Son Life or Slave Life: The Choice is Yours

Son Life or Slave Life: The Choice is Yours

Galatians 4:1-31

-Essentially, we have 2 choices—live as a free son of God with all of its privileges or live as a slave with all of its imprisonment.

-Galatians 3:26, “For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.”

-Doctrinal truth: when one accepts Jesus as Savior by faith, a legal and eternal status is given—children of God!

-Problem: our tendency is to forget this status and go crawling back to the enslavement of our previous status—children of the flesh and this world.  

-4 choices we need to constantly make if we are living in the freedom of sonship in God’s family:

I. Realize Your Status (Galatians 4:1-7)

-This is a status that brings great privilege and peace, but needs to be pondered often.

-3 realizations we need to make about our spiritual status as God’s children:

1. We are former slaves. (1-3)

–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:

-Before Christ came and consequently, before we accepted Christ as our Savior, we had a slave status that forced us to live in bondage—bondage to the unattainable law, bondage to our flesh, bondage to the issues of this life.

-To realize that we’ve been saved from slavery helps us to avoid walking back into it and helps us to celebrate the absence of it from our future!

2. We are formal sons. (4-5)

–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.

-God’s Son, Jesus, came in the form of man and lived under and fully kept the law (that no man was able to do), and died in our place to redeem us from our sin/slave status and, in turn, gave us full-on son status with God!

-Through this process, God adopts us into His family!

3. We have familial security. (6-7)

-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.

-“Abba Father” = intimate name of endearment by which a child addresses their father 

-When Jesus was anguishing in in prayer to His Father in Mk. 14:36, He said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt.”

-The special relation that Jesus has to the Father is the same relation you and I get when we are adopted by God into His family!

II. Resist Your Regression (Galatians 4:8-11)

-Jesus has died & rose again to secure our freedom from sin and the bondage of the unattainable law, but our tendency is to crawl back to that slavery in the way we look to rules and religion to keep us right with God.

-3 truths that help us to resist going back:

1. Slavery used to be compulsory. (8)

-Howbeit then, when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods.

2. Freedom brings intimacy (9a)

–But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God…

3. Reverting is natural, but foolish. (9b-11)

–…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.

III. Revisit Your Bible (Galatians 4:12-20)

-The Galatian believers were drifting not only from a Jesus-based Gospel, but as a result, also from a Bible-based lifestyle.

-2 reminders that drive us to constant interaction with God’s Word:

1. Scripture maintenances our relationships. (12-16)

–Brethren, I beseech you, be as I am; for I am as ye are: ye have not injured me at all. Ye know how through infirmity of the flesh I preached the gospel unto you at the first. And my temptation which was in my flesh ye despised not, nor rejected; but received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus. Where is then the blessedness ye spake of? for I bear you record, that, if it had been possible, ye would have plucked out your own eyes, and have given them to me. Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?

-A regular diet of God’s Word keeps His truth before our eyes and hearts and has everything to do with how we treat each other.

2. Scripture molds our mission. (17-20)

–They zealously affect you, but not well; yea, they would exclude you, that ye might affect them. But it is good to be zealously affected always in a good thing, and not only when I am present with you. My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you, I desire to be present with you now, and to change my voice; for I stand in doubt of you.

-The only way to know what each next step should look like is to consistently revisit our Bible.

IV. Remember God’s Promises (Galatians 4:21-31)

-Abraham and Sarah got their eyes off of God’s promise (son/heir in old age) and took it upon themselves to make it happen by having Abraham have a son with a servant of theirs named Hagar.

-3 truths about the promises of God that this story illustrates that drive us to rest upon the God of those promises:

1. Our salvation comes through God’s promise. (21-23)

–Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law? For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise.

2. This world is limiting, but God is not limited. (24-27)

-Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all. For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband.

3. Faith-filled living is hard, but oh so worth it! (28-31)

–Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise. But as then he that was born after the flesh (Ishmael) persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now. Nevertheless what saith the scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman. So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free.