[Machine transcription]
But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of woman, born under the law,
to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. Amen.
You may be seated. In the name of Jesus, Amen. Dear Saints, this is St. Paul’s Christmas text,
where he talks about how our dear Lord Jesus was born under the law, and for what purpose?
To redeem us.
Now, Paul, when he writes, often writes in very sort of precise theological language.
His writing is dense.
There’s a lot going on in each sentence, and the sentences are long, but we have an advantage
when it comes to St. Paul, and it is this, that St. Paul speaks in images.
He writes with pictures in mind, and so just like it, and we’ve been talking about this
for the last few months, when we go to investigate the Psalms, or even look at the hymns, and
we ask the question, what’s the picture?
So the same thing with St. Paul.
We want to say, what’s the picture?
And it’s a very precise picture that he’s working with here in Galatians chapter 4.
In fact, he’s been developing it for a time, and he’s going to go on to talk about it later
in chapter 4 and chapter 5.
And the picture is this, it is of the ancient family estate.
Now this is, it’s good for us to just spend a little bit of time kind of setting the stage
here because we’re just not used to thinking this way.
When we think of family nowadays, we think of the nuclear family, you have the father
and mother and children in the home and things like this.
But in the ancient world especially, it took a lot more to run a home.
So you had the father and the mother and you had the children, maybe you had the parents
and there was grandparents, all living in the same place, and you had workers, lots
of workers, manservants and maidservants, all with different duties and different vocations.
This was true out in the farmland and also in the cities as well, and those servants
also had families.
In fact, oftentimes you would have a family of servants, so the dads would work in the
field with the master of the house, and the maidservants would work with the lady of the
house, in the home, preparing and taking care of all those things there, and these families
all had children.
Now here’s the key.
The children of the master of the house and the children of the servants of the house
all grew up together.
A lot of times, I mean, depending on the size of the estate, the Lord would hire a pedagogue,
and he would be a tutor, not only for the children of the free children, the children
of the Lord and the lady, but also for the children of the servants.
they would go to school together, and there would also be a master that would set over
all of the workers, and they would determine the work, and the children of the parents
would work together with the children of the slaves in the field or in the factory or wherever
they were working to do their kind of stuff, so that the children of the servants and the
children of the master and the lady grew up together under the same tutor, under the
same master and in the same family.
That’s the picture that Paul’s working with.
So to dial it back a couple of verses and pick up the text in Galatians chapter 4 verse
1, Paul writes this, I mean that the heir, that is the children of the master, I mean
that the heir, as long as he’s a child, is no different from a slave, even though he
is the owner of everything.
But he’s under guardians and managers until the date set by his father.
In the same way, we also, when we were children, we were enslaved to the elementary principles
of the world.
So Paul is giving us this picture of this ancient estate and the children of the free
and the children of the slave are all bound together, and they’re all under the same tutor,
and where do we fit?
We are the children of the slaves.
We are the children of the servants, and we are set under the master, which in this case
is the law, the law of God, the law given through Moses.
We are under its authority, and in fact we are held captive by it.
And this, it turns out, is quite a terrible situation to be in.
Now, if you can imagine it this way, imagine growing up and your whole childhood you have
one teacher, every class from kindergarten until you graduate from high school, and this
teacher has very strict rules and very severe punishments.
And whenever you break these rules, you are being constantly given over to these punishments,
constantly driven by them.
That’s the picture.
You are constantly breaking the rules, and you are constantly being sent to the corner,
made to write lines, sent to bed without food. In fact, worse, you’re beaten, you’re
thrown into the dungeon. It’s because you’re guilty. It’s because you’re a
sinner. And all of us, there’s no teacher’s pets. Every single one of us is
guilty of breaking the law. All of humanity is in this together, and the law
will eventually bring us death, the rightful punishment for our sins.
Now this picture pushes us towards this understanding of our, maybe the mystery of our fundamental
human problem, the problem that is in each one of us.
Now there’s plenty of problems around us, and normally we focus on these, and that’s
fine.
I mean, these are real problems too.
I mean, there’s sickness, and there’s suffering, and there’s death, and there’s poverty, and
And there’s war and conflict and trouble of every sort.
There’s trouble at work, there’s strife in families, there’s â I mean, we live in a
fallen world.
Jesus says, in this world you will have trouble.
And true enough, we are surrounded with trouble.
But that’s not the main thing.
There’s also trouble that’s in us, a conflict that’s in our heart and in our conscience.
And that’s what Paul’s preaching about.
And the conflict is this.
We are sinners.
sinners.
You are a sinner, and maybe even more.
We want to sin.
The theological word for this is concupiscence, which means that we are born with a tendency
towards sin, that we have a gravity inside of us that’s pulling us towards breaking
God’s commandments.
And what this means, and we’ve got to face the facts on this, each of us likes the very
thing that is killing us.
Now, this liking of sin comes in all kinds of different forms.
Lust seems to be the big one, I mean, especially living as we do in the midst of the sexual
revolution, and we’re told this lie from the devil that we should let our lust go wherever
it wants to go, and that’s what it means to live and truly be alive and to truly be free.
It means to break the sixth commandment.
But it’s not just lust, there’s greed, and there’s anger, and there’s bitterness,
and there’s laziness, and there’s rebellion.
All of these sinful desires are native, or they’re ingrown in our flesh.
And they’re constantly drawing us, tempting us, inviting us to follow after them.
And here’s the trouble, we like it.
Now, we want to recognize the devil’s argument here because there is a theological argument
that the devil makes with all of these things.
He tries to turn the truth that we know of the Lord’s Word on its head.
We know that the commandments are given to us to give us life and freedom, but the devil
flips it on its head and he says the commandments are bondage, the commandments are death.
The devil says that to sin is to be truly free, to sin is to truly be alive.
Now we want to pin this down as a lie, we’ve got to be clear on this, that sin is slavery.
Jesus says it like this, He says, whoever commits a sin is a slave to sin.
And we also need to be clear on this, that sin leads to death.
The wages of sin, says Paul, is death.
So, we are tempted to sin, we are tempted to slavery, we are tempted to chase after
death, and this is exactly what we want to do.
I mean, it’s hard for us to imagine, but the Bible says that inside of us we have this
theological instinct towards slavery, towards bondage, towards the pleasure of sin.
And there’s something that comes in that’s even a little bit more subtle, this temptation
of the flesh, which is maybe even more dangerous than the temptation to sin itself, and that
is the temptation to think that we are keeping God’s law, that we are good enough for God.
The thought that by keeping the law of God that we’ll somehow find peace with God or
we’ll somehow attain righteousness or whatever.
Now this also is a slavery, and this also leads to death.
This one is perhaps more difficult to see.
The chains are light and they’re made of gold, but still it is dangerous.
In fact, we see the picture of these two slaveries, the slavery of sin, the slavery of despair,
and the slavery of pride.
Remember, in the parable of the prodigal son.
The prodigal son just abandoned the God’s law and went and lived however he want and
he fell then into the slavery of lust and sin.
The older son was at home doing everything he thought the father wanted him to do and
he too was under the slavery of pride.
So, we find ourselves born, as St. Paul said, enslaved.
Enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.
Enslaved to the law of God.
And back to this picture of the ancient estate, we are there, the slave children, under the
law and there’s nothing that we can do about it.
There’s no way to rescue ourselves.
us.
We would remain under the law forever unless someone would intervene to rescue us and deliver
us, and that is what the Lord Jesus has done.
Now here, I mean I don’t want to miss this in the text, I want to pause just to make
sure we get it.
Jesus is God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God.
He is in eternity with the Father.
Through Him all things were made, including the law of God.
Jesus is above the law.
He’s master of the law.
The law has no dominion over Him.
The law of God can make no claim on Him.
He is superior to it.
But in His incarnation, He comes down and places Himself under the law of God.
This picture of the estate, He is the master of the estate and yet He makes Himself a child
so He can put Himself under this tutor, under this tyrannical tutor, under this tutor who
is busy punishing us and tormenting us.
And this is what He has done.
When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of woman, born under,
under the law.
And this is how we should think of our Lord Jesus, especially as we see Him going to the
temple and being circumcised, or as we see Him living His perfect life, that He is living
in obedience to this law, which He did not, which had no claim over Him.
And even more than that, because even though Jesus perfectly kept the law, even though
Jesus never did anything wrong in his entire life, even though Jesus is the only person
ever to be born a woman who was not guilty of breaking the law of God, the law still treats
him as a lawbreaker.
The law treats Jesus as guilty.
The law comes along and treats Jesus with the same harshness that it treated you and
me.
In fact, even worse than that, and so He is tortured, He is beaten, He is sentenced to
death as a lawbreaker, and He is put to death on the cross, so that the law claimed Jesus
when it had no claim on Him.
And in doing this, dear saints, the law has gone too far.
In fact, the law was given for the specific purpose.
I mean, the law tells us what our love for God should look like.
The law tells us what our love for each other should look like.
The law shows us our sin, but the law is not the judge.
That’s God’s job, but the law, with the devil behind it, judges Jesus and steps out of His
vocation.
It condemns an innocent man, the innocent man, and in doing so the law loses its
authority over us. Jesus was born under the law to redeem, that is to rescue
those who were under the law. That’s you and me. So the authority of the tyrant
That has been broken, and you are redeemed.
You are rescued.
You are set free from sin and death.
And Jesus has not only rescued from something, He’s also rescued you to something.
He hasn’t just pulled you out of the dungeon and darkness of enslavement to sin, He’s brought
you now into the kingdom of His light, and if you can believe it, He’s adopted you into
His family.
That’s what St. Paul says.
To redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.
Can you imagine?
You’re born the child of a slave, you’re living as a slave, you’re growing up as a slave,
you’re treated as a slave, you’re troubled and afflicted as a slave, and now the master
has made Himself your brother so that you can be brought into His family and be made
heirs of the Master, that you would be set free from the condemnation of the law.
You get the picture?
Dear saints, you do not belong to the law anymore.
There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
You do not belong to sin anymore.
anymore.
How shall we live in that which we have died to?
You do not belong to death anymore.
For those who believe in Christ Jesus have passed from death to life.
You do not belong to the devil anymore.
He has transferred us out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of light in
His Son.
You belong to Jesus.
God is your Father.
And you, if you can believe it, I mean this is one of these places in the Bible that’s
It’s too good to be true.
I mean, you couldn’t make this stuff up.
You have to believe it by looking at it with your own eyes.
You are an heir of God.
Whenever the will of God is read, you know who’s the beneficiary?
You.
His kingdom is yours.
His life is yours.
His eternity is yours.
His kindness is yours.
His Son, Jesus, is your brother.
His Holy Spirit is inside of you.
you, and you are part of His family, you are no longer slaves, but are sons.
Hear again how Paul preaches to us, but when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth
His Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law so
that we might receive adoption as sons.
sons, and because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying
Abba, Father.
So you are no longer a slave, but a son.
And if a son, then an heir through God.
God be praised, amen.
and the peace of God which passes all understanding. Guard your hearts and
minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
