Heirs of Everything

Series on Galatians

II The Apostolic Assertions

E The Parent

Text: 3:23-4:11

Introduction

There is a story by Alexander Dumas, “The Man in the Iron Mask.” In the story Aramis, a former Musketeer and now a priest, is in a cell with a prisoner. Aramis is there to hear the man’s confession. The prisoner, however, doesn’t have anything to confess, because his only crime is being the King of France’s twin brother, and Aramis is one of the few people in France who knows this secret. He puts together a plan to free this prisoner and swap him for the legitimate king. When the plan works the prisoner becomes king and goes from rags to riches. He goes from possessing nothing to possessing everything. This is what happens when we become children of God and it is what Paul is talking about in our text. This passage abounds in metaphors illustrating our impoverished condition as sinners. In it we are identified as malefactors, minors, menials, and morons.

I Malefactors

Where do malefactors get put? In prison of course. That is why Paul writes in verses 23-25, Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed. So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law. Locked up and guarded is how we are described in our natural sinful lives. But then comes Jesus and we are justified. In our modern parlance we would describe this deliverance as a reprieve and a pardon. As the angel came to deliver the Apostle Peter from prison, so the Holy Spirit comes and opens the eyes of your heart to the truth of the Gospel. You are no longer under the supervision of the law. The Greek word translated supervision is the word for a guardian. Rejoice the malefactor is no more and in his place there is a justified and pardoned man.

II Minors

Different cultures celebrate different levels of maturity in different ways. Girls have sweet sixteen parties, or they used to have them. In Judaism they have the Bar Mitzvah. In primitive cultures they have all sorts of coming of age rituals. In this country you can drive when you are 16, and since the Vietnam war and the twenty-sixth amendment to the constitution you can vote at 18. And in the United states for the most part since 1984 the legal age for alcohol purchase and public consumption has been 21. Countries and cultures as well as eras vary widely in their views of maturity. In financial matters such as wills and trusts the age is pretty much up to the person that makes the will. In most states, there is a “Uniform Transfers to Minors Act” that ends custodianship automatically unless otherwise specified when the beneficiary is 21. But a few states end them at 18, and a handful allow you to extend the age to 25. If you don’t want the beneficiary to get the property so young, you may specify differently. This is what Paul is talking about in Galatians 4:1-5, What I am saying is that as long as the heir is a child, he is no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate. He is subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his father. So also, when we were children, we were in slavery under the basic principles of the world. But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons. It is the people of God who are to be seen as minors until God’s revelation is complete in Christ. Notice Paul’s reference to the fullness of time. This means the time was ripe, the world was ready, and all the Old Testament prophecies would culminate in Christ and His earthly and heavenly ministries. As Paul declares elsewhere in II Corinthians 1:20, For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us. Thus, in Christ, we move from childhood to maturity in God’s plan. This is not the maturity that we seek through sanctification individually, but something we already have in Christ who is the fulfillment and therefore the final end of God’s revelation. Now, says Paul, why would we want to go back to the laws and ordinances that characterized our minority since Christ has feed us from them? This is exactly the trap into which the Galatians were falling as they were urged and incited by the Judaizers.

III Menials

Not only have we gone from prison to pardon, and from minority to majority, but Paul says we have moved from being slaves to being free men. From being menials in the household to being sons. Let us put two separate sections of this passage together and read in and 4:6 and 7 and 3:26-29, Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir. You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. How cleverly Paul talks to both Jew and Gentile and reminds both of them that the Judaizers are corrupting their faith in Christ. In Chapter 4 he uses both the Hebrew word for father which is transliterated for us as “Abba,” and the Greek word which is translated “father.” And in Chapter 3 he says there is neither Jew nor Greek in Christ. As Paul later points out, they, as Gentiles, were enslaved, but they left the worship of dumb idols to serve the living God. The Jews of course were enslaved by the hedge of law that they had ironically erected as a symbol of their sonship. All the differences between the Jews and the Gentiles have been erased. All have become Abraham’s seed and heirs of the promises of the covenant of grace. All are circumcised in Christ female as well as male, and Gentile as well as Jew. To paraphrase Martin Luther King, “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, free at last,” for in Christ there is neither slave nor free because all are sons of God.

IV Morons

I use the word not in the technical but in the vernacular sense to describe a complete fool. Thus Paul describes them in 4:8-11, Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods. But now that you know God—or rather are known by God—how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable principles? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again? You are observing special days and months and seasons and years! I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you. The Apostle makes no distinction between the Gentile worship of idols and the Jewish worship of the law because both were false paths to salvation. Like the Christians in Thessalonica, the Christians here had turned from serving dumb idols to serve the living God, but now they were turning back. Now they were going back to the equivalent of heathenism described by Paul in Romans 1 saying that they, “Serve the creature rather than the Creator, and for the glory of God they substitute the likeness of an image of corruptible man and of birds and of four-footed beasts, and of creeping things, and make these the objects of their worship.” This foolish and wicked failure to acknowledge God results in slavery for those who are guilty of it. The subjection to the law urged by the Judaizers is no better. Under the childish teachings of pagan priests and ritualists they had been taught to obey all kinds of prescriptions regarding the discovery of the will of the gods by means of omens, the benefit of afflicting the body and of submission to fate. There had been moral stipulations derived from nature, custom, and arbitrary will. Having been delivered from all this folly, do they now wish to become enslaved all over again, this time by Judaistic regulations? Martin Luther commenting on this says that he had known monks who zealously labored to please God for salvation, but the more they labored the more impatient, miserable, uncertain, and fearful they became. And he adds, “People who prefer the law to the gospel are like Aesop’s dog who let go of the meat to snatch at the shadow in the water.… The law is weak and poor, the sinner is weak and poor: two feeble beggars trying to help each other. They cannot do it. They only wear each other out. But through Christ a weak and poor sinner is revived and enriched unto eternal life.” No wonder Paul begins chapter three with the warning,You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? And also no wonder that the Apostle says in 4:11, I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you. Indeed they were blockheaded, dimwitted, dumb, foolish, idiotic, ignorant, moronic simpletons to throw away the best and replace it with the worst. So is everyone who wishes to be justified by laws and spurns grace and forgiveness.