticlimactic, doesn't it? They were asserting an incorrect process of becoming a part of Abraham's family, and Paul is saying not only have you missed the boat on process, you've missed the whole point, because it's not about how to become Abraham's child, it's about how to become God's child. We're not becoming merely offspring of Abraham, we are becoming offspring of Abraham's God. In Christ, we have become sons of God through God, and heirs of everything that rightfully belongs to a son. Now in the verses that follow, Paul's going to give the application of today's text, and so I'll save that for next week, but this morning as we close, I think it would be appropriate for us just to pause and contemplate the unmerited grace of adoption. I didn't comment on this earlier, but back in verse six, Paul says that because we have been adopted by God through Christ, we have the spirit of his son crying in our hearts, Abba, Father. That word Abba is the Aramaic word for father.
Aramaic was the common language of Jesus's day. This is what Jesus would have grown up calling Joseph. This is the name Jesus used in the Garden of Gethsemane when he called upon God and said, Father, all things are possible for you.
Take this cup away from me. Nevertheless, not what I will, but what you will, Father. It's a term of deep endearment. It's a term of deepest trust and love, and it's this term that the Holy Spirit has put into the hearts and mouths of every believer. When you come to God in prayer, when you come to God with your deepest desires or disappointments, your most awful secrets, your highest hopes, your most fearful vulnerabilities, you come to the one who is by his own choosing your Abba, your trustworthy, wise, all powerful, caring Father.
You come to the one who has made himself your Father. You haven't earned the rights and privileges of sonship with God, and so there is nothing you can do to unearn or forfeit those rights and privileges. Our familial relationship with God is not grounded in our law keeping or our attractiveness to God. It's not grounded in our ability to impress him or maintain God's interest in us.
No, a thousand times no. Our relationship with God is grounded in the obedience and death and resurrection of his only begotten Son, whom he gave to this world because of his great love for us. Behold what manner of love the Father has given to us. Because that love is grounded in Christ and not in us, nothing can remove, diminish, obscure, or change God's fatherly love for his children. You really need to just rest in that love, Christian. You're not a slave. God doesn't treat you like a slave. You are sons, and if sons, then heirs through God. Let's pray. Holy Spirit, please drive home in our hearts this truth that we belong to God and that nothing can snatch us out of his hand. Nothing can separate us from his love through Christ. Thank you, Father, for being our father. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
