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Galatians 4:1–7
“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” (vv. 6–7).
Conversion brings us into union with Christ, and with that union comes several benefits. One of these benefits, justification, pertains to our legal relationship to God. God the righteous Judge of all the earth condemns sinners for transgression and for not possessing the righteousness that He requires for eternal life. When we trust in Jesus alone for salvation, God forgives our sins and credits to our record the perfect righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, freeing us from guilt and condemnation and granting us life forever with Him (Rom. 1:18–4:25).
The second benefit of our union with Christ involves our familial relationship to God. This is our adoption as His children, specifically as “sons,” in and through the Lord Jesus. Adoption follows justification in the order of salvation because the just demands of God’s law must be satisfied before He can receive us into His family. With our legal status of condemnation having been changed to righteousness, we can be adopted as the sons of God.
Adoption grants us the high privilege of being His children. Although God originally made Adam and his descendants to be His sons (Luke 3:38), the fall into sin exiled us from God’s family and destroyed our peaceful relationship with Him as our Father. No longer do all people have the right to be children of God but only those who receive Christ as Savior and Lord (John 1:11–13). Dr. R.C. Sproul writes, “The Bible speaks of a universal neighborhood, not a universal brotherhood. That is, every person is our neighbor, but only fellow Christians are the adopted children of God. Only if someone is in Christ is he our brother, in the biblical sense.”
We are adopted as sons not because God disregards gender differences but because adoption gives us the legal status of sons, who in biblical times ordinarily received the best of the inheritance. As sons of God, we are all equally heirs of the promises of redemption and enjoy the same value before Him (Gal. 3:15–29). Paul tells us that we are now sons, not servants. He does not mean that we are not servants of God in any sense but means that now we have the rights and freedoms enjoyed by those who are not mere servants but children (4:1–7). Matthew Henry writes that in adoption we are “no longer . . . accounted and treated as servants, but as sons grown up to maturity, who are allowed greater freedoms, and admitted to larger privileges, than while [we] were under tutors and governors.”
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
Under the Mosaic law, the Israelites were restricted in terms of what they could eat, what they could wear, and so forth. In Christ, however, we have fewer restrictions because we are now regarded as mature sons of God. We are freer in many areas of life to make choices on our own, according to the principles of Scripture, than the old covenant people of God were. Let us enjoy but never abuse this freedom that we have as sons of God.
For further study
- Matthew 5:9
- Romans 8:14
- Ephesians 1:5
- 1 John 3:1
The bible in a year
- Isaiah 41–42
- Colossians 2