Back to Galatians chapter 4.
Now, salvation is a grand work. It's no small thing. It's a grand
work because it's a grand God. It's a great God who does it. It's great, it's grand for the
depths to which it goes to find its recipients. Paul says, this
is a faithful saying, a trustworthy saying, and it's worthy to be
accepted by all. that Christ Jesus came into the
world to save what? Sinners, of whom I am the chief. God's salvation is great because
it goes to great debts to find its recipients. I had a CD, I
still got it, and it's not necessarily one I'd recommend, but I found
some of those the songs on it to be profitable in a humorous
way. Somebody had taken some very
popular songs, both from the pop and rock and roll world and
the country music world, songs that probably you all would recognize,
and they had changed the words in them to make them sound more
or less Christian. And one of them was that country
song, I've Got Friends in Low Places. They had changed that to, God's
grace goes to low places where the sinners are. And that's true. God's grace is great because
it goes to great depths to find sinners to save. And in God's
grace, his salvation is great because of the heights to which
it takes these chiefs of sinners. Look over here at Romans chapter
8. We will never do God an injustice. We will never misrepresent Him
by setting forth a salvation that's too great. There is no
work that's too great for God. There's no depth to which God
is unwilling or unable to go to save. And the heights to which
He takes those whom He saves is farther than you and I will
ever be able to imagine. I dare say that even when we
experience it, when we are there, It'll take us an eternity to
fully realize and understand what He has taken us to. But look here as it's described
in just a few words in Romans 8, 29. For those God foreknew. Now that's His purpose in, as
someone calls it, old eternity. For those God foreknew, He also
predestined to what? To be conformed to the likeness
of His Son. Now, he takes us all the way
from the likeness of the first Adam, who sinned and was a rebel
against God. He takes us all the way from
the depths of depravity. And you might think, well, I
never was to the depths of depravity. You don't understand what depravity
is then. That doesn't mean necessarily that we've done what the world
would call the worst things, but all of us have been guilty
of doing what God calls the worst thing, and that's to disbelieve
Him. to call him a liar, to refuse
to trust him. And whatever form that rebellion
may take is of no consequence. Whether in unbelief, we go on
in false religion, or in moral corruption, it's of no significance. It is nonetheless total, complete
depravity. Paul says, I am the chief of
sinners, and I'm sure he felt that he was, and yet he also
understood that all of us are the chiefs of sinners. All of
us qualify to be on the bottom of the barrel. And God took us
from the bottom of the barrel of depravity, and in the work
of salvation, He's going to make His people to be just like His
one perfect Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I look forward to heaven,
and I don't have a word to say against whatever blessedness
there may be in that place called heaven. But the real blessedness
of God's salvation is not in where we'll be, but what we'll
be. And I believe that that so often
divides between the sheep and the goats, because many of the
goats are looking for a place. That's all they're looking for.
a place and some stuff. They're looking for what they'll
get. God's sheep are anxious for what they shall be. Heaven is heaven because those
who live there are like Christ. So God's salvation is great for
how deep it goes, it's great for how high it takes us, and
it's great for all the many marvelous works of grace that God does
in between finding us in our depravity and making us fully
like His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, in some cases we'll
say that salvation is an instantaneous affair, but really what we mean
by that is that regeneration which is just one part of salvation.
Regeneration is an instantaneous affair. Now, I grew up in free
willism, you know. And maybe you aren't as familiar
with this as I am. But people talk about, well,
I got saved on such and such a day. And I know what they mean. And I'm not even going to say
that it's wrong to say that. I'm just going to say that it's
not a complete statement. God's salvation began before
there was a world. God's salvation of sinners began
before there were sinners to save. And God's work of salvation
will continue until this world is no more. And even in us, in
our own experience, God's salvation is a process, a series of works
by God. He's going to make us like His
Son. But all of us would confess and thankfully confess He's not
done yet. I'd hate to think this is the end of it. I'd hate to
think this is as good as it gets. It's good. Don't get me wrong. What we now have, what believers
now have and experience in the Lord Jesus Christ is good. But
I thank God it's not all there is. There's more to come. Because we aren't like Christ
yet. In some respects we are, but
not all. All of the work of God's salvation
is the work of God himself. Paul says, He that began a good
work in you will perfect it till the day of Christ. Notice that.
He credits God with the beginning of the work. And there he's talking
about the beginning of work when salvation actually touches us.
There's a whole lot about the work of salvation that went on
before we even existed. I mean, Jesus Christ redeemed
our souls before we were born. But Paul's speaking here of when
God begins to touch us with His salvation, and we begin to experience
that salvation, he said, it's He that began it. He that began
it. And he says, and He'll perfect
it. What's that mean? He'll carry it on to perfection
at the day of Christ. Friends, everything from the
beginning To the end is His work. If the hymn writer wrote God's
grace, all the work shall crown through everlasting days. It
lays the first and topmost stone and well deserves the praise.
It laid the foundation. It lays the capstone. God, by
His grace, lays every stone in between. It's a great work of
grace. Election, redemption, regeneration,
preservation, and glorification are all works of God. None of them are our works. Nobody chose himself. Nobody
redeemed himself. Nobody regenerated himself. Nobody
preserves himself. And nobody glorifies himself
to be like Christ. God does all those things. Now,
as we stand back like this and look at the whole span of salvation,
kind of like one of those panoramic pictures. You know what those
are? They were kind of popular for a while, you know. They're
about that wide and about that tall. And they show you a wide
view. Panorama means to see all. And
when we stand back in a panoramic view of God's work of salvation,
all the way from His electing grace before the world began,
His glorifying grace when He wraps up this world, and all
His graces in between. When we look at that, it makes
for a nice, neat, and orderly picture. And we find comfort
in that. And well, we should. But you
know, our experience, our lives, are not lived in the panorama.
They're lived in the moment. Through the preaching of the
Word, I can stand back and see the whole thing. But in my day-to-day
life, I don't see the whole thing. Do you? I see what's happening
right now. Look back here at Ecclesiastes
chapter 3. Ecclesiastes chapter 3, verse 11. He has made everything
beautiful. in its time. He has also set
eternity in the hearts of men, yet they cannot fathom what God
has done from beginning to end. Now that word that's here translated
eternity, strictly speaking, it means the vanishing point.
You know, you look off into a great distance, there comes a time
when everything just goes down to a vanishing point. And you look east and things
go towards a vanishing point. You look west and things go towards
a vanishing point. And when it comes to time, you
and I can look in the past if we want. But there's only so
far we can look back. And that's, we can look back
as far as our lives, as our memories. That's all we really know. Everything
we know about the time before that is what somebody else told
us. We can't see it. And we can look forward, and
when we look forward, we really look with a really fuzzy eye,
but there's a vanishing point, and the sight isn't too clear,
because we can only look forward to what we hope will happen. And even if we look forward,
we know this, there is a vanishing point. We don't know just when
it'll come, but there's going to come a point when we're done. But here's what the writer of
Ecclesiastes is telling us, that God has put limits on what we
can see, so that we don't know what God
is doing. The whole book of Ecclesiastes
is really about a man trying to make sense of it all. And
when he looks with the eye of the flesh, when he looks at the
world, understanding only the things that his five senses can
tell him, he said, it's a waste. It's vanity. Because you see,
with the eyes of the flesh, with the natural senses, you can't
see what God's doing. Because you can't look all the
way back there in eternity and see what He purposed. And you
can't look into the eternity future. and see that purpose
brought to pass, you're just right here. And all you can see
is what's before you. And as we live our lives in this
world as believers, even though we're believers and we've been
told some things, nonetheless, with the five natural senses,
we're closed off in the past and the future only to what's
in front of us. I believe that I've been chosen
of God, but I have never seen God's election. I believe that
I have been redeemed by the Lord Jesus Christ, but I never saw
it happen. I believe that I've been regenerated
by the Spirit of God, but there is no sensory experience that
I can tell you that if you're regenerated, you're going to
have this experience, and thereby know it, that you've been regenerated. There's nothing I can tell you.
I believe I've been preserved by the grace of God. And I have to this point, that
is, I have persevered up to this point, so I believe that means
I've been preserved. And yet I cannot see to the day
of my death to know that like the believers of old, I'll die
in faith. I can't see that right now. And
I believe that I shall be glorified to be like the Lord Jesus Christ.
But brethren, I don't see it. Of course, that's why Paul says
we don't live by what we see. We live by unseen things. We
don't live by sight. We live by faith. And Paul was facing this matter
of the disconnect between what he hoped for in these people.
I mean, he knew the gospel. It had been told to him, God
had revealed it to him, and yet here he has the gospel and here
he has these Galatian believers in front of him. And here's what
he said, I know what the gospel is, but I don't know about you. I don't know about you. I'm not
sure. I'm troubled. We see little evidence that any
work, sometimes we see little evidence. that any work of grace
has begun in us, much less do we see that any work of His grace
shall ever be perfected or finished. Paul was in such doubt about
these professed believers. In verse 20 he says, How I wish
I could be with you now and change my tone, because I am perplexed
about you. I wish I could be right there
where you are. Maybe by talking back and forth, I could get some
assurance that my labors for you were not in vain, that your
profession was not a vain profession. But I'm in doubt of you. I'm
perplexed about you. So he goes backward in time.
Now, Paul used a lot of metaphors, a lot of figures of speech, and
sometimes he'd mix them up. And you have to be careful when
you're reading these that you don't try to connect all his
metaphors together, because he isn't trying to lay out for us
some really careful system of theology. He's rather going for
a very basic truth. And he says, verse 19, My dear
children, for whom I'm again in the pains of childbirth until
Christ is formed in you. Now, the whole book of Galatians
is tied up with family relationships. It's all together about being
a son as opposed to being a slave. Household relationships. A household
has slaves and it has sons. And the gospel is defined in
terms of being a slave or a son, of being in bondage or being
free. And now this Galatian church, he speaks to them in terms of
their sonship, but he does it kind of in a reverse order. He
says, my dear children, Children's a word you apply to those already
born. Now we, in our age where abortion's the big issue, you
know, and they're emphasizing the fact,
that is pro-life people emphasize the fact that that embryo is
a human being, and I fully agree with them. But we use the word
children to refer to those that are already born. So he calls
them children. He says, My children, meaning
those who had come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ through
His ministry. That's all he meant by it, but
he figured they were born into the kingdom of God. Children.
But now he steps back. He says, For whom I am again
in the pains of childbirth. Now normally you have gestation,
travail, children. Well, he starts children, backs
up to travail. Said, I travailed for you once.
I feel like I've got to travail again. I've got to go into labor. The ministry of the gospel is
a ministry of labor. He feels like a woman who is
just in the process of giving birth. And, you know, now we've
got these instruments nowadays, you know, a woman goes to the
doctor and they, boy, no time, you know, they take out that
ultrasound thing and they're giving you pictures from inside
the womb. And you know, you feel like you've met your child before
it was ever born. But it wasn't like that in this day. Women
would become pregnant and they could tell that the child was
growing within them, but they didn't know if it was a girl
or a boy. They didn't know if it was properly formed or deformed. They didn't know if it was healthy
or sick. They didn't know anything until it came forth and was born. And he said, I'm like a woman
in travail. All this work now has come to
a head, so to speak. All this work is now about to
bring forth fruit. And here's the hardest work.
Here's the most intense labor. But I still don't know. I still
don't know what's going to come of this. Will it be healthy? Will it be
pretty? Is there maybe going to be a miscarriage,
a stillbirth? Don't know. Paul says, I'm just like one
of those travailing women. All my heart is just twisted
up. His soul labored for them. Paul's
love for these people and his concern for their eternal well-being
would not allow him to write them off with such words as,
Well, if they belong to God, God will preserve them. You know,
we must never allow our faith in the sovereignty of God and
in the grace of God. We must never allow that to give
us an excuse not to personally labor to enter His rest and to
personally labor for the salvation of others. We've got to be careful
what we do with our theology. I've said these things. I've
heard some of our brethren say these things. Folks, I know that
God, in the panoramic view of His salvation, has everything
well ordered and under control. But we don't live in the panorama,
so to speak. We live right now. And God has
ordained means by which He will bring to pass His purpose. And part of that means is the
labors of God's people, the labors of His ministers. Paul, just
like a woman, you know, a woman that's in childbirth pain, she
doesn't say, well, you know, just whatever. Whatever will
be, will be. She can't think within herself,
you know, it could be healthy, it could be sick, it can have
a live birth or stillbirth, you know, it's just all in the Lord's
hands. We'll just leave it be. and not fret. I tell you, a woman
in travail will be satisfied with one thing, the live birth
of a healthy baby. And she gives herself completely
to that. And likewise, we should labor
in the Word of God, in the preaching of it, in the understanding of
it, in the hearing of it, to this end. to bring about the
hope of live, healthy children in the kingdom of God, spiritual
children. God's grace, God's sovereign
grace, the blessed truth of it was never given to us just to
make us lay back and not take any concern about spiritual things.
Paul knew that every one God chose Christ had redeemed and
that the Spirit would call them and preserve them. And he says,
yet I travail. My heart is in agony for you. Because, he says, it is of desperate
importance to me that you prove to be truly the
sons of God by his grace. Paul labored in prayer and in
preaching and in persuading and in defending the truth for their
sake. He wrote this letter. He wrote
this letter to defend them against these Judaizers, these self-righteous
worksmongers who had entered the church. He did not say, well,
you know, if the work that I did there before was a true work
of God's grace, God will take care of them. He believed that
to be so, but he believed one of the ways God was going to
take care of them was by him reminding them of the truth that
they had first heard and defending their hearts and minds against
that heresy that had taken root within the church. Children,
prevailing woman, and then he backs up even farther and he
says, I'm in travail till Christ is formed in you. And here he
shifts the figure of speech a little bit, and he talks about them
as though they are women in whom a child is being formed. And he said, I am in agony for
you and in travail for you until that child within you be fully
formed, set, so to speak, and identifiable. as a complete human
being. That which would ease Paul's
mind was the knowledge that Christ had been formed in them. Now
these words give us some insight into the nature and the process
of God's work of salvation. A paraphrase of Paul here would
be, I am in travail until I can see sufficient spiritual maturity
in you that I might be confident that indeed you have been born
of God. Now, salvation, let's look at
what this teaches us about God's work of salvation. Salvation
is the impartation of life. It's not simply the preservation
of it. You see, when we came into this world, we had no life.
We didn't. We were dead in trespasses and
sin. Some view that salvation is simply
something that comes at the end, in which God refuses to execute
us as though we are alive now. And if nothing happens to us,
then we'll be executed at the end in judgment. And the salvation
keeps us from being executed. Friends, we've already been executed. We were executed in Adam. In
Adam, all die. Did you hear that? All die. And
all are dead in Adam. We came into the world that way.
So it's not as though there's any life to preserve. Salvation requires that life
be given. Our Lord Jesus Christ did not
go to Bethany to the tomb of Lazarus to preserve life. He
went there to give it. They hoped he would have gone
to Bethany to preserve Lazarus' life, but he said no. I'm going
to wait, and it's good for you that I'm waiting, that you might
see the glory of God, that you might see where God's real glory
is. It's not just in preserving life,
of continuing us on in the condition we're in. It's God coming and
imparting a life that was not there before. A man and a woman come together,
and something that did not exist until then begins. A life that
did not exist begins. A person that was not there appears. Now, of course, to them, that
was an utterly mysterious thing. They didn't really understand
the harmony at all. Science has given us some insight
into how the process of natural birth, natural conception, birth
happens. But in point of fact, there's
still some mystery to it, isn't there? A sperm and an egg come together.
This blows me away. Two things without consciousness. Two things that on their own
are just so much living matter, but you wouldn't call them alive.
They come together. And from that union, a conscious,
living human being is formed. Friends, the work of God and
the regeneration of the sinner and that new birth is just as
mysterious to me. He'll take a man like me to preach
the gospel. And He'll take these dead words
of a dying man, preached into the darkened and dead hearts
of other dying men, and out of that bring forth life. That's
amazing. But that's exactly what God does.
By an act that only He can do, He invades the persons of people. and creates life. He says, I
have prevailed till Christ be formed, but Christ could not
be formed until He was first generated, until life was first
given. It is not as though people are
born spiritually alive, they are born spiritually dead, but
God gives life. Our Lord made this abundantly
clear when He told Nicodemus, you must be born again. And this
life does not spring into us fully formed. Why, when in the
body of a woman, when the sperm and the egg come together, why
is it just a single cell? The whole code's there. All the
information's there. And we rightly call that a human
being, but there's no eyes, there's no heart, there's no brain. It's
human, but it's not formed. And if that were to be ejected
from the body, then it would be considered an
unformed human being, not fully formed. It's a wonderful thing
that they've been able, with the cameras they've got, they
show us pictures of that whole process. Isn't it amazing to
see how it's fully formed? It takes time from the generation
of the life to the full formation of a body with all its various
parts. And you know, when the Holy Spirit
of God comes and begins a work of grace in the heart, He begins
with the impartation of life. And it's truly spiritual life.
It's completely spiritual life. That is a child of God. It's the Son of God. But it's
not fully formed. And brethren, it will not be
fully mature. until we see him face to face. You know, even
in natural life, there comes a point in which the baby is
formed enough that it can be given birth. But it isn't done
for me. In fact, it's not done for me
until about 20 or 20, what we call 20 or 25 years old. That's
when a person has reached maturity. And Paul refers to that spiritually,
that we should all attain the full stature of Christ, that
we should all become fully like Him. But it's a process. And some of that process is hidden.
And for that reason, we need to learn patience. Patience with
others and patience with ourselves. What would you think A woman
were found to be pregnant. She told her husband, we're pregnant.
We're going to have a child. Oh, good. And if he went there every
day and kind of talked at her belly and said, now you get with
it. Make a way. Open your eyes. Come on out of
there. Be patient. Even as the writer of Ecclesiastes
said earlier in chapter three, to everything, there's a season.
And a time for every purpose under heaven. Let us preach the
gospel which the scriptures call the word, and actually the word
there is sperm of God. We preach that word and it may
conceive life in someone's person, in their body, in their heart,
long before we know it. And it may not be fully formed
and fully informed, but that's okay. Just keep preaching, keep
teaching, keep learning. A child within the womb is without
flaw. It's completely human. But it's
not perfect. It doesn't have all its parts
yet, and we ain't got all ours yet. Or the ones we've got haven't
been fully formed yet. Thirdly, the description of this
maturing process is Christ formed in you. Paul says, I'm like a
woman in travail until Christ be formed in you. Now again,
that's mixing metaphors. But he's trying to talk about
the hard labor and the agony of his soul on their behalf and
preaching and praying and all that for them. And he said, here's
what we're going for. That Christ be formed. Now, not
Christ personally. Not as though Christ comes into
us as some unformed spiritual life in later forms. He's talking
about a Christ-like nature. You see, we're dead spiritually. And that means that we can't
know God, we can't communicate with God, we can't believe God,
we can't submit to God, we can have no communication with God,
whatever, because God is spirit. But God created man to be both
flesh and spirit. When Adam sinned, he died spiritually
and all his posterity died spiritually with him when the spirit of God
comes. and regenerates us. He makes
us alive again spiritually. And that new spiritual nature
is like Christ in His spiritual nature. And that's why He says,
Christ be formed in you. God begins this work at regeneration. And He matures it in us. And
just like that baby in the womb goes from being a single cell
to a kind of a Undifferentiated, indistinct blob, and then arms
begin to show, and legs, and the head forms, and they can
see the heart and all that, and all the parts begin to form and
begin to function. So spiritually do we grow and
mature into the image and form of the Lord Jesus Christ. The goal and the perfection of
our salvation is that we be like Christ. We read that a few minutes
ago in Romans 8, 29, being conformed to the image of Christ. That
word conform, even the Greek word behind it, is just the word
form with a prefix that means together, or to be made like. So, God's purpose is that we
would be made of the same form like Jesus Christ. And this formation takes a long
time. To have Christ formed in us is
to, spiritually speaking, have the mind of Christ firmly settled
in our hearts. Now, this could be applied in
many ways, but the chief point is this. To have Christ formed
into us is that we should think, act,
and especially relate to God as His child. That's what Paul was going for.
Do you realize that's the main thing? That we should perceive
ourselves to be the sons of God. That we should think like sons
and not slaves. Live like sons and not slaves. And approach God and worship
Him and fellowship with Him as sons, not slaves. That's Christ
being formed in us. And I'll show you that. Chapter
3, verse 26 in Galatians. You are all sons of God through
faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who are baptized into
Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither
Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male or female, for you are all
one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then
are you Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. Right here sets us on the footing
of sonship. He's saying there are no fleshly
distinctions. It doesn't matter whether you're
bond or free, a male or female or whatever. You are a son of
God. It doesn't matter whether you
were moral before or immoral or whether you were religious
and self-righteous. It doesn't matter. None of that
stuff has any effect on the reality that by the grace of God and
through faith, We are sons of God. Then he says, look here
in chapter 4, verse 4, But when the time had fully come, God
sent His Son, born of a woman, under the law, to redeem those
under the law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.
Because you are sons, now look at this, because you are sons,
God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, the Spirit who
calls out, Abba, Father. There you go. There's the spiritual
work. God sent His Spirit into our
hearts to create a new man, a new person, a Christ-like person.
And what does this person do? Does what the old man could never
do. With open heart and mind, he
looks to God and says, Abba, Father. That prodigal son out there eating
with the pigs. He says, and the slaves have
it better in my father's house than I got it here. He says,
I'll go back there and I'll just see if I can't become a hired
hand in his house. At least I'll have a house to
sleep in and food to eat. And he makes his way back to
his father's household. And he sees his father, and his
father sees him, and his father runs to him and hugs him and
kisses him. And as the son begins this little
speech that's been going through his mind, you know, and he says,
Father, I've sinned against heaven and against you, and I'm no longer
worthy to be called your son. And he had planned on saying
this, let me be one of your servants, and the father cut him off, wouldn't
let him go any farther. It's right. He'd sinned against
his father and he'd sinned against heaven. And he wasn't worthy
to be called his son. But that didn't change the fact
that he was his son. And the father was not going
to deal with him any differently than as a son, because what did
the father say? The son's ready to say, make me a servant. But
the father said, you get some shoes for this boy's feet. You
go get a robe. You put it on him, a robe that
says he belongs as a son in this household. You give him a ring,
a ring of authority, a ring that shows the world he's my son and
where he goes, he has the rights and privileges of my household.
He's an heir. He's a son. And Christ being
formed in us is to come to the realization that we aren't slaves.
Just like our Lord Jesus Christ knew he wasn't a slave. He was
the Son of God. To conduct ourselves in all things
and especially in our relationship with God as a child, as His son. Look back here at Mark chapter
14 and we'll close with this. People look, I suppose, for all
kinds of things as to what it means for Christ being formed
in us. And a lot of things went through my mind as to what it
might be and how I could preach on it and encourage and admonish
the congregation and all that. But as I studied, I looked. Here's
the one thing. Here's the big thing. This is
the form of Christ. He's the Son. And Christ being
formed in us is the realization by faith that we are also sons,
and to begin acting like it. Begin approaching and dealing
with God as though we're sons, not slaves. Our Lord says, and
this is in Gethsemane, here in verse 36, Abba, Father. He gave us the
spirit of His Son crying, Abba, Father. Abba, Father. That Hebrew word, Abba, collects
together not only the concept of where we came from, that is,
you know, like who is one's biological father, but also all the tenderness,
all the love, and all the sense of safety and comfort that a
child has from his father. The closest we have in our English
language is daddy. Abba, father, everything is possible
for you. Oh, here's the word of a child. Do you remember when you were
a little kid, you thought your dad could do anything? Of course, you grew
up and found out he couldn't. But here's a father to whom we
can say, my dad can do anything. And he can. You say, well, I
don't know how you can save somebody like me. You don't have to know
how. You just have to know you can. Oh, but preacher, I'm such
a mess. That's OK. So far as your salvation
is concerned, it's not going to stop God. All things are possible
within. Everything is possible from you.
And then he makes a request. He says, take this cup from me.
He did not hesitate to ask. He didn't hold back. But as a
child freely asks great things from his father, so our Lord
asks. Now, because it was necessary to our salvation, the father
denied this request of the son. But I want you to notice the
attitude of a son. Yet not what I will, but what
you will. Not what I think, but what you
think. Not according to my wisdom or desires, but according to
yours. Here is a faithful son. And we should seek to be this
way. Father, I would that you take
this trial from me. But I trust you enough to say,
not as I want it, but how you want it. Because I trust you
enough to know your ways best. Father, I would that you deliver
me from this weakness. But not as I would. but as you
would. This is the heart of a child.
This is the heart of a son. To freely call out, Abba Father,
with confidence that you're owned as a son. To be free to ask for great things. I would that you forgive all
my sins. And to be ready to submit all
things to his wise and gracious purpose. Slaves have no such
entry into the presence of the Master, but sons have such a
place in the presence of the Father. Our Lord's last words
on the cross were what? Father, into your hands I commend
my spirit, all to live like a son. To be done with all this slavish
trying to get and to earn God's favor. I pity children whose
parents are so mean-spirited that they feel like in their
homes they've got to work to get the favor and love of their
parents. I thank God I had two parents who loved me and would
love me no matter what I did. And I never feared to be in my
home. From them I learned somewhat
what it means. to say, Abba, Father, and to
live in God's household, not as a slave, but as a son, to
have Christ formed in me. Heavenly Father, bless Your Word.
Forgive us that we so often live like slaves, that we insult You by living cravenly in Your sight. Lord, give us the confidence
and boldness of sons Give us the heart of sons. Yea, may Christ
be formed in us. May our spiritual being mature
into where it thinks and acts and lives and worships as did
our Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.