Sons & Heirs

The apostle Paul wrote to the church in Galatia because false teachers were deceiving the people there. There's a sense in which these Judaizers wanted to put the Christian church back under the old covenant, under the bondage, the imprisonment, the way in which the law was like a big dark cloud that imprisoned them. The book of Galatians is Paul's strong defense of the gospel. He wrote it because he sensed the churches there were drifting from the truth. They had forgotten what Christ had done for them, that His work was finished. Today on Renewing Your Mind, Dr. Derek Thomas turns our attention to Paul's plea to the Galatian churches to remember their adoption, that believers are children of God.

Welcome back. This is session 7, and we pick it up now in verse 25 of chapter 3 down to chapter 4 and verse 7. Let's recap a little. Paul in the previous section in chapter 3 began to look at things not simply from the perspective of our individual experience of the gospel, but more in terms of the historical manner in which the gospel was revealed. So, he went to Abraham, for example, talked about a covenant that God made with Abraham. Then he went forward 420 something years to when the law was given.

So, he's no longer looking at this from an individual perspective. He's looking at it from the perspective of the way in which the calculus of the gospel was historically given. So, the gospel came first with Genesis, justification by faith, being reckoned righteous, came first, and the law came subsequent to that. And now Paul sees this as an opportunity to further extrapolate on the purpose and function of the law, the law in salvation history. Why, for example, are there now no requirements to obey, for example, the kosher food laws, the issue in the church in Antioch that got Paul and Peter all bent out of shape? And the answer is that they have been fulfilled. The answer is, as Paul will say in this section, we've gone from being children in kindergarten to being adults, to being full-blown children of God, to being heirs of God. But he does this, first of all, historically, and tracing the purpose of the law in the old covenant and why compliance with certain boundary markers is part and parcel of that administration of the gospel rather than of this administration of the gospel.

So, let's pick it up in chapter 3 and verse 25. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian. He brought into play the idea that one of the functions of the law is to put us under a guardian, under a tutor. It's like being in school. It's like learning to read. It's like learning to type. It's like learning grammar. It's like learning the order of the kings and queens of England, as I had to do one time. It's like going back to school, and there's a sense in which the old covenant, the Old Testament, is like kindergarten. He wants to draw from the world, the Greco-Roman world of Galatia, the concept of inheritance and what it is that that means, sort of coming of age and so on.

You are under tutors and guardians. Let's go back to chapter 3, verse 27. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ, there is neither Jew nor Greek, there's neither slave nor free, there's no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Now, don't over-interpret these verses. Paul isn't saying that there's no male or female as though he was living in 2019.

That's not what he's saying. But as far as the gospel is concerned, the gospel doesn't show one way for males and one for females. The New Testament brings into play the absolute and total equality of male and female as far as the gospel is concerned.

That's something that only Christianity can say. All of the other world religions do not in any shape, way, or form suggest what the New Testament is suggesting here. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise, and it goes full circle. He wants especially the Gentile Christians to understand their heritage, their spiritual heritage, that they're children of Abraham.

Abraham is their father. He wants the Jewish Christians to understand that folk were saved and brought into a right relationship with God under the old covenant in precisely the same way as they are in the new covenant. He wants them to understand that Gentiles also are children of Abraham, and that has all kinds of consequences, and one of which is to understand that you can go back into the Old Testament and read the Old Testament in a way that it is addressing us. It's not just addressing Jews.

It's not just addressing ancient Israel. But the lessons of the Old Testament are lessons that are lessons of the Old Testament, are lessons for the Christian church. Now, having introduced the idea of an heir, an heir according to the promise, the promise that had first been given to Abraham and that's fulfilled in Christ, and now that we've passed from the old covenant into the new covenant, we are heirs in a different way.

We have come of age, and I want us to see what that means. So, in chapter 4 and verse 1, I mean that an heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything. There's a sense in which these Judaizers wanted to put the Christian church back under the old covenant, under the bondage, the imprisonment, the way in which the law was like a big dark cloud that imprisoned them.

And he wants them to see that that's not the trajectory of salvation history. The trajectory of salvation history is to graduate from kindergarten to being full-blown adults, and inheritors, and heirs. Now, you might be an heir, but so long as you are under tutors and guardians, you are not an inheritor.

There was a story, I think it was Phil Reichen, in one of his books, drew attention to it. In 1999, the Duke and Duchess of Northampton, they had a son who was going to inherit when he was eighteen, and he was now fourteen. He would inherit a million pounds, and he would have, in addition to that, an annual salary of half a million pounds, a substantial inheritance. And they went to court and said, no, you couldn't inherit until he was twenty-five, because there was a reputation of squandering among British aristocracy. It was the concept of coming of age, that you, at a certain age, you inherit.

But until that age, you're under guardians, you're under tutors. It was the same in the Greco-Roman world. The Galatian world would have been more than used to that idea of children being put under guardians, and being taught, and so on, but they weren't free. And Paul is thinking here in terms of the function of the law, the law in its ceremonial aspects, the law that now these Judaizers want to put Christians under.

And so what was the function of those ceremonial markers? What was the function of circumcision? What was the function of the food laws, for example? I mean, why was it wrong to eat pork? Why was it wrong to eat shellfish? Well, there's nothing wrong in and of itself.

Absolutely nothing. Peter was taught that in the vision on the rooftop in Acts chapter ten, when when he saw clean and unclean animals, and these were all to be taken in good conscience and eaten in good conscience. There's no way you can argue vegetarianism from the Bible. It may be a personal choice, and a personal lifestyle, and so on, but you can't inflict this on Christendom.

That's bondage. That's exactly what these Judaizers are doing here. You are free in Christ, and you must treasure that freedom. That's what Luther was talking about in the captivity of the Christian church, and so on. That freedom is a very important concept.

Freedom from the consciences of other people, the meddling, legalizing consciences of other people, and constantly pointing their finger and saying, you know, you shouldn't be doing this, whatever that is, and you should be doing that, whatever that is. And so I mean that an heir, verse one of chapter four, as long as he is a child is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything. I remember a time when my children, who were not model parents by any means, absolutely not, but I remember the first time that I had to leave the house. My wife had gone to a Bible study somewhere, and this was Belfast, and things were very unhappy, and the troubles in the 1980s, and the telephone goes, and this is before cell phones and so on, and somebody's in hospital, and I needed to go, and I needed to go right there and then.

And I said to the two children, and they were at that age where it wasn't quite ready for a babysitter, but we had time to get a babysitter, I needed to go. So I laid down 400 rules, and I'm talking very, you must not do this, you cannot do that, you cannot do the other thing, and I knew that half of them wouldn't be obeyed, but I said, above everything else, if you don't obey any of the others, you must obey this one. You may not open the door unless it's me or your mother.

Do not open the door unless it's me or your mother. They were under rules, lots and lots of rules, most of which I think were broken, but that's the nature of childhood, lots of rules. And when they say to you, why?

You know, and it gets, why? And you say, because I say so. And that's not good parenting, I know that, but you are so exasperated, and you say, because I say so. Because these rules are going to, well, they're going to shape you.

Actually, they're going to show how much of a sinner you really are, how much of a damic sin is still in you, and why you need the gospel. And there's a sense in which the Old Testament exacerbated the rules in order to teach, demonstrably teach the need for Christ and the need for the gospel, not just individually in our experience, but redemptive historically, so that John can say in the prologue, the law came by Moses and grace and truth came by Jesus, and we're in the days of grace and truth. Now, as I said in a previous lesson, that's a relative contrast, but it's made in absolute terms. Paul does something similar in 2 Corinthians 3, and he talks about a period of the Old Testament as a period of darkness and of bondage and so on, and a period of death in comparison to the new covenant.

Well, 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's 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. Lots of views about interpreting that expression, the elementary principles of the world. But at least in the context, it seems to me that Paul is still talking about the period of the Old Testament, and as long as we're children, we are subject to all of the minutiae of the law, teaching elementary things, you know, ABCs, language, grammar, structure, the periodic table, the bones in the body. And no, I don't want to go back and do all of that again.

I'm glad I did it. It taught me lots of things, but I've graduated from that now, and that's what Paul wants us to see in verse 4. But when the fullness of time had come, now what is he talking about? Well, I don't think he's talking, first of all, about Roman roads and the Greek language and the fact that the gospel could spread across the entire Europe without a translator.

Those were extraordinary providential privileges, to be sure. But what Paul is talking about is, he's talked about Abraham. He's talked about the law coming 400 years later.

He's talked about being under tutors and guardians, and that the law, certainly the ceremonial law of the Old Testament, functioned in that way to exacerbate the fact that you cannot by law make yourself righteous with God. But then the fullness of time came, when the seed, not the seeds, but the seed, which was the promise to Abraham, came, Jesus. When all of a sudden the gospel flourished in color as opposed to black and white.

It was there in the Old Testament, but it was like watching a black and white movie. And then some of us remember the first time we saw a color television. And it was like something new. I remember my first computer. I did my papers at seminary, typing on an old Corona typewriter. And if you made a mistake, you would start all over again. And you had to measure footnotes and so on, and there was kind of a formula. And sometimes you got it right, and sometimes you didn't get it right.

And young guys, like some in this congregation, know nothing about that at all. And the sheer blessings of a cell phone. I remember stopping at gas stations, asking for directions, and then getting into the car and saying, did he say second left or third left?

And then you'd have to get out at another gas station and ask the directions once again. And now it's cell phones. And now my wife knows exactly where I am at any point of the day, because she has fine friends on her phone. Well, that's graduation. That's progress. In many ways, it's progress. It has its downside too, of course, but it's progress. You want to have information about something, and you just go to the Internet, and you Google it and search it, and you've got the answer in seconds. Something that might have taken you days or weeks or months to find out in the past. So there's progress.

And Paul is using that kind of imagery here about the gospel. The reason why we don't have to obey these ceremonial boundary markers is because we've graduated. We've come of age. I have a slide rule at home. Some of you don't even know what a slide rule is, but I have a slide rule at home, but I don't ever want to use it again. I mean, I don't ever want to use it again. I have maps.

I have books of maps at home, books of maps at home, but I never want to use them again because I have a GPS, and it's so much better. And Paul is going to talk about the age of the Spirit. Now, some of the most beautiful language of the gospel emerges here, and he says in verse 4, when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son. He's the one who was sent, born of a woman.

Well, let's pause there. I mean, that's kind of deux. I mean, how else would he be born? But Paul, some people think that because he's saying born of a woman, he might be referring to the unusual way in which he was born of a woman, and that this might be the only reference of Paul to the virgin birth. Paul never mentions the virgin birth, but this might be a reference to the virgin birth.

I don't think so. I think he's alluding to Genesis 3.15, the seed of the woman. He is the seed of the woman, that seed that was promised to Abraham. He is the seed of the woman, born of a woman, born under the law to redeem those who are under the law.

And that's our condition, isn't it? That's our condition as individuals by nature, but it was also the condition of the Jews under the old covenant. They were under the law, and there's a sense in which Jesus came to redeem them from the consequences of that law. And some refused, and some were hardened, and some like Saul of Tarsus and John and James and Peter and Andrew and Thomas and others believed to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons. And there in Galatians, and Galatians is an early letter, but there in Galatians you reach the Himalayas.

You reach the high point. What is the chiefest blessing of the gospel? And it's not justification by faith.

That's only the beginning. The chief blessing of the gospel is adoption, that we are children, that God is our heavenly Father, that Jesus is our elder brother, that we are brothers and sisters in a great family, and that we are inheritors, and because you are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. The same Holy Spirit who upheld Jesus and assured Him of His sonship is the same Spirit who indwells us and assures us of our adoption. Now, I know that it's PC to say sons and daughters, but you understand that makes absolutely no sense in the first century because daughters did not inherit.

It wouldn't have made any sense for Paul to say sons and daughters because only sons inherited, and the point that he wants to make is that we are inheritors. We are going to inherit the new heavens and new earth. We inherit a new name. We inherit a new status. We inherit new privileges.

We inherit a new future. You are no longer a slave but a son if you obey food laws out of conviction that you are supposed to obey food laws. Now, you may have a preference not to eat shellfish, and that's your choice, but if you obey it as a matter of conscience, you've gone back to being a slave. You are no better than a slave, and that's not who you are in Christ. You are a child. I'm the child of a king. With Jesus my Savior, I'm the child of a king. You are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God. You are an inheritor.

There is coming a day when that inheritance will be given to you in all of its fullness. It's given to you in promise now, but one day it'll be given to you in all of its fullness, in all of its glory when you walk those blessed streets of the New Jerusalem, and you see the wonders of the new heavens and new earth which God has prepared for those that love Him. So, this is a high-water mark in Galatians, the doctrine of adoption, that we are children of God, that God is our heavenly Father, that Jesus is our elder brother, that the Holy Spirit, the same Holy Spirit who indwelled Jesus indwells us, and who knows Jesus better than the Holy Spirit does. He is Jesus' best friend and His representative agent in our hearts, witnessing with our spirits that we are children of God. Well, there's more, because now He's opened up a whole new world, and He wants to address some pastoral issues in Galatia, because they haven't seen the truth of what it really means to be a Christian.

That is a high-water mark indeed. All this week on Renewing Your Mind, Dr. Derek Thomas is reminding us of the Apostle Paul's bold defense of the gospel, that we are justified by God's grace alone through faith alone because of Christ alone, all for the glory of God alone. And as we heard today, we're adopted.

We're part of God's family, and nothing can change that. The lessons we're hearing this week come from Dr. Thomas' series on Paul's letter to the churches in Galatia. We invite you to request this 14-part series. It's titled No Other Gospel. We'll send it to you for a donation of any amount to Ligonier Ministries.

You can reach us by phone at 800-435-4343, but you can also find us online at renewingyourmind.org. You may want to share this series with your friends and family. An easy way to do that is to follow us on Facebook. You can listen to the program there and easily share individual messages with your network of friends.

Once you're on Facebook, just search for At RYM Radio. Well, as we've been hearing in this series by Dr. Thomas, the churches in Galatia were being confused by false teachers. The fullness of times had come, and God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, made under the law to redeem those who are under the law, to bring them out of that bondage. But now they're going back into that bondage again. Legalism, that's the issue in the church in Galatia. What is legalism, and why is it so costly? We'll find out tomorrow, so we hope you'll join us for Renewing Your Mind.