The Word Is Alive Galatians

The Word Is AliveGalatians Chapter Four Narrated by Tony Gillon

Chapter Four • Galatians 3:1–5:12 – • Direct Appeals to the Galatians (continues)

Chapter Four • Galatians 3:1–5:12 – • Direct Appeals to the Galatians (continues) • Galatians 3:19–4:7 - The Purpose of the Law (continues/concludes)

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • Summary of Chapter Four • Sons are slaves until the appointed time.

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • Summary of Chapter Four • Sons are slaves until the appointed time. • A son according to the flesh.

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • Summary of Chapter Four • Sons are slaves until the appointed time. • A son according to the flesh. • A son according to the promise.

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • Summary of Chapter Four • Sons are slaves until the appointed time. • A son according to the flesh. • A son according to the promise. • Two families: one free; one in slavery.

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • 1 My point is this: heirs, as long as they are minors, are no better than slaves, though they are the owners of all the property; 2 but they remain under guardians and trustees until the date set by the father. 3 So with us; while we were minors, we were enslaved to the elemental spirits of the world.

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • When a son or heir is a minor and too young to receive his inheritance, he might as well be a slave. • This was the situation of Paul and his fellow Israelites under the old covenant legal restrictions.

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • In the Greco-Roman world slaves, bondservants and servants, Greek doulos, were generally permitted to work for pay and to save enough to buy their freedom. • Many were given positions of influence and trust in the family home or business.

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away (Matthew 25:14-15), which shows that some of the slaves were entrusted with immense amounts of money and responsibility.

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • They remain under guardians and trustees: • The will would stipulate who had authority to manage the estate and take charge of the affairs of the family until the date set by the father is reached. • This would normally be an age of consent for the main beneficiary, usually the eldest son.

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • Elemental spirits: • Both here and in v.9 the expression refers to the elementary or rudimentary principles of the world that the Galatians previously followed, which for Jews would be the Mosaic Law and for Gentiles the basic concepts of their pagan religions.

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • However, the additional overtones of demonic bondage in this phrase should not be ignored; they were, in terms of their mindset and life situation, under a legalistic system and enslaved, and Paul explains in v.8 that this enslavement was: to beings that by nature are not gods.

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • Legalistic superstition and demonic domination are closely linked. • Paul returns to this theme elsewhere: • See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ (Colossians 2:8).

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the universe, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? Why do you submit to regulations, ‘Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch’? (Colossians 2:20-21).

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • In the previous chapter, Paul had argued that the law acted as a jailer and disciplinarian. • These are descriptions that Paul himself would have disputed before his conversion. • The Jews were God’s people and even under Roman occupation did not consider themselves as slaves, as demonstrated when Jesus spoke to a group in Jerusalem.

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’ They answered him, ‘We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, “You will be made free”?’ (John 8:31-33).

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • Paul therefore gives this more positive illustration that Jews would recognise as representing even the best of households of a child’s restrictions within a family to describe Israel under the law. • He then shows that with maturity comes freedom through life under Christ.

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • Paul is describing the condition of all Jews under the law as children not yet mature. • The law contains the rules and regulations of how to correctly act under God ‘in the elements of the world’. • It did not contain salvation - it just outlined the need for it, which was promised and would be realised in the Gospel.

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • The picture that Paul is painting shows a remarkable parallel journey for both Jew and Gentile, both in similar forms of bondage before Jesus came to free them. • For Jew and Gentile alike, Jesus was the new Moses to lead God’s people in the second Exodus.

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • 4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law,

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • 4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, • Paul provides a simple confessional statement of the essence of the Gospel story: the incarnation and birth of Christ; his perfect life of obedience under the law; and his redemptive death on the Cross (v.5).

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • When the fullness of time had come. God sent his Son at the right moment in human history, the date set by the father (v.2), when God’s providential oversight of the events of the world had directed and prepared peoples and nations for the incarnation and ministry of Christ; that is, for the proclamation of the Gospel.

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news’ (Mark 1:14-15).

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • God’s redemptive work must be understood in the framework of his actions in history. • God gave an irrevocable promise to Abraham; 430 years later God gave the law through Moses; at a time God had set, he sent his Son: • For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. • (Romans 5:6).

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • A time is also set for Christ’s return: • But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father (Matthew 24:36).

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • So when they had come together, they asked him, ‘Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?’ He replied, ‘It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. (Acts 1:6-7). • The relationship of these acts of God in history provides the framework for understanding his redemptive work.

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • The story of how God first sent the prophets and then sent his Son is told in the Parable of the Wicked Tenants, recorded in Matthew 21:33-46, Mark 12:1-12 and Luke 20:9-19, which tells how Jesus was sent for his special redemptive mission.

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • During the Exodus account God had revealed himself by name: • God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am.’ He said further, ‘Thus you shall say to the Israelites, “I am has sent me to you”’ (Exodus 3:14).

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • In preparation for the new Exodus, God reveals his personal presence as a human among other humans, a Jew among other Jews: • Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am’ (John 8:58).

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • God’s Son Jesus, and the spirit of God’s son, are both sent out from God the Father, not as beings remote or detached from himself, but as his own self-revelation, his own personal presence.

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • Born of a woman indicates that the Son was fully human and therefore subject to all the inherent weaknesses, yet without sin: • For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • Through his human birth God would fulfil the most ancient of promises: • I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel (Genesis 3:15).

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • And is confirmed in Messianic prophecy: • For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:6).

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • Born under the law is more than an indication of Jesus’ Jewish heritage being of the line of David, with all the meaning this held for the Jewish people, for it also follows on to Paul’s argument that Jesus was also subject to the curse of the law.

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • Although Jesus did fulfil all the requirements of the law, he still experienced all the conditions of sinful humanity under the curse of the law. • He was subject to temptations, suffering, loneliness, and on the Cross, God-forsakenness and death.

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • 5in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • In order to redeem those who were under the law. • Jesus confirmed that a primary concern for God was to rescue the Jewish nation from their own iniquity: • He answered, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel’. • (Matthew 15:24).

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • If being under law means being under obligation to keep the law and under the curse of the law for not keeping it, then to redeem those under the law means to set them free from both the obligations to keep the law and the curse of lawbreaking.

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • Paul’s adoption imagery probably picks up the OT concept of God calling Israel his son and combines this with the Roman notion of adopting a son, usually already a full grown adult, in order to designate him as the heir to all the family wealth.

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • This was the great redemption, paying the price for all through Christ’s sacrifice. • The law could no longer require works for people to attempt to save themselves. • The adoption of God’s people as sons came with the Gospel. • Refer also to the comments made on Galatians 3:25-26.

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • There is a shift in Paul’s images here from the picture of a son who is treated like a slave until he reaches a certain age to the picture of a slave who becomes a son by adoption. • The first picture clarifies the contrast between the two stages of redemption in history.

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • The sending of the Son concluded the stage of slavery under law and inaugurated the new era when sons receive their inheritance. • The second picture focuses on the nature of sonship itself. • Believers are adopted as God’s children by the sending of, and in receiving, the Son of God.

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • 6 And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ 7 So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • Paul changes from the first person ‘we’ to the second person you to indicate that the adoption received by those under law (v.5) was also received by the Gentile converts. • The confession of faith of Jewish Christians is now the confession of Gentile Christians. • Both are set free from the curse of the law.

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • Because you are children or sons: • Christians are now sons and have come of age. Therefore, they are in a position to receive the inheritance, beginning with the promised Spirit of his Son.

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • Believers not only now have knowledge of the Son, they can experience him through his Spirit and therefore enjoy an immediate relationship with God through him. • There is an amazing condition expressed here. It is through receiving the free gift of adoption that one receives the Spirit.

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • Personal comment: • Although the term Holy Trinity and its various derivatives did not appear in theological writings until the 3rd Century AD, Paul’s language here is probably the earliest Trinitarian type understanding in the NT Canon.

Direct Appeals to the Galatians • Abba is the Aramaic word for father and is used again by Paul: • For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. (Continued).

The Word Is Alive Galatians