Title: Welcome to the Family!
As we continue to answer the question -
This morning, we see that being saved means being a part of the most amazing family in existence.
When we think of the idea of joining a family, we might think of doing so by marriage or adoption.
When someone tells us “Welcome to the family!” it might be that we’re joining an organization or a
company.
Unless it’s being said by a cynical teenager as they roll their eyes, we’re expecting good things when
someone tells us this.
Typically, this statement is intended to make us feel at home.
Maybe we feel less at home when a boss tells us “Welcome to the family” than if it were a father-in-law.
But we know that we’re being invited to be more of ourselves, to feel accepted, and to know that someone
has our backs.
It’ pretty amazing to think of how we’ve been entertained for decades by TV families.
Early sitcoms generally portrayed the family as a source of stability, affection, and moral instruction.
These would include:
The Cleavers — Leave It to Beaver
The Nelsons — The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet
The Andersons — Father Knows Best
These shows generally presented family life in a positive light.
Problems were temporary.
Parents provided wisdom, and family relationships were strengthened through conflict.
Then there the slapstick, absurdity, and exaggerated family chaos of some shows.
Then there’s Macabre and absurdist humor of:
The Addamses — The Addams Family
The Munsters — The Munsters
The Simpsons — The Simpsons
Think also of the satire, slapstick absurdity of:
The Clampetts — The Beverly Hillbillies with their fish-out-of-water and farcical humor.
The Bradys — The Brady Bunch
Six children, sibling competition, misunderstandings, and neatly resolved conflicts.
The Stone Age working-class family, the Flintstones — The Flintstones
Some of us appreciated the Sarcastic, cynical, and dysfunctional families
Many sitcom families were full of conflict, disillusionment, biting social commentary
The Bunkers — All in the Family
The Bundys — Married... with Children
The Barones — Everybody Loves Raymond
These families challenge the idealized television household.
Humor often comes from selfishness, incompetence, or characters openly criticizing one another.
Then there’s the witty, verbal, and relationship-centered families
These shows derive much of their humor from personalities and conversation. Characters may disagree
frequently but often remain deeply attached to one another.
The Drummonds — Diff'rent Strokes
The Keatons — Family Ties
The Winslows — Family Matters
The Bankses — The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
The Taylors — Home Improvement
There there’s more recent ones that I don’t really recognize.
The Bravermans — Parenthood
The Fosters — The Fosters
The Kyles — My Wife and Kids
The Duncans — Good Luck Charlie
There’s certainly different kinds of families out there.
And some are better than others.
But being a part of a family typically means that you have other people who will love and support you for
the rest of your life.
As Robert Frost put it, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”
We see that Galatians 4 begins with another earthly example in which the Apostle Paul is explaining what it
means to be saved.
And He explains it in terms of what it means to become a full-fledge member of a family.
* 1 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, 2 but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father. 3 In the same way we
also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. 4 But when the
fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those
who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. 6 And because you are sons, God has
sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” 7 So you are no longer a slave, but a son,
and if a son, then an heir through God.
I see a very interesting flow to these verses.
Verses 1-3 describes the time of the Old Testament and how the Law was to the Jews like a babysitter.
Verses 4-5 seems to depict the truth of the gospels and the person and work of Christ.
Verses 6-7 then represents what we learn from the rest of the NT about being in God’s family.
I’ll highlight what I mean by this as we move al
Moving forward, hear this from me from verses 1-3
1. LET GO OF LEGALISM AS CHILDISH RELIGION.
Avoid the tendency toward a legalistic approach to God, as represented in most of Israel’s approach to God
in the Old Testament.
* 1 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, 2 but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father. 3 In the same way we
also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.
Even though the young son might be the heir of a farm, his wishes wouldn’t’ be followed.
It’d be crazy for the farm manager to follow the child’s direction to sell all the work animals for riding
ponies.
Instead, the child would be treated as having no authority - no different from a slave
And he those with much lower status would tell him what to do all day everyday.
* 3 In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the
world.
Notice that Paul uses “we” referring to himself, while in v. 9, he will turn to write of the Galatian Christians
with the pronoun “you.”
So, it’s Paul and his Jewish brethren that he’s speaking of here.
He’s applying his illustration to the Jewish people prior to the coming of Christ.
As we’ve already noted, the guardian they were under is the Mosaic Law, which the false teachers were
trying to convince the Galatians that they needed to obey.
Here, Paul continues to explain why He and the rest of Israel did originally follow the Law but no longer.
Jewish, Greek, and Roman cultures saw young boys as needing to cross a milestone before they could be
seen as adults.
And I think we’re missing this in the broader culture today.
You might be familiar with the bar mitzvah for 12 year old Jewish boys.
In the Roman culture to which this letter is written into, a son would wear a garment with a purple border.
This was called the toga prae-texta.
At some point between the ages of 14 and 17, the boy’s father would usher his son into official manhood.
He would remove from him the toga praetexta and place on him the toga virilis, which was plain white.
The plain white toga identified the teenaged boy as an adult male citizen.
This would mean that the son could participate more fully in Roman civic life.
He also carried greater responsibility with how he conducted himself in public.
He could also decide to pursue military, legal, or political activity.
Mainly, the son had a new social identity - He was no longer publicly identified as a child but as a man.
Paul is describing the Jewish nation as being like a young child, under the care of Law as a guardian.
But with Christ having come, the church is now like the grown man.
We are released from the legalism of the Law and meant to put aside the childishness of legalism.
We’re all familiar with the proverbial 30-yr-old basement dweller.
He plays video games all day, only to come upstairs and ask what’s for dinner.
He doesn’t know how to make his own meal, do his own laundry, pay a bill, or carry on an adult
conversation.
He’s an example of a “failure to launch,” and seems to only be good at making excuses.
Understand that legalistic Christianity is a form of this kind of failure to launch.
It reverts to the do’s and don’ts in order to define a relationship with God.
It’s followers don’t walk in a personal relationship with God but follow then instruction of others instead.
They’re discouraged from reading the Bible.
And they’re told that they must regularly return to the church in order to continue to receive grace.
Catholicism and its Orthodox offshoot are reversions to the elementary principles of the Mosaic Law.
And they’re no hiding the ball.
Their catechisms explain the Catholic priesthood as having its roots in the Levitical priesthood.
It also explains that Jesus is offered as a sacrificial offering on their altar as a part of the Lord’s Supper.
Just 30 years ago, Pope Benedict affirmed that the priest is seen as the continuation of the Old Testament
Priest and Christ as the modern sacrifice.
In his 1995 publication, Life and Ministry of Priests, he states, “The priesthood of the Church is the
continuation and revival of the priesthood of the Old Testament”
Friends, this is exactly what the Apostle Paul warned the Galatians against doing.
Sadly, many parts of the early church referred back to the elementary principles of the OT Law for
guidance in how to function as a church.
And they ended up with deadly legalism.
Understand that, if you’re drawn to the robes, liturgy, and uniformity of the Catholic or Orthodox church, it’s
a drawing toward a legalism that resonates with our hearts just as it did with the Galatians.
The argument might be made that these false churches go back to the early church.
Well, Galatians shows us that this is because the temptation to revert to the OT law dates back to the days
of the early church.
Paul says that the Jews were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world
He will say virtually the same statement about the Gentile Galatian Christians, asking them,
“how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves
you want to be once more?”
There’s a commonality for all unsaved Jews and Gentiles before trusting Christ.
We were all slaves to these “elementary principles of the world.”
The term elementary mean’s basic.
The Greek term literally refers the ABC’s.
This is why young children go to elementary school.
and why Sherlock would speak of his ability to understand the clues to a case by saying,
“It’s elementary, my dear Watson.”
We’ll get into this more next week.
But let me cut to the chase and tell you what Paul is getting at which was common to both the Jew and
Gentile religious experience prior to trusting Christ.
The elementary principles of their experience can be summed up as “fleshly religion.”
A church that’s returned to the OT to define how grace is doled out to Christians has taken a dangerous
step backward.
So, what took place in history in order to move God’s covenant people from childhood to adulthood?
The answer is the very person that split our history into BC & AD.
As we’re told in v. 4-5
* 4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, 5 to
redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.
From v. 4-5, I encourage you to -
2. LOOK AT YOUR REDEMPTION/ADOPTION WITH CONFIDENCE.
Embrace Jesus Christ as your redeemer, who is fully God and fully man, as shown in His person and work in
the gospels.
Verse 4 starts with one of those “But God” statements that makes all the difference in the world.
With everyone enslaved to the elementary principles of the world, God breaks through.
And He breaks through with what’s recorded in the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
It was a perfect time in human history.
The Roman Empire had brought the Pax Romana (peace of Rome) allowing for travel and commerce like
never before.
There was also the incredibly developed system of Roman roads linking the diverse regions of the entire
empire.
Coupled with the freedom to travel was the Greek language as the pervasive trade language of the day.
Also, the world had fallen into a moral abyss, at depths that even caused the pagans to mourn over it.
This meant there was a spiritual hunger that overshadowed the civilized world.
Into this context, the perfect redeemer was sent.
He was divine as the Son of God.
He was human, being born of a woman - vitally important because it was the offspring of a woman that
was promised to crush the head of the serpent.
He was born under the law, meaning that He was a part of the nation of Israel and capable of fulfilling the
Law.
But Jesus wasn’t born according to these parameters in order to simply prove a point.
It was so that He could buy people out of slavery who were also under God’s law - this would be everyone.
And the result is that we might receive adoption.
This is a legal term which means “given the status of son.”
God made it so that all those who trust Christ (Jew or Gentile) can be adopted as God’s son.
I remember being at the historic Moody Church when Dennis Rainey begin his message with an odd
request.
He asked everyone who had been adopted to stand.
I remember looking around at about 1-2% of the auditorium.
Then he went on to explain verses like these that describe Christians as having been adopted by God.
He went into detail about the privileges that are involved and the fact that adoption means as my son’s
documentation says that they “in all ways will be considered as if he came from the bodies of John Daniel &
Kelly Bowman”
Having shared with us how, knowing Christ, we’ve been adopted into God’s family, he asked again,
“Who here has been adopted?”
And the whole auditorium stood up.
Do you understand that no other person could have done what Jesus did to secure your redemption?
In 2 Corinthians 5:21 that God “ made [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become
the righteousness of God.”
We’re also told in 1 Peter 3:18a “ Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that
he might bring us to God.”
Only Jesus could do what no one ever imagined that anyone would do for our salvation.
Do you remember that Jesus is described in 2:20 as the One who “loved [YOU] and gave Himself for
[YOU]”?
For me this makes it all the more amazing.
We come to the last section of our passage.
* 6 And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” 7 So
you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.
Lastly, I hope you can fully grasp the miracle of your adoption as I encourage you to -
3. LEAN FULLY ON YOUR HEAVENLY FAMILY.
Make the most of a relationship with the Triune God, as described in the rest of the New Testament.
Just as God the Father sent His Son, He also sent the Holy Spirit into the hearts of those that He redeemed
The distinction of the members of the Trinity is clear in these verses.
And the unity of the Trinity is also clear from the Holy Spirit is referred to as “the Spirit of [God’s] Son.”
If we were able to separate what takes place in the moment of a person’s salvation, v.6 would be describing
how it is that God’s adopted child becomes like His true-born child - from receiving the Spirit of God.
Thus far, Paul has explained the basis of our position as sons with full right to an inheritance.
Now, Paul explains how it is that the believer experiences this reality of being a son of God.
And we’re told the primary way in which we experience the reality of our relationship with God.
It’s through prayer - crying out to God as our “Abba, Father.”
If you’re not familiar with the Greek term Abba, it’s what a child would call their dad.
It’s also how Jesus addressed His heavenly Father while on earth.
And it’s how he instructed His disciples to address God as well, teaching them to pray, “OUR Father…”
Adoption is pretty amazing even in our broken world.
As I said, I’m still impacted by my sons documentation saying that they are to be considered “in all ways
as if he came from the bodies of John Daniel & Kelly Bowman”
But wouldn’t it be crazy if adoption meant that you took DNA from the adopted parents and included it in
the child’s genes.
My sons would probably say, “No thanks. I’m good.”
What I mean is that, as wonderful as adoption is, there’s still not the passing on of likeness and
mannerisms.
Wouldn’t it be wild if that was part of the process - the adoptee was made to be like the adoptive parents.
Do you know how much that would improve communication?
To be able to better read each other’s body language, mannerisms, and tone of voice would be helpful.
It’d mean that adoptive parents and adoptive child could “get each other” a little better.
For some who aren’t able to have children of their own, it would mean being able to see themselves in a
little one.
I know I sound like some mad scientist.
Again, my sons would probably say, “That’s OK. I’m good.”
Get this though - in our being adopted by God into His family, this does happen.
God places Himself within us.
The same direct connection is made between our adoption and the indwelling Holy Spirit is made in -
* Romans 8:14–16 14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 15 For you did not
receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by
whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” 16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of
God,
And the connection is also made with how the indwelling Holy Spirit affects our prayer as well.
* Romans 8:26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as
we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.
In a way, we’re told here that God GETS US because He’s caused His Spirit to live within us.
So, talk to God without any fear that you’re gonna say something wrong.
He knows what you mean. He gets you.
If you’ve wandered from where you know and long to be in your relationship with God.
Know that He’s not going to cast you out when you cry out to Him as your Abba Father.
You’re His child, and He wants you to know and experience His love.
When you or those you love are suffering, He feels it.
Just as you ache when you child, grandchild, niece or nephew hurts, God joins you in your suffering.
He’s your perfect Father through all of it.
Do you pursue spiritual growth expectantly, knowing that you’re a fellow-heir with Christ, a dwelling of the
Holy Spirit, and a child of God?
If you know Christ as your Savior, God is inviting you to be expectant for your Heavenly Father to love you
as His child.
* 7 So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.
Verse 7 seems to be repeating the same concepts as we’ve been reading except for one detail.
It’s moved from the plural to the singular.
It brings the amazing truths to the living reality of the individual reader.
“So… YOU are no longer a slave, but a SON, and if a son, then an HEIR through God.”
It’s meant to bring it down to brass tacks to ask,
Do you trust Jesus?
Do you sense His Spirit within you?
Do you believe God when He says you are His child?”
