09 Are You Living Like a Slave or an Heir? (Galatians 4:1-11)

Krisan Marotta: Thank you for joining me today for the Wednesday in the Word podcast. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. Today we're going to study Galatians chapter 4, verses 1 through 11. This is the ninth talk in my series on the book of Galatians. Lecture notes for today's talk are on the link below the podcast, or you can find them at Wednesdaytheword.com slash Galatians 9. Glad to have you along. We're starting chapter 4 of Galatians today, and just to review where we are in the book, Paul wrote this book to churches he founded on his first missionary journey. They have since turned away to a false gospel. They've been influenced by the Judaizers who have told them that it's not enough to believe in Jesus. You must also keep the law. Paul is writing to correct that. In the first two chapters, he defended his gospel and his authority to preach it. And then in chapters three and four, he makes a series of five arguments for justification by faith alone. And we have looked at the first three of those arguments. First, he says, look at your own experience. Did you receive the spirit because you got your act together and finally started keeping the law? Or because you heard the gospel that Jesus died in your place and you believed it. And he says, You receive the Spirit because you have faith. And he's using that receiving the Spirit as the sign or the seal that God has accepted you. His second argument is that Scripture confirms our experience. The scripture teaches that Abraham believed and God counted that belief to him as justification. And that God's plan from the beginning was for justification to come through faith. Before Moses even gave the law, God had promised that all those who had faith like Abraham would be blessed. In his third argument, which we looked at in the last podcast, Paul argued that God made a promise to Abraham, but the law which came later did not nullify the promise. So the law was a deal. The covenant with Abraham was a promise. The promise to Abraham was a one-sided covenant in which God promised to bless Abraham and those who have faith like him. The law, which was a two-sided covenant or a deal, was given to Israel, and that did not nullify the promise. Now Paul's in a kind of a tangent. It's a related, but it's still kind of a tangent. He's answering the question raised in 319, why the law then? If the promise of God is as good as Paul says it is, then why was the law even given? Is there any good reason for it? And Paul has been answering that. Yes, there is a very good reason. The law teaches us that we are sinful and that we need a savior. God gave us the law to give us boundaries and a kind of protective custody. The law was necessary because of our tendency to choose evil. And yes, following the law may be a demanding and stretching experience, but it teaches us a very valuable lesson. Continuing in that thought in our passage today, he's going to argue that having learned that lesson, we should graduate from law keeping to the maturity of faith. So Galatians 4 continues this theme of the importance of graduation, the importance of being spiritually mature, and Paul is expanding on the thought that we went over in the last podcast. Let me read the whole section and then we'll go back and walk through it in chunks. So I'm going to read Galatians chapter 4, verses 1 through 11. 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 a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And 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. Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world whose slaves you want to be once more? You observe days and months and seasons and years, I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain. Let's start with the first two verses. 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. Paul takes an example from his world, the Roman era, to illustrate his point. Noble Roman households had these father figures who were kind of Olympian. They were men who lived above the ordinary run of the mill home life. Roman children were not raised by their fathers typically, but rather by a highly educated slave who taught and directed them like a drill master or a guardian, like he was just referring to in the previous section. Here Paul is pointing to the irony of that kind of family situation. The son will someday be master of the estate. When he comes of age, the son will actually own the slave from whom he is now taking direction. So when the son is a child, the slave is master over the son. The slave tells him when to go to bed, when to get up, what to eat, when to eat it, what to study, when to study, how to be polite and respectful, and the slave pretty much disciplines him and controls his life. While he is underage, there's a sense in which the son is no different than a slave, even though he is the heir to the household. For the young child, from his perspective, there's very little difference between being an heir and being a slave. In fact, there's no appreciable difference between being a slave and being a son until the child reaches his age of majority. Then he becomes owner of the very slave from whom he took direction. So childhood consists of this kind of slavery, this kind of restriction. It's a life under a taskmaster. But when childhood ends, that relationship ends. It points toward the fullness of time, the date set by the father when the child will be considered a grown-up and given adult freedom and adult responsibility. Paul goes on to explain his analogy. This is three through five. 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 a woman, born under the law, to redeem those of us who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. So the first question we want to ask in these verses is who is we? Paul tells us it's those under the law, and I think in this context, he's got believing Jews in mind. Remember, the near context is he's answering a question about the place of the law. Why was the law given? And the far context is this issue of whether Gentiles must keep the law in order to be saved. Now here he's spelling out his metaphor. When we were under the law, we Jews were like that Roman child taking orders from a slave until he reaches the age of majority. But at the right time, God sent his son, the Messiah, Jesus Christ, to redeem us from under the law so that we might be reconciled to God and adopted into the family of God. Now, why does Paul emphasize born of a woman born under the law in this context? I'm not really sure. He seems to be emphasizing the human personhood of Jesus. I suspect he might have something in mind like the argument he makes in Romans 5. There in Romans, Paul draws a parallel between the one man Adam and the one man Jesus. The man Adam introduced the problem of sin to the human race. What's the solution to the problem? It's not the law. The law can't solve the problem of our sin. The solution is another man, a second Adam, and the man Jesus will solve the problem of our sin. Jesus was born under the covenant. He wasn't an outsider. He grew up under the law. He understood it. He learned it. He followed it. He was not an enemy of the law. He lived under the law and kept it. He understands all its plans, purposes, and goals. I think that's kind of what he's emphasizing here, that Jesus as a man lived under the covenant just like we did. He uses this other interesting phrase in 4.3 and 4.9, this Greek word that's translated elemental things or elementary principles of the world. I think by that he means the basics, the stuff of kindergarten, the stuff of childhood, like what you would learn in elementary school. Like the child in the household, we were ruled by the basics. We needed to learn and be taught the basic principles to grow to adulthood. So children need to learn their ABCs if they want to read. Children need to learn to read so they can cope as adults in the world. They need to learn the basics of math to function as an adult. They need to learn to write and to be able to communicate. They need to know the rules of their culture, how to be polite, what's respectful, what's expected in various social situations. All that is the basics, the elementary stuff. It is the stuff that you learn in childhood, and you must learn it. You are enslaved to it in that sense, but eventually you leave it behind. In the same way that the heir in a household, at least in Rome, was under the rule of a guardian, we were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world, which I think in this context is the world of the law. And by enslaved, I think he means we didn't have the option of not keeping the law. It was our master, it was our guardian. We were in its protective custody. Ignoring the law was not an option. It's compulsory, like it's compulsory for a child to obey his guardian. But when the fullness of time came, just as the child eventually comes of age and becomes the owner, at the right time God sent his son, Jesus the Messiah, to buy us out of our slavery to the law so that God could adopt us as sons. Now, if you redeem a slave, you pay a price and buy their freedom. We were under God's wrath, enslaved to our sin, facing condemnation on judgment day, and no amount of law keeping could change that. We desperately need someone to pay the price to buy us out of that slavery, and that's what Jesus did on the cross. That's the concept of redemption. Jesus came and redeemed those under the covenant, under the law. Now, obviously, Jesus redeemed Gentile believers too, but Paul's talking about the Jews and their relationship to the law here. I don't think he has the Gentiles in mind yet, but he's about to. His point right now is like a child in the house who is under the rule of his governess, so the Jews were under the rule of the law. Like a child follows the rule set by his governess, so the Jews followed the law. They ate the way the law said to eat, they dressed the way the law said to dress. They celebrated the feasts and made the offerings that the law prescribed. They rested the way the covenant said to rest, and so forth. But like a child in a household, there was a date set when they would transition from being a child to being an adult. That date corresponds to the coming of the Messiah. Now, like a child who has come of age and reached majority, the believing Jews are no longer under the rule of the law. When the fullness of time had come, when all the time had passed that God and his purposes had set between giving the law and the coming of the Messiah, when that time passed, the Messiah came, and with the coming of the Messiah, the believing Jews' relationship to the law changes in the same way the child's relationship to the household changes when he comes of age. What is that change? Paul goes on to explain. This is four, six, and seven. And because you are sons, God 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. Now notice the pronoun shift. Paul's now shifting from speaking of believing Jews, I think, to believers in general. All the believers in Galatia, both Jew and Gentile, are now sons. Not only did the we believing Jews experience this change, becoming adult children of God, so you Gentiles are sons as well. You're not little children under the custody of the law either. You are also sons. And two things change. God is now father, and we are no longer slaves. The father is no longer this Olympian, distant, unapproachable figure to us. Rather, he is now someone we address as Abba or Daddy. The Aramaic word Abba means daddy or papa. It conveys intimacy. Abba is typically the first word a child would learn. It was used by children to address their earthly fathers. It was also used to address a person of respected rank, so a student could address a respected teacher, for example, as Abba. It affirms both the respect of I am addressing a superior, but also a profound personal relationship between the speaker and the one addressed. By contrast, in the Old Testament, Father is never used as direct address to God. The Hebrew word father is used only about a dozen times with reference to God in the Old Testament, and most of those are part of a simile or a metaphor. So in the Old Testament, we see Father as a metaphor to describe what God is like. In the New Testament, Jesus then uses this Aramaic title Abba, which expresses both our profound respect for God and our profound relationship to Him. Now there's some uncertainty about how common it was for Jews of the day to refer to God as Father. Some scholars I found argued that it was never done, and that Jesus is introducing a new and revolutionary way of speaking to God. Others argued that while it wasn't common, it was done, so this isn't all that new or unusual, and I don't know which position is correct. What's clear is that Jesus made Father his preferred way of talking about God to us. When he talks about God to us, he refers to God as our heavenly father, and it's a great metaphor for God. A father imparts life to his children, a father cares about and cares for his children, a father passes on an inheritance to his children, a father is wiser than his children and teaches them. Children respect and seek to imitate their father, and we see all those ideas in Scripture in talking about God as our father. So that's the first change. The second change involves moving from a slave to a son and an heir. Since God is now our father, we can leave behind the drill instructor, the guardian of the law, and leave behind all those elementary things. We are no longer under God's wrath, we are no longer rebellious children, the price of our guilt has been paid and we can be reconciled to God. And that means having been reconciled, we can be adopted into his family and he will give us his spirit. We don't need the law to fence us in anymore because now we have the spirit to teach us and make us people who choose what is right and good. We can know God by coming to know Jesus, we can relate to God and understand him, learn to value what he values, learn to think like him and be conform to his character because we now belong to his son and he has given us his spirit. So we no longer need to follow the dictates of the law, it is no longer our guardian. We are no longer slaves to the law, but heirs entitled to inherit all the riches of the promises of Abraham. Instead of being told what to do by the law, we now make our own decisions on some other basis. Now Paul doesn't spell out here what that basis is, but as we get into the later chapters in Galatians, he is going to tell us, he is going to tell us that now we follow the dictates of our Master Jesus, or as Paul puts it, we do what the Spirit of His Son tells us to do. God now teaches and guides us through the work of the Spirit. Since we are now forgiven and reconciled to God because of the cross, God is free to give us his life-giving spirit who teaches us and opens our eyes to the truth. As we learn and grow, the spirit gives us understanding, and we become more and more people who want to live like Jesus, people who love God and love our neighbors. As the Spirit sanctifies us, we learn to hear and obey the truth. The instruction of the law no longer governs our actions. Instead, the instruction of the Spirit of God now governs our actions. But that's stuff he's going to spell out in chapter five. Now there is a great deal of overlap between the instruction of the Spirit and the law. Much of what the Spirit is teaching us to do, we could learn from obeying the law. But Paul's point right here in this section is that the Messiah has come, the law no longer controls and governs us. Now the Spirit of God controls and governs us and influences our life and choices and behavior. And again, we'll get into that into more detail as we get into chapter five. Let's finish this part of Paul's argument. Let me read verses eight through eleven. Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods, but now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more? You observe days and months and seasons and years. I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain. Notice again the pronoun here is you. I think he's speaking to the Gentile believers in the Galatian churches. He's saying, You Gentiles did not know God the way the Jews knew God. You didn't have any history with him. You didn't know the rich heritage of the history of the nation of Israel, and you didn't have that to teach you about God. Instead, you were enslaved to idols, things that are man made and not gods at all. Idols are just blocks of wood and hunks of gold and silver, and they offer counterfeit promises. Chasing them is like chasing the wind. They didn't create the universe, they don't ordain history. They are nothing, but you thought they were gods, so you did what you thought you needed to do to appease them and gain their favor. Your life was controlled and governed by what you thought those gods required. But now, having come to know the one true God through the Messiah, why would you want to go back to all those rules and rituals? Neither keeping the Jewish law nor following the dictates of idols solves the problem of sin. You simply cannot make yourself acceptable to God by following the dictates of any religion's rules and regulations. No amount of outward obedience changes the fact that we are motivated by sin and selfishness inside. God never intended to grant mercy through law keeping. From the foundation of the world he planned to send the Messiah to redeem us. Those under the old covenant looked forward to the coming of the Messiah, and we look backward to his first coming and forward to the To his second, but all of us are going to be saved through faith in the blood of Christ. In 4, 9 through 11, Paul asks, if you're an heir now, why would you go back to childhood and slavery? What would persuade you to limit yourself the way a child needs to be limited when you were meant for maturity? Let's think about that a little bit. When my children are young and growing up, they had many restrictions. And we had lots of discussions over the rules and regulations we built into their lives. Don't cross the street unless you're holding the hand of an adult. Don't talk to strangers. Don't approach the neighbor's dog unless the neighbor is there holding the leash. You need to be home by eleven or ten or whatever. You need to budget your allowance. Here are the rules about homework. Call me when you arrive safely. We gave them all kinds of rules to keep them safe and also to teach them right from wrong and how to make wise choices. As they grew in wisdom and maturity, the rules relaxed and changed. We expected them to begin taking responsibility for themselves and acting as a responsible adult. We expected them to manage their own lives without us making a hundred rules for them. Eventually they set their own bedtime, they managed their own money, and they completed their own homework. They made their own lunches, they did their own laundry, and they set their own homework schedule. They grew up. And Paul's arguing that the law functioned in a similar way. It was necessary and helpful while we were immature children and especially rebellious adolescents, but now we ought to be spiritually mature. My children are adults now and they have kids of their own. Why would my grown children ever want to go back to the restrictions of childhood? That's the argument Paul is making. The Judaizers are teaching you that you need to go back to childhood and place yourself under the guardianship of the law. They're telling you to follow the dietary rules, keep kosher, be circumcised, attend all the feasts and festivals. But now that the Messiah has come, the Jews aren't even obligated to keep the law in the same way, and neither are you. Believing Jews are free of that lifestyle, and so are you. The Spirit of God at work in you testifies to the fact that you are a child of God. You don't need any other proof. You don't need to earn God's favor through law keeping. You have it. You have tangible observable evidence that you have God's favor because you have his spirit changing you from the inside out. Paul's going to talk more about the work of the Spirit in the next chapter, so we'll talk more about it then. His point here is you Gentiles are heirs and nothing less. God has intervened in Christ. God is your loving Father, not your taskmaster. When we need wisdom, he'll supply it, he'll make us courageous. We've been given gifts to serve him and a calling to explore, and we were made for freedom and maturity under the Lordship of Christ. He then ends this with a warning in 10 and 11 you observe days and months and seasons and years. I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain. Paul raises the fear that they will succumb to the teachings of the Judaizers, that they will return to spiritual childhood despite all his teaching and his prayers. He fears that all his work among them was in vain. I think this phrase, observe days and months and seasons, is a reference to the prescriptions of the Mosaic Law. Drill instructors are necessary for juvenile delinquents, but they are not necessary for those who have learned the lessons and graduated. Why go back to the days, months, seasons, and years of the Jewish ceremonial laws and calendar? Why go back to those kind of childhood restrictions? Why would anybody who has graduated ever want to go back to the life of a minor? Having received our justification by faith, we should rejoice in our freedom in Christ. You've been listening to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. My mission is to explain not only what a passage means, but show you how to figure it out. Please rate and review us on your favorite podcast app. The more people who do that, the easier it is for others to find us. But even more important, tell a friend what you learned and where you learned it. You can hear all previous episodes in this series as well as find many other series on my website, WednesdayInTheWord.com. Our theme music is graciously provided by my friend and favorite musician Reggie Coates. You can find his music and his CDs on heartfeltmusic.org. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Krissan Murata and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word. In the meantime, I hope you find some time to visit my website, WednesdayInTheWord.com, and take advantage of some of my free Bible study resources.