Paul tells us, “you are all sons of God,” in Galatians. Paul uses sons, not “sons and daughters,” simply because with sonship in ancient cultures came the right to inherit. Are all people sons of God? Find the important qualifiers in this verse: “For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.” They serve as bookends for sonship: “in Christ Jesus” and “through faith.” We have all the rights and privileges of a child of God only if we are in Christ Jesus through faith. Without that, we are still in our sins. We are still in Adam. 

J.I. Packer says in his classic book, Knowing Faith, that there is a higher privilege the gospel offers, even higher than justification. The doctrine of justification made you right before God the judge, who made the declaration, “not guilty” from the bench. But what happened next is critical. The judge then got off the bench, came down to where you are and embraced you, and said, “Come home to live with me as my son.” JI Packer wrote, “To be right with God the Judge is a great thing, but to be loved and cared for by God the Father is a greater.” In answer to the question, “What is a Christian?” Packer said, “The richest answer I know is that a Christian is one who has God as Father.” Jesus taught us to pray, “Our Father, who is in heaven,” didn’t he? Sometimes I have a hard time moving past that first phrase without getting emotional. I have a perfect Father who loves me perfectly and wanted me to be in His family. 

Along with that, a son of God is one who is clothed in Christ, Paul wrote. The picture of baptism points to that moment of your salvation, when you “put on Christ.” Paul writes in Romans 6, “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead…we too might walk in newness of life.” Therefore, water baptism follows spiritual baptism, and our primary identity is in Christ. We don’t have to wear a badge that says, “I belong to Christ.” We are closer to him than our clothing is to our body, and in our speech and actions we “practice His presence.” If we are clothed in Christ, we are growing in our love for Him and that changes how we think, and speak, and walk, and act. There is an intimacy with Christ that colors everything about us. 

That means also that we are one with every other believer, because we are all where? In Christ! We play different roles in the body, but there is no distinction among believers as far as our position in Christ. There are ethnic, social and gender distinctions among believers, and yet, we are one in Christ. Paul said, “There is neither Jew not Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Paul mentions this threefold affirmation in Galatians because, many believe, the same was used in a morning prayer that Jewish men prayed every day: “Thank you God that you did not make me a Gentile, a slave, or a woman.” The reason for this prayer, which Paul himself would have prayed before He met Christ, was not a disparagement of Gentiles, slaves, or women as persons. FF Bruce writes that it was because of the fact “that they were disqualified from several religious privileges that were open only to free Jewish males.” Paul affirms that in Christ, these distinctions are irrelevant.  The body of Christ is unity within diversity, but not sameness. All are welcome in Christ as in Him there is no difference, no distinction, no division.  

Nobody can pull this off except Christ. And only in His church. 

Galatians 3 26-4 7 We Were Adopted

Galatians 3 15-25 In Prison or In Christ

Paul tells us in Galatians the law did not come to tell us about salvation but to tell us about sin. “It was added because of transgressions.” Some have said the law is a mirror that when we look into it, we see who we really are. But you know that no one who looks in a mirror and sees dirt on his face then takes the mirror off the wall to clean the dirt away. The law can only show us our sinfulness. It cannot remove it. Paul said in Romans 7 that without the law he would not have known what sin was. “I would not have known what it is to covet,” he wrote, “if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’” On the one hand, then, the law was given to constrain mankind by clearly revealing God’s standard for holiness. It tells us how to live a life pleasing to the Lord.  

That is why we don’t have free-range children. At least, we shouldn’t. Instead, I would urge you to constrain your children’s tendencies toward misbehavior with rules and with loving discipline. We teach our children right and wrong because God tells us to! One of the things my wife and I did as we  raised our children was to ask this question when one offended or hurt another: “What was in your heart to make you do that?” We did not want to just correct behavior, we wanted to teach our children to examine their hearts. We wanted to teach them to pray with David, “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts…Lead me in the way everlasting!” That’s what God does through the law when we read it and apply it: He shows us our sinful hearts, which causes us to cry to Him for help.  

On the other hand, we know that the law exposes and even inflames our sin. Paul wrote, “But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness.” Is that the commandment’s fault?  No, Paul says, “the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.” Why then do we delight in breaking ourselves against the law? Augustine, an early church father, described how this worked in his own life: “There was a pear tree near our vineyard, laden with fruit. One stormy night we rascally youths set out to rob it and carry our spoils away. We took off a huge load of pears – not to feast upon ourselves, but to throw them to the pigs, though we ate just enough to have the pleasure of forbidden fruit. They were nice pears, but it was not the pears that my wretched soul coveted, for I had plenty better at home. I picked them simply in order to become a thief. The only feast I got was a feast of iniquity, and that I enjoyed to the full. What was it that I loved in the theft? Was it the pleasure of acting against the law? The desire to steal was awakened simply by the prohibition of stealing.” The law against stealing inflamed a desire to steal. It did not cause a sinful heart, it exposed one.  

A brand-new waterfront hotel in Florida was concerned that people might try to fish from the balconies so they put up signs saying, “NO FISHING FROM THE BALCONY.” After that they had constant problems with people fishing from the balconies, with sinker weights breaking windows and bothering people in rooms below. They finally solved the problem by simply… taking down the signs – and no one thought to fish from the balconies. Because of our fallen nature, the law can actually work like an invitation to sin.  

The law shows us our need for salvation. It can lead us to Christ, but no further. When Jesus draws us, by grace and through faith, He is waiting with open arms to release us from the prison of the law and call us sons and daughters.