It was a big deal in Pune, India that hot spring
day. The temperature was hovering around
112 degrees. A day earlier my wife and I
were in New York boarding a plane to travel half- way around the world. Now we were sitting on a bench in a tiny
little building in a dark corner of the world.
This place is probably very insignificant for those who pass by it every
day. But for us it was life-changing. It was in that little building, on that hot
May day, in Pune, India, that we met our daughter Siddhi.
Every night, before I put my little Indian daughter
to bed I ask her three questions: What’s
your name? Where are you from? Who are you?
These are three very important questions with three very important
answers. My daughter is the only child
with brown skin and black hair in our family.
She is the only daughter who is small for her age. She is the only daughter who has been
adopted. She is the only daughter that
doesn’t look anything like the other sons and daughters or mommy and daddy for
that matter. Her answers to these
questions must be truth to her. I cannot
make her believe them, I can only ask the questions.
To the first question she answers, “My name is Mira
Siddhi.” To the second question she
answers, “I am from Pune, India.” And to
the third question she answers, “I am Daddy’s daughter.” It doesn’t matter if she goes to bed sad or
happy, mad or joyful, I always ask these three questions and she always
answers. It doesn't matter that she is
different, adopted, happy, sad, angry, joyful, tired or hungry, or from mommy’s
belly or from Pune, India – she is Daddy’s daughter.
This is precisely what Paul wants the Gentile
Christians in Galatia to know. It doesn't matter if you are male or female, Jew or Gentile, slave or free – you
are a son of the Living God by faith in Jesus Christ alone. We have different names. We have different backgrounds. We look different. We have different cultures and
traditions. We have different theology. But under the one Gospel, we are one people,
under one Father God, because of one Messiah.
In the Christian faith we call this “sonship.”
At the very center of the Christian faith lies
sonship. Paul sums it up in verse 26
when he says, “for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through
faith.” Our position is a son of
God. The qualification is faith. Let me go back to Siddhi for a moment. I can tell her that she is my daughter, but
at some point she has to believe it. At
the heart of Christian faith is to believe that we are the sons of God by faith
in Jesus Christ. This is true freedom. We are not sons by good works. We are not sons because of what we bring to
the table. We are sons because of God’s
grace.
Why does Paul use the word “son” and not
“children?” Because in ancient times,
only sons had legal rights to that which was the father’s. Adoption in ancient times meant that the male
person adopted would receive all rights to his father’s estate. He received the full rights of biological
sons. Paul wanted the Galatians to know
that whether they were male or female, they received all that Jesus has to
offer and all that Jesus has secured. In
Romans 8, Paul says that we are co-heirs with Christ. We can only receive an inheritance from God
if we have come to faith in Christ.
But what does it mean that we are treated as sons
through faith in Christ? First, by faith
you receive the righteousness of Christ.
Paul alludes to this when he says in verse 27 that we have been baptized
into Christ and have put on Christ. He
is speaking of the righteousness of Christ.
This reminds us that we are justified.
We have been dressed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
Tim Keller makes four great points about
what it means to be clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. First, our identity is in Jesus Christ. Clothes say a lot about us. They tell others what we like, where we are
from, how much money we have or do not have.
Clothes can be a very personal choice.
On a broader scale, clothing can have a lot to do with your culture. Mainstream clothing in the Middle East desert
is much different than the mainstream in Los Angeles. Being clothed in Christ means our identity is
in Jesus.
Second, being clothed in Christ speaks to the
closeness of our relationship to Christ.
Hopefully, your clothes are on you and go with you wherever you go. When your clothes aren’t on you, you might
end up in jail. In the same way, Jesus
is with us in all things. He is always
present with us and the closest person to us.
Third, we imitate Jesus. To be in Christ by faith means we look to
Jesus as our example. He is not only an
example to us, but he is certainly the prime example for us.
Fourth, being clothed in Christ means we have been
found acceptable by God. God has been
putting clothes on us since we sinned in the Garden of Eden. Now when God looks at us clothed in the
righteousness of Christ, He sees us as His sons and daughters.
In verse 27, Paul is telling us that our lives have a
lot to do with Jesus. He cannot be
compartmentalized. He cannot be confined
to a church service or outreach program once a month. He is everything to us and gives us all
things. This is what it means to be “in
Christ.”
Faith also binds the church together as one
church. There are times when I meet
someone in public or even hear them speak on TV and I immediately know that
they confess Jesus as their Savior. We
are united in the faith. In verses 28-29
Paul eliminates all cultural and social divides. We do not need to be of a particular culture,
race, class, or gender to be united in the church.
In my experience I have found that the church
includes people of all different backgrounds and cultures. Even within one culture there are
sub-cultures. The point that Paul is making
is that membership in the church (which is faith in Christ) does not require a
cultural, class, or even a gender change.
We are all free and found equal in the sight of God.
We are all united by the Gospel. We are united by the bad news that we are all
sinful. This keeps us from being
self-righteous. The bad news helps us to
see that our culture, upbringing, and traditions aren't our identity or a
source for contention. Additionally, we
are united by the good news of the Gospel.
We are all sinners who have been saved by grace.
My prayer for Stone’s Throw is that we would be a
church united under the Gospel, lit up by the Gospel, and bring much joy to
people’s lives with the Gospel, regardless of their story.
We are either slaves or we are free. For Paul, those who are in Christ are free
sons of God. How did this happen? Paul says that at just the right time, God
sent Jesus. Jesus was born under the
Law. This means that Jesus kept the Law
and subjected himself to the Law.
Why? So that he could redeem us
from the curse of the Law. The redeemer had to keep the law in order to be made
a righteous atonement for sins. Jesus
accomplished this in his life, death, and resurrection.
The result of Jesus’ humiliation, being born under
the Law and keeping it, is that we have been saved from our sins. Additionally, we have been saved into the
rights and privileges of the Son of God.
Many Christians focus so much on salvation from sin that they forget
they have been saved to something incredible!
Not only are our sins taken away, but we are given something of eternal
value.
Sometimes when my children disobey me, I will take
away their bedtime snack. They love
bedtime snack. They look forward to it
from the moment dinner is over until bedtime.
It is a tradition. But it is also
a privilege. There are nights where I
have had to take their bedtime snack away from them. In moments of weakness, I will sometimes give
their bedtime snack back to them. This
is not dissimilar to God taking our sins away.
But the privileges that He gives us would be like me not only giving my
child their snack back, but taking them to the store to pick out their favorite
snack and allow them to enjoy that snack for as long as they want. Later, we might go back to choose another one,
just to change it up a little. What I
mean is that God not only takes our sin away but He gives us all things!
Additionally, Paul tells us that the Spirit is at
work in us so that we might cry out to God, “Daddy!” Jesus has changed our legal status before God
(justification), but the Holy Spirit helps us to experience the grace of
God. The tense of the words and the
sense that Paul is trying to convey here is that the Spirit is actively at work
in our lives. The Holy Spirit builds us
up in the faith and in confidence. We
have a sense that God knows us as His child and we know Him as our Father.
Being a son of God should change everything for each
of us. Our Father owns the world and all
that is in it. We are hanging out in our
Father’s place in which everything belongs to Him. There is nothing that can separate us from
our Father. There is no fear, no
anguish, no grief, or any person that can tear us from the Father’s hand.
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