The Gospel is of Freedom, Not of Bondage (No Other Gospel #15)
Remember what Paul has just said at the end of the last passage. He was speaking of a boy being under the authority of a Paidagogos, which he used as a type of the Mosaic law. But that authority has ended. And that leads him directly to speak of this idea of sonship and freedom.
For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise. 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 fulness 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. Howbeit then, when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods. But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain. (Galatians 3:26-4:11)
The gospel is a gospel of faith, but what does that faith do? What can the gospel accomplish? What does it mean, in practical application, to be a Christian?
First of all, what did it mean for the Judaizers? We can't fully answer that question, but we know it meant entering into a new profession, going through specific rituals (i.e., circumcision), making changes in your life (following the law) and so forth. It was a new leaf, a new way of living. Which is all very well in its way.
But that isn't what it means to be a Christian; that is not what the one true gospel teaches: the message of the gospel is that to be a Christian means a change in nature and status: “For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.” This isn't a change we make but a change God makes; a change not in our behavior but in our essence (though, of course, it will lead to a change in behavior.) Verse 26 acts as a summary or title sentence for all that follows. Getting saved doesn't just mean starting to go to church and putting a religious bumper sticker on your car. It means becoming a member of God's family, a change both in station and in nature; it means sitting with Christ in heavenly places.
Paul says something interesting in verse 27 that we have to pause and look at before we move on. “For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ.” We recognize that it is possible to be saved without being baptized and that it is possible to be baptized without being saved. But for the New Testament, baptism was so linked to salvation that Paul could use the terms almost synonymously; because salvation was always followed by baptism and baptism symbolized the act of salvation. But what is that act? In baptism, a person's old life is put away and a new life begins. They are baptized into Christ, into a new life and relationship. And in so doing, they have put on Christ, like a man putting on a new suit of clothes. The old has passed away and something new has taken its place. This isn't just a random new addition to life, but a new mode of existence.
You see how that contrasts with the ideas of the legalists. To them, religion was all about what we do. Even circumcision or baptism was only a form that WE did to symbolize OUR new intentions. But for Paul, it symbolized putting on Christ; not something we do (though we do have a part in it). Christ gives us Himself and we put Him on. It's not merely that we chose to act in a more Christian manner, but that Christ has entered our actions.
And because this new life is by grace, and not through any efforts of our own, then it doesn't matter who or what we are. If salvation came through the Jewish covenant or the Jewish law then obviously, Jews would have an advantage. If it came through special action and ministry, then slaves and women would have been at a disadvantage (in that day). But there is no advantage or disadvantage here--at least, not any that really counts. All are sinners; all need salvation; and all can find salvation through Christ. These distinctions do not cease to exist. Read the words of Paul and it will be clear that Paul always remained very Jewish; he didn't cease to be a Jew when he became a Christian and the Greeks didn't cease to be Greek when they converted. But none of these distinctions matter at the deepest level.
Imagine we had here a collection of empty bottles and glasses. Some are very high quality while others not so much; some expense, some cheap; some fancy, some tacky. If we were to have a beauty contest for these bottles, obviously some of them would have no chance of winning. It would be possible to put them all into a tier list, ranking them from best to worst. But if the bottles are going to all be filled with the same liquid, then their appearance doesn't matter. All that matters is what they're filled with. They'll still have different appearances and different functions, but they'll all be essentially the same, all water-bearers, regardless of their size or shape.
As Christians, we are all different. Becoming Christians doesn't destroy those differences; if anything, it accentuates them. And we have different functions and roles in the church, just as Paul and Peter did in their ministry (as we saw earlier in Galatians). But none of these differences in function changes what we are--and that is Christ-bearers. We are all one in Christ, and because Christ is Abraham's descendant (both physically as a Jew and spiritually as the consummation of the promises made to Abraham) then we, as Christians, are also Abraham's seeds and heirs according to the promise. The Jews were very proud of their descent from Abraham and thought that the Gentiles had to enter into their covenant in order to be saved, but Paul says that the true descent, the true covenant is in Christ and therefore whoever we are, whether Jew or Gentile, we can be the seed of Abraham through faith. This acts as a mini-recap of what Paul has said thus far in the chapter.
We talked before about these two words: JUSTIFICATION and REGENERATION. These are what God does in salvation. Justification removes the guilt and punishment of sin. Regeneration removes the corruption of sin and remakes the sinner into a saint. That is also partly included in this idea of sonship, since (as I've pointed out before) in Hebrew thought, to be the son of someone means to be like them. If we are made into the sons of God, that means we have the nature of God. If we put on Christ, we must be like Christ.
But there is another side to this idea of sonships. Note the last words of verse 5: “The adoption of sons.” And again, verse 7: “If a son, than an heir of God through Christ.”
Sin not only brings guilt, punishment, and corruption, but it brings a division. When man sinned, the first thing he did was hide from God. And he has been in hiding ever since. Like the prodigal son, mankind rejected his father's house and went off into the far country of his own will. But now, through the gospel, that broken relationship can be remade. Once we were the children of God. In sin, we are called the children of the Devil. But through the gospel, we can once again be called the children of God; we can enter back into the family of God. When Paul in verse 7: “Thou art no more a servant, but a son” I can't help but wonder if he was thinking of the story of the Prodigal Son; remember how the Prodigal Son returned planning to ask his father to make him one of his hired servants, but instead the father welcomed him back as a member of the family. That is what salvation does; it brings us back into the family. This is ADOPTION. By this, we can call upon God, not only as a Sovereign; not only as our Saviour; but as our Father. “For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.” (Romans 8:15)
It is worth noting in passing that there is a strong parallel between this passage and Romans 8. And note here that the Holy Spirit or the Spirit of Adoption is referred to as “The Spirit of God's Son” just as Romans 8:9 refers to the Spirit as “The Spirit of Christ.”
But not only does adoption mean the restoration of a relationship with God, but something more. When that relationship was broken, it had consequences. The prophet Isaiah spoke to Judah during a time when things were going very bad. God was far away and he wasn't hearing the prayers of the people. When they needed God most, He wasn't there. And Isaiah reminded them it wasn't because God had grown weak or apathetic or ignorant. God still knew their troubles and could help them: the problem wasn't with God, but with them. “But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.” (Isaiah 59:2) Because they had sinned against God, they had lost the right and privilege of calling for God's help when they were in trouble. A criminal on the run isn't going to be very quick to call the police to help him when he's in trouble. In ancient times, an outlaw had no rights and no privileges; because he was on the outside of the law, he could appeal to no aid from the law.
And that's what's so important about that phrase: “The adoption of sons.” It's a legal term in Greek, and it has a specific connotation. When we think of adoption, we think of finding love and acceptance. Which is part of it. But here the idea is specifically that adoption brings the right of inheritance. Under Roman law, a boy who was adopted into a family had all the rights of inheritance that a natural-born son would have had; to be adopted was to become an heir.
And that is what God has done for us. When a person is saved, they become an heir; a member of God's family with all the rights and privileges that come with that, both in this life and the next. This is what the gospel does; this is what salvation does: it makes criminals innocent men; it makes sinners saints; and it makes outcasts members of the family and beggars into heirs.
But there is even more to this idea of sonship. And that brings us to the heart of Paul's somewhat intricate argument.
When you were a child, did you ever think your parents treated you like a slave? Because there's Biblical warrant for that thought: “The heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant.” According to the Net Bible, the word for child here means a child older than an infant but not more than 4-5. Obviously, a child of that age is under a lot of restrictions. He has very little power to direct or determine his own life and is under the authority of other people. He might be the heir to a great fortune and vast lands; he might even be the ruler of an entire kingdom, but for all practical purposes he has no more control over his own life than a slave. So long as he remains a child, he has comparatively little freedom and cannot truly exercise any of the authority which he may inherit.
But there is a time coming when that will change. Someday he will grow up and reach the appointed time when he can enter into his inheritance. He will no longer be a child, under the authority and restrictions of tutors and governors but an adult with the freedom and rights that come with manhood. That is the analogy that Paul sets up. Before we look at what it means, let's go back to verse 26.
“For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.” This acts as a summary of what Paul has said so far in Galatians. We are saved not by the works of the law nor by membership in the Jewish covenant but by faith in Christ Jesus, for the just shall live by faith. We are justified and regenerated only through Jesus and the atonement provided by His life, death, and resurrection. In Christ is the true fulfillment of the promises made to Abraham.
That is the gospel. But Paul realized one objection which some of the Jews might make: if salvation comes through Christ, then what about all those who lived before Christ? What of all the saints of the Old Testament? What of the righteous men who lived before Christ? Surely, Paul couldn't say that they had been lost; that they hadn't been accepted by God. And if they had been accepted, even though they lived under the law, even though they didn't have the gospel, then why couldn't people still be saved through the law? (Bear in mind that Paul is writing to people who were over-reverencing the Old Testament and the OT economy; our tendency is rather to under-value the Old Testament and so some of this may seem distant to us.)
Paul has already partly answered this earlier in Galatians. Even in the Old Testament, no one was saved by following the law. David testified to the fact that no one can be justified by their own works in the eyes of God. Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness. And yet, these men did live under the law; they didn't have the gospel except as a promise, and even that wasn't a clear promise. “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.” (Hebrews 11:13)
And that's where Paul's analogy here comes in. There were those long before the gospel who knew God; who lived godly lives; who found salvation and who are members of God's kingdom. And yet they were still under the bondage of the law. They were like children who had not yet come of age. They were truly children of God but they had not received the full privileges that God had promised would someday come.
In verse 3 he describes these people as children in bondage “under the elements of the world.” This word elements means the basic or rudimentary elements of something and, especially, the alphabet. Think of a child in the nursery playing with his alphabet blocks or little plastic numbers with magnets on the back. Is there anything wrong with that? No. Those letters and numbers will form the basis for all knowledge he will gain as he grows up. But those are only the basic elements. A child who grew up and never learned anything beyond the alphabet would be very ignorant. These things are the basis of all knowledge, but they aren't the completion of it.
And that's what the Jewish law was--and, by implication, the natural law God revealed to the Gentiles as well--it was the basic elements out of which full plan of God would be formed. It was an essential beginning point. It was the Paidagogos to lead to Christ. But it wasn't the full revelation of God. That had not yet come. “And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise: God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.” (Hebrews 11:39-40) The saints in the Old Testament under the Jewish law (and those Gentiles who had found the true God outside of the Jewish covenant)--they were like children in the nursery, under the elementary law, with a great promise but without having entered into the full liberty of that promise.
Notice in verse 9 that Paul refers to these elements as “weak and beggarly.” The word beggarly in Greek (as in English) is connected to the idea of being a beggar, of someone who has to ask others for help. But in a more general sense, it simply means “Poor, needy... Destitute of wealth... lacking in anything.” (Thayer, #4434) If you need something very heavy moved, what kind of person do you want to help you? Someone strong, not someone weak. If you have a financial need you need to be met, would you go to a pauper or a beggar? No, you would want someone who has at least some money. There is no moral fault in being either weak or poor, but it does prevent you from being useful for certain functions. That's what Paul is saying here. The Old Testament economy--and the moral knowledge God gave the heathen--was good in so far as it went, but it was too weak, too poor to really solve the problem of mankind.
Instead, the law brought only bondage. Or rather, it defined the bondage that already existed. That bondage existed because of sin. “For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.” (Romans 7:22-23) There is in mankind a law or principle which drives him to sin. And that principle makes living a righteous life an impossibility. But if there were no moral law, no statement of what was right or wrong, then nobody would ever know that. You don't know the strength of a habit until you try to break it. Man was in bondage to sin and the law, by revealing sin, revealed the bondage. But it could only reveal the bondage, not bring freedom.
But then--then the fullness of time came. I'm sure all of you know what an hourglass looks like--a glass filled with sand which slowly trickles through to mark the time. Picture that moment when the last bit of sand flows through and the bottom half is completely full to the brim. That's is the fullness of time--the point where everything is ready, everything completed; the full measure of time filled up to the brim. And it was then, at just the right moment, that God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law.
Notice here we have the providence of God--the events of the world and the events surrounding the birth of Christ might have seemed random and out of control, but God was providentially arranging things until the fullness of time came. God's clock always keeps perfect time. We also see the deity of Christ: “Sent forth his Son”--Jesus existed long before that moment He was born in Bethlehem, for He is the Word of the Father, Begotten Not Created. And yet we also see His humanity: “made of a woman, made under the law.” Though His conception was miraculous, yet He went through the process of birth just like any other baby. He was a mother's Son like any other man. And he was born under the restrictions of the Jewish covenant just like any other Jew. And once again we come back to this idea of providence because He wasn't simply born. His life had a purpose. He was born to accomplish something: “To redeem them that were under the law.” He put himself under that burden to bring out those who were under it. Irenaeus wrote: "Because of His boundless love, He became what we are in order that He might make us what He is." C. S. Lewis compared it to a diver, going deep down to the bottom of the sea and bringing back treasures to the surface. Jesus entered our bondage so that we might be set free. He redeemed--bought back, ransomed, rescued--those who were under the law. And by doing this he made it possible for us (Paul and his readers) to “receive the adoption of sons... wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son.”
So we have a contrast here; between the old covenant, the Old Testament and the new covenant, the New Testament, the gospel. The old covenant was one of faith--as Paul showed earlier--but it was still a state of bondage and incompleteness. Jeremiah 31:31-33 paints this contrast between the old covenant and the new: “Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD: but this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.”
Note the contrast. We have the old covenant, the covenant which God made when he brought Israel out of Egypt; that is, the covenant of Moses. And then we have the new covenant and its main attribute is that God would put his law inside the people, that he would write it on their hearts. By implication, the Old Testament law was only written on tablets of stone. It was on the outside of man. It could tell him what to do, but it couldn't truly change his heart. It could restrain sin but not destroy it.
Look at verse 10; look at what Paul says were the symptoms of the Galatians which worried him: “Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years.” The Old Testament law was filled with special events and days and holidays which were to be observed and it seems that the Galatians were also beginning to observe them. And that's not necessarily wrong. There is a good case to be made for the importance of observing special days and events. But it worried Paul because this isn't enough. Celebrating the Fourth of July does not make you a good citizen. Celebrating Valentine's Day does not make you a good husband or wife. Celebrating your birthday does not make you more mature. Celebrating Christmas or Easter does not make you a Christian. Even remembering the Sabbath--the one holy day enjoined on Christians--does not make you a Christian. These things are good in so far as they go, but they are only external reminders. But that's as far they could go.
That's why the old covenant was one of bondage. It was a matter of external reminders and restrictions. All it could do was restrain sin and therefore restrain man. It could not root out sin. I'll be honest, I really struggled with this lesson, because we simply don't fully understand what the spiritual experience of those in the Old Testament was. Clearly, God did reveal himself to those in the Old Testament, and there are many who knew God on very personal terms, many who lived righteous lives. But there was still a difference between their experience and what we have under the gospel.
And we can picture this if we go back to Paul's analogy about the child. How many adults struggle with a daily temptation to stick metal objects into electrical objects, swallow pennies or buttons, or touch hot pans with your hands? Not very many. But those are the kinds of things that a child of three or four is tempted to do--which is why children of that age have to live in a state of constant restrictions and have to be constantly watched and guarded and corrected. But an adult does not need the same kind of restrictions. An adult has temptations and sometimes even temptations to be childish, which is why an adult does need some laws and restrictions. But an adult is different from a child and so does not need that constant guarding and restriction--an adult has a different heart and mind from a child. And that's the difference between those under the Old Testament and the New. Even at its best, the Old Testament economy was an experience of bondage and incompleteness, like that of a small child. But under the New Testament, full adulthood has come with the change and freedom that comes with that, because now the law has been written on the heart.
And here's the important part. Remember that the churches Galatia were primarily Gentile. Look at verse 8: There was a time when they didn't know God and instead they “did service unto them which by nature are no gods.” The word “service” literally means to be a slave. They were enslaved, and they were enslaved to nonentities, giving their lives in service to non-existent gods. Jonah 2:8 refers to false gods as “lying vanities” which can be literally translated: “worthlessnesses of nothingness.” (NET Bible) They were in bondage to things that weren't even real.
Be careful here, because this is a fact that would be easy to misunderstand. But there were a lot of similarities between the pagan religions of the world and Judaism. Like Judaism, many of the pagan religions put a very big emphasis on sacrifices and offerings, on ritual purity, on special times and occasions. One was a service to the true God, and one was a service to unreal gods, but they were similar in some respects and both involved bondage and curtailment of liberty.
But the Galatians had passed beyond that--they had known God, which is to say, they had been known by God. It was not so much that they had accepted the true God (though that would be true) but that the true God had accepted them. They had entered God's family. They had passed from bondage to false gods to the full liberty of being a son and an heir of God.
And that's why the whole argument of the Judaizers was so wrong. At its best, the state of those under the Old Testament was one of bondage, like that of a child who has not come of age. But these people, who had really been slaves of falsehood, outside the family of God, had (through the gospel) been accepted into the family. Under the New Testament, under the gospel, we can go straight from being an outcast and a slave to being full sons with all the right and privilege of adult sonship. We are no longer under the bondage of the Mosaic law; temporary bondage like the protective guardianship of a toddler. To everyone--Jew and Gentile, good and bad--there was a way open to something better than anything anyone had before. And those to whom Paul wrote had experienced this. They had come into God's family; they had known what it was to be a full son of God, not a child, but a full adult son. And so, having known that, why would they desire to go back into bondage, even the bondage of the Mosaic Law? It would be like full-grown adults wanting to crawl back into the cradle. The gospel brings deliverance from that preliminary state because the gospel is of freedom and not of bondage.
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