We're going to read from verse
one and just a few verses this morning. Galatians chapter four
and verse one. Now I say that the heir, as long
as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be
lord of all, but is under tutors and governors until the time
appointed of the father. Even so we, when we were children,
were in bondage under the elements of the world. But when the fullness
of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman,
made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law,
that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons,
God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts,
crying, Abba, Father. Wherefore thou art no more a
servant, but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ. Amen. May God be pleased to bless
to us this reading from his word. We've spoken a little bit in
recent weeks about the covenant obligations that the Lord Jesus
Christ undertook in what we sometimes call the covenant of grace or
what the Bible calls the covenant of peace or the everlasting covenant. And the Lord Jesus Christ's obligations
under that covenant of peace were wide and varied. the duties that he undertook
in the covenant of peace, the responsibilities that he carried
willingly in the covenant of peace, when God the Father, God
the Son, and God the Holy Spirit entered into this agreement in
eternity past to deliver a people from their sins. Those obligations
that Christ took within that covenant, within that contract, were wide-reaching and varied. He was called upon to bring in
an eternally enduring relationship of grace and peace between a
holy God and a sinful people. It was demanding It was costly
and it was onerous. So demanding, in fact, that no
mere man ever could accomplish that task. The love of God, the love of
God the Father expressly embraced a people loved before time, loved
from everlasting. The holiness of God required
justice for offenses that had been committed. The anger of
God pursued punishment for guilty lawbreakers. The justice of God
sought full satisfaction for the sins that had been committed. But in the covenant of peace,
the grace and mercy of God laid hold upon a substitute. It was as though the grace and
the holiness of God cried out, how might these great demands
be settled? How might justice and peace be
reconciled? And there, in the eternal council
chamber of almighty God, the eternal Son of God, arose from
his throne, stood up, the eternal word, the
everlasting voice spoke forth in the council chambers of the
Godhead and the ever blessed Lord declared, here am I, send
me. Only the God-Man. Only the Lord
Jesus Christ. Blessed name, Lord God, Jesus
Saviour, Christ the Anointed One, the Appointed One. Blessed
name, only that One who is truly God. Only that One who is completely
man. Only that One who had been appointed
to the task. could fulfil those covenant obligations. These obligations, I repeat,
were demanding. They were costly. They were onerous. Demanding because every claim
of a holy God rested upon the elect must be completely satisfied
by their substitute and their saviour. costly because the price
of the redemption of that people was to be the precious innocent
blood of the Lamb of God and onerous because of the great
crushing overwhelming weight of sin that must be laid upon
his shoulders. Our Lord Jesus Christ, when he
stood up in that council of peace and willingly and voluntarily
undertook to fulfill those covenant obligations, knew exactly what
he was doing, what he was acquiescing to, and he uniquely qualified
to atone for the sins of his people. He perfectly fitted to
the work of redemption, singularly able to save, willingly undertook
this great task. He was appointed by God as the
Messiah, the chosen one, and he willingly came. the matchless
Christ, the supreme one, he who is excellent, without rival and
without equal, a glorious mediator, fitted for a glorious work, and
he must fulfil all that was required. He was called upon to redeem
and to atone, to reconcile and to justify, to pardon and to
sanctify, to propitiate and to liberate, to cleanse and to intercede,
and he must suffer and he must die and he must rise again. And the end of that great work,
the object and the purpose of that great work, the fullest
and most glorious expression of salvation for sinners like
you and like me. And the Apostle Paul, in grasping
the nature and the extent of this work, and seeing the purpose
committed to him to preach the Lord Jesus Christ and to preach
this work, went around the churches of the Near East. He went into the Mediterranean
ports and across land and into the towns and villages and the
cities of that ancient world, carrying with him this gospel
message of the accomplishments of Jesus Christ. And it seems
to me that one of the foremost aspects of the ministry of the
Apostle Paul was to teach men and women of the relationship
that they now had with God as a result of the work of Christ. That accomplishment of Christ
upon the cross, that death for his people, that redemption,
that justification, all of these great biblical truths that had
been secured and won by Christ was to this end, that they may
be brought into the family of God, that they may be united
with him. The Bible calls that relationship
adoption, and it is adoption that we see referred to in this
passage in Galatians this morning. It is a foundational element
in the covenant of peace because it describes the benefits and
the blessings of the saints' union with Christ, and it pictures
our relationship with God. We who were far away, we who
were separated, we who, because of sin, because of the fall,
because of our nature and because of the outworking of that nature,
because of inherent sin and because of the practice of sin, had been
separated from God, had been alienated from His presence. now are brought nigh, now are
brought back, now are brought into a relationship with God
wherein His love towards us is not simply the love of one who
has been forgiven of sins, but is the love that says, you're
my children, you're my son, you're my daughter, I'm your father,
we are one. This union that we have with
the Lord Jesus Christ by which adoption is described to us is
the heart of the Apostle's argument in this portion of his letter
to the Galatians. The Apostle Paul is saying to
these Galatians, you are heirs of God by the promises that he
has made. What promises were those? The
promises to Abraham, yes, yes they were the promises to Abraham,
but the promises primarily that were made between the Godhead,
the promises that were made between God the Father and God the Son,
that this way of working, that this accomplishment of the cross
would bring in a new relationship between God and these erstwhile
sinners. all the glorious promises of
salvation, all the accomplishments of the Lord Jesus Christ are
ours by free grace, ours by divine gift, accomplished, secured,
achieved, and freely given. They are not for the earning,
not for the working, not for the doing, but by the free gift
and grace of God. Now the apostle had previously
shown that the purpose of the law of God was to preserve the
Jewish people until the coming of Christ. He says, the law was
our schoolmaster unto Christ or until the fullness of the
time had come. Until the Lord Jesus Christ,
that one of whom we spoke to the children who was truly God
and truly man had come to earth. and achieved this great work
which only he could fulfil. Until that time, the law had
a particular role. It was a schoolmaster. It hedged
in it. It directed people how to live. It showed them where they were
fallen and transgressors of that law. But it protected the people
by whom the Lord Jesus Christ would come. And until then, believing
Jews, that's Abraham's true spiritual seat, had been like children
under a tutor or under a governor. They were true heirs of the promises
of God, but they were still minors. They couldn't do the things that
they wanted to do. They couldn't enjoy the experiences
that they wanted to enjoy of God and His grace and His goodness
because they were still confined as minors. Now we know what that
is. We live through it. As young
people, we long for the day when we'll be old enough to do the
things that we want to do. That's the picture that Paul
is painting for us here. In fact, Paul goes so far as
to say that until that time of majority, until the time when
they moved out of being children, you couldn't hardly distinguish
the servant and the son. They just lived exactly the same
way. Though the son was heir of all
that the father possessed, yet you couldn't distinguish him
from a servant because they were under the schoolmaster. And it
was only at the appointed time, or to continue the analogy, at
the time that the father decides, that the child moves out from
that state of minority into the possession of the inheritance
that the father has for him. Paul is showing the Galatians
that now that Christ had come, the day of the schoolmaster had
passed. The day of the tutor and the
governor had gone. and that the believing Jews and
the Gentiles had entered into the full liberty of the inheritance
that is ours in Christ and the enjoyment of it. The tutor was
redundant. The governor was out of a job.
The schoolmaster had gone and it wasn't just a holiday when
you had to go back at the end of the holiday and start all
over again. He's gone for good. You've graduated. You're out
from this state of minority and you're a possessor of the fullness
of the inheritance. You are at liberty. And the physical
and the ritual and the ceremonial, the judicial and the moral constraints
that had been laid upon the people on that Old Testament time, they
were gone. That law had served its purpose
and it was no longer required. Paul actually calls that the
elements or rudiments of the world. He's saying it's the ABC,
it's the do-re-mi, it's the basic building blocks of understanding. It's elementary school stuff.
And it has ceased because a new day has dawned. The Lord Jesus
Christ has come. And Christ having come, With
that purpose to fulfil, to accomplish, to bring to a conclusion all
the requirements of God, be they ever so demanding, be they ever
so costly, be they ever so onerous, Christ did it. He did it. He fulfilled every requirement
on the cross. We say, we sing, it is finished. That's what it means. It is finished. Not simply the life that the
Lord Jesus Christ had. He wasn't saying my life is finished. He was saying his work was finished. He was saying that the law was
finished. He was saying that the age of
the schoolmaster was finished. It was all over. It was complete.
It had fulfilled its duty. It had been honoured. And now
the Lord Jesus Christ was taking his people and entering into
the fullness of his union with them in this adopted relationship
or adoptive relationship. God sent forth his son who came
willingly, made of a woman, for he was truly man and truly God,
made under the law that is subject to the law in order that he might
fulfill the law as a Jew in all of its aspects. And he fulfilled
it perfectly, demonstrating his holiness as a man, worthiness
to suffer in place of man, suitability as that perfect, pure, spotless
offering, the Lamb of God without blemish. And notice this. These people who try to put the
Church of God or the Lord's people under legal obligations. Obeying the law never made Christ
holy. Christ was holy. And obeying
the law can never make us holy. because we are holy in Christ. That relationship that we have
with him is the giving of a new man, a new creation. Obeying the law can never make
you holy because that was never its job. It was only ever given
to show how far short of holiness that you really were. The law
was a schoolmaster to the Jews, it was never even given to the
Gentiles, and it certainly can never make a man holy or perfect
today, or indeed gain him any favour with God whatsoever. The Lord Jesus Christ came to
redeem them that were under the law, to gain their pardon, to
effect their deliverance, to secure their liberty, to bring
all for whom he died out from under that condemnation of the
law. All fear of condemnation, all
suggestion of condemnation. Paul says to the Romans, there
is therefore now no condemnation. into that glorious liberty of
the children of God. That's what it is to be a child
of God. It is to be in our majority,
not in our minority, not to be servants anymore, not to be like
a servant, but the entering into the fullness of the inheritance
as those who are Christ's people. Every believer, is a child of
God by adoption. And what a great position that
is to be in. Better ever than Adam was. Better
ever than the angels can be. We are God's sons. We are family with the divine. And we can see something of the
nature or the extent of this purpose of adoption in Ephesians
chapter 1 verse 5. Because there the Apostle Paul
says to a different church, he's speaking not to the Galatians
now but to the church at Ephesus, but his message is just the same.
It's the same gospel. He says, having predestinated
us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself according
to the good pleasure of his will. Predestinated to adoption. Predestinated to be made one
with Christ. To be God's children. That was what we were predestinated
to be. Indeed, in that respect, we may
say that God's elect always were the adopted children of God within
the confines of that everlasting covenant. But just like justification,
the manifestation of our sonship, the manifestation of our inheritance,
was revealed in us in the experience of the Lord's people when they
come to faith, when they come to belief, and the testimony
that we bear. We didn't know that we were the
adopted sons and daughters of God until God the Holy Spirit
revealed it in us by conversion and by faith. So Galatians chapter
4 verse 6 says, Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the
spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. And if
the Spirit of Christ, that is the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit,
is in our hearts, then we are full possessors of every promise,
full heirs of every grace, full members of the divine family. What is the witness here? Well, here in Romans 8.15, the
apostle uses the same picture. He says that the spirit of adoption
that the Holy Ghost gives to the children of God is linked
with the believer's cry, Abba, Father. We can call God our Father. And it's interesting that that
little phrase there, Abba, father, it picks up the same word in
two different languages. It picks up the word Abba, which
is Hebrew for father, and father, which would have been the Greek
or the language of the Gentiles. So Paul has emphasized this union
that we have between the Jews on one hand, who can call God
their father because they're the children of promise, and
the Gentiles who can call God their father because they too
are the children of promise. Because this is what the Holy
Spirit has done. Remember we read before about
that time when Cornelius was, as it were, that first Gentile
believer. And when Peter went to speak
to Cornelius, he said, I can see now, because the Holy Spirit
has fallen upon these Gentiles, that God is no respecter of persons,
that everyone who is in the family of God, be they Jew or be they
Gentile, are there as a result of the promise of God. nothing
to do with earning it, nothing to do with works, nothing to
do with law. We are free in Christ because
we are adopted into the family of Christ. We are all redeemed
by his blood. We are all justified by faith. We are all recipients and beneficiaries
of all the promises of God by grace, by his free gift to us. Romans 10 verse 4 confirms that. For Christ is the end of the
law to everyone that believeth. Brothers and sisters in Christ. You who have faith in Christ,
you who have tasted these blessings of adoption, who know something
of that union with the Lord Jesus Christ, we are no longer servants
of God. We are no longer servants. Christ said, I don't call you
servants, but I call you brethren. friends, sons and daughters of
God, heirs with Christ, to all the blessedness of God's goodness. Verse seven of our chapter says,
therefore, wherefore, thou art no more a servant, but a son. And if a son, then an heir of
God through Christ. And that's a fact. That's a fact. It is how God considers us. It is how God views us. He sees
us as his children. He regards us as such and he
deals with us as such. And that doesn't mean to say
that there isn't a chastening rod sometimes. But that shows
his love to us as his people. And it reminds us what we truly
are. I am as much a son of God as
the Lord Jesus Christ is a son of God. You are as much a son
of God if you have faith in him by adoption as the Lord Jesus
Christ is the son of God. Every blessing of his is ours. because we're joined to him.
Everything that he has done, we have done in him. Everything
that we have done has been taken by him and dealt with within
the covenant obligations of God's purpose. We are united to Christ. The Lord uses another analogy,
John Principally, the other disciple. He talks about us being the bride
of Christ, but that bride of Christ speaks about our union
with Christ in the same way as a man and a woman are united
and become one flesh. This is our relationship with
Christ. And it pictures that union and
the effect of that union and the accomplishments of that union.
Now supposing someone comes along and says to us, in order to please
God, you've got to do this. In order to get God's blessing,
you need to live like this. In order to receive the good
gifts of God's favour, you ought to act like this. What shall
we reply? We shall reply, no, no, no. We shall say, get thee behind
me, Satan. We shall say, I have every blessing,
every promise, every grace of faith from Christ. He is my all in all. And that's enough for me. May the Lord be pleased to bless
these thoughts to us. and encourage us and comfort
us and give us boldness as we seek to serve him, who is our
father and our elder brother and our God. Amen.