We’ve been talking much about how we have received forgiveness of sins and acceptance with God as a pure gift, received by faith. There is no more condemnation for us. We’ve been pronounced innocent, not guilty, just, and righteous in God’s eyes. We’ve been talking much about that. But, as forgiven people, how do we BE what we are supposed to be today? How do we live as new people?

The answer God gives us is “By the Spirit of His Son sent into our hearts”. This is the single great gift of God to create relationship to the Father, and attachment to the Father, and affections for the Father. We are not trying to get you to conform to an image of what a Christian should be: to talk like a Christian, to act like a Christian, to do things a Christian should do. Our goal is for you to know, and experience, and be transformed by, the work of the Holy Spirit, within you.

Here is what often happens: You are touched by God in some way, you seriously want to follow Christ, and you want to know, “What do I do next?”. Usually some well meaning person will give you a list of things to begin to do each day or each week, and maybe a list of things to not do. So you are told, intentionally or not, that you will be spiritual, or mature or complete, by doing or not doing, by keeping or not keeping, by having or not having. But Paul says we don’t grow by following a set of laws or religious duties, but we grow as son’s of God, given affections and desires, BY the Holy Spirit, to draw us to the Father.

Galatians 3:25-26 says, “We are no longer under the supervision of the law but you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus”. And we are given the Spirit to give us this attachment!

In this passage Paul compares living under the law or laws to being a young child and the life in the Holy Spirit to being a mature person. So here we have another illustration, to help us figure out what this life in the Spirit is to look like. Paul’s illustration is from the Roman world where younger children in wealthy families were under the authority of managers or guardians, until they reached a certain age set by their father.

That age might be 20 or 25. Even though these children, in that system, would someday inherit great wealth, in their childhood, they had a guardian who had absolute authority over them and told them what to do and where to go, and managed their behavior. So much so, that verse 1 says, “Now, I say, as long as the heir is a child, he does not differ at all from a slave, although he is owner of everything, but he is under guardians and managers, until the date set by the father”. So we have this child in this wealthy family, who is destined to manage great wealth, but for the time being, he has NO right to that, and NO freedom.

But you, instead of being like children who have no right to the family fortune, are like sons who have reached the age set by their father to receive the inheritance, AND our FULL RIGHTS as sons. (verse 5)

We don’t have that same system in place of course but the same principle is seen in our homes too. As a child you were told what to do, what time to go to bed, what time to get up, you were told to wear this, don’t wear that, eat this, finish your food, don’t touch this, don’t touch that. A child is not mature enough to make their own choices. Then as they mature and can make responsible decisions are released into more freedom and are entrusted with the keys to the car and soon live freely on their own, make their own choices.

When you are a child, Paul says it does not differ that much from being a slave. (Probably more so in that day but still true!) Children or young people, I hate to tell you this, but you are kind of like slaves! Your parents may be the greatest parents in the world but if you try to stop going to school, or not doing your chores, if you try running away from home for a few days, you will find you are not a free person.

Paul uses this bondage of childhood as an illustration: being under the law is like being an underage child which is much like being a slave. There are all these external controls in place to keep you in check. Living with the Holy Spirit in your heart, is like being a son who has come of age.

The obvious question is: Do you want to live like a child?  Or like a fully grown son, released from the rules and restraints of childhood. We raised our son Luke in a loving environment but also with firm discipline and controls. If anyone would ask Luke, or any grown son if they would like to go back that childhood system of being managed, they would say, “Absolutely not!”.

Often when we speak of the being sons of God we emphasize the childlike affection, and that we are like little children who love their heavenly father. And that is true. But the emphasis here in this passage is that we are grown up sons, with full rights. And you relate to God as a loving son or daughter BUT as a son or daughter released from your rules of childhood. (the supervision of the law) We live internally moved and motivated by the Spirit not, externally coerced by the law.

Verse 3 “In the same way we also, when we were children were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world” (ESV). BEFORE we had a saving encounter with Christ, we lived in slavery under the rules of life, the laws of morality and commandments, there was nothing supernatural, no work of the Spirit in our hearts, nothing freeing, or gracious and empowering. It was do this don’t do that and then condemnation for our failures to measure up to that.

Salvation is release from that bondage. It is release from bondage to sin, but ALSO release from the bondage to the world’s basic way of trying to manage yourself, by following certain, rules, laws, commandments, principles.

Instead of the law and it’s duties and ceremonies, being looked at some advanced kind of Christianity, Paul calls it elementary. The word means the basic or the simple, the beginning, the preliminary, or rudimentary. Before Christ, we were like children, learning the ABC’s of life.

This was an insult to those who thought keeping the Jewish laws and days, made them more advanced! He said it is NOT more advanced, it is like going back to Kindergarten. It is like giving up all your privileges as an adult and going back to childhood. To live in Christ, indwelt by his Spirit, is superior, more grown up, than living under the principle of law.

“One of the tragedies of legalism is that it gives the appearance of spiritual maturity when, in reality, it leads the believer back into a ‘second childhood’ of Christian experience.” (Wiersbe)

When I was at Iowa State I was in a group of very sincere but at times very legalistic Christian group. And a lot of them did not do very well after they graduated. When all the set routines and activities, and disciplines, all the set times and places for QT and scripture memory, when all the pressure to perform all the spiritual disciplines was suddenly gone, many did not do well at all.

You can’t get people mature in a strongly legalistic ministry. You can get everybody to look alike, to act alike, to dress alike, to do the same things but that is not the same as showing people how to live as sons and daughters of God!

Verse 4 “But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship”. Being a Christian involves being redeemed out from under the law, and being made sons.

The law is not something to look back to kind of as the good old days. It is something we needed to be redeemed from!! He redeemed you from the hopeless frustration and condemnation that you found under the holy and perfect law of God. Christ DID THIS FOR YOU. To go back to law based living, is like refusing to step out of prison when Christ has opened the door to let you out.

Some are fearful of this freedom, but...Being a Christian involves a complete break from the law based living, AND living as sons. And its two completely different ways of living.

And it is not that we are only legally adopted as sons, as wonderful as that is. We are changed in our very constitution to BE sons. You are not a son or daughter of God in NAME ONLY!   But the Spirit creates in you the heart of a son. He creates that intuitive, natural, spontaneous cry of a son to his father!

Verse 6 “Because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father”.

This verse again answers the question of why we are called sons. Certainly God recognizes and loves women equally as men. If you are a woman, God gave you the gift and glory of femininity. And it is wonderful to think of yourself as a daughter of God. But whether male or female you are all sons of God, in this sense: The Spirit of HIS Son was sent into your heart. Your connection to God comes from the Spirit of Christ, HIS OWN SON, being in you! It is Jesus living in you, by the Spirit that creates your son-like affection for God. IE you are a son of God like Jesus is a son of God! Of course his is the one and only Son of God, but in him and by HIS Spirit in us we are sons too!

The Spirit is what makes us live as sons! The Spirit is the key to living as a son. If we were just to throw off the law and never had the Holy Spirit, we would go nowhere! The Spirit turns your heart toward God. He cries out within you for your Father. He creates the love and affection and desire in your heart for God and the things of God.

A person who is genuinely connected to Christ by faith, will feel related to God. You intuitively know you can cry out to God. You have a sense of intimacy with God as a child to his father. This is the single GREAT GIFT we have received. It is a spirit of attachment, a spirit of loving devotion and affection.

So...We become mature by acknowledging and yielding to the INDWELLING SPIRIT, yielding to his cries of “Dear Father”, by living as a beloved child of God. If you are a son of God, then there is a cry in your heart. Yield to that impulse. Pay attention to it! Give yourself to that desire burning in your heart for God. Don’t quench it! Pray with me right now, “Father, I give myself to this longing, this love, this attraction, this desire in my heart for you”.

Is there a calling out within you for your father? Is there a cry in your heart for communion with Him? Then you have the Holy Spirit in you. That cry comes from him. You have him!

I was up one night praying for the power of the Holy Spirit and wondering where is that power, where are those mighty manifestations, almost wondering where is the Holy Spirit. All the time I was calling out, “Father, fill me, show me the power of the Spirit”. Then it hit me, this “crying out to my Father”, IS my witness that the Holy Spirit is here, IN ME right now.

Luther said, “The fact that the Spirit of Christ in our hearts cries unto God…. should reassure us greatly. However, there are many factors that prevent such full reassurance on our part….. the devil, our adversary goes about seeking to devour us by roaring: “God is angry at you and it is going to destroy you forever.” ….

The law scolds us, sin screams at us, death thunders at us, the devil roars at us. In the midst of the clamor the Spirit of Christ cries in our hearts: “Abba, Father.” And this little cry of the Spirit transcends the hullabaloo of the law, sin, death and the devil, and finds a hearing with God.” And assures our heart!

Verse 7 “So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir”. Christ redeemed you for this great purpose, that you could relate to God, not as a slave but as a son!

Now the message to the Galatians, is: Don’t go backwards. Don’t go backwards from Father/Son relationship to law based living. Verse 9 “How is it that you are turning back to those weak and elementary principles of the world?”

Sometimes it is hard to stay grown up!.   We can know the joy and liberty of walking by faith, as sons and daughters of God, then all of a sudden that’s not good enough any more. We hear about some other ritual, or special knowledge, or spiritual experience, that we think will give us that sense of legitimacy, or will qualify us, or set us apart from ordinary Christians. And once we fall for that, instead of taking us forward, actually takes us backwards into immaturity.

“Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods. But now that you know God—or rather are known by God—how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable forces? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again?”

That bondage to external laws and duties was natural when you did not know God, but now that you know God, how can you go back! Now that you have the advice and direction, and movement and impulses, and the heartbeat of the Holy Spirit inside of you, how can you want to go back??

The thing that will keep you from going back, is real relationship with the Spirit. Andrew Murray, “I have written to make clear and impress this one truth: the Holy Spirit must be known as living in you. The Spirit must be accepted, and treasured, until his presence becomes part of your consciousness: You must live your whole life in this faith: The Holy Spirit possesses me.” (paraphrase)

Every group tends to have their “laws” or way of talking and ways of doing things that seem so spiritual or so advanced. And you feel like a spiritual dork because you are just trying to walk with Jesus and be led by the Spirit. Don’t let those people intimidate you into following some kind of system, or pattern, or special activity, that you really need to be complete, or to take you to a higher spiritual plane.

Make sure your badge of spirituality is “the Spirit of the Son sent into your heart”. Make sure you aren’t tricked into looking to something else as your badge of spirituality! I have seen people go on missions trip with the idea that this will give them that spiritual status they have always been looking for. (Go on the missions trip but for other reasons!) Others find some thing else that lifts them up, sets them apart, gives them spiritual status! Give up false hopes of spiritual status, and progress, other than Jesus Christ living in you by his Spirit.