“Sons of God Through Faith in Christ” Gal. 3.23-4.7, Pentecost5C, '16

1.                   Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  The message from God’s Word this morning is taken from Galatians 3:23-4:7.  Happy Father’s Day! We give thanks for the earthly fathers who have been a blessing in our lives. We give even greater thanks today for our heavenly Father, who has called us all His sons and daughters. In the Word, we are reminded of our beginning in Baptism, when He called us by name and adopted and welcomed us into His family, where we receive lasting blessings that can’t be found in any other place. As His children and heirs, we’re favored, forgiven, and free, that we may live in His grace and respond in our lives to His glory and honor. Happy Father’s Day today! Happy “God the Father Day” today and everyday living as His children united in His Son!  The message today is entitled, “Sons of God Through Faith in Christ.”  Dear brothers and sisters in Christ.

2.                   Imagine this: everything you do is under the watchful eye of “the authority.” He claims you as his own. He tells you what to do—gives you your daily work, your responsibilities and tasks—from morning to night. And he pays you nothing at all. No check, no IOU, nothing. He chooses what you’ll eat and when you’ll eat. You own nothing; he owns it all, everything from food to clothes to whatever kind of roof he puts over your head. You are under his thumb in every single way, from morning to night, every day.  No, I’m not talking about your relationship to your dad growing up.  I’m describing the identity of a  slave. But, it so happens I’m also describing a child. Of course, the two situations are different. The slave is truly oppressed by such circumstances; the child, on the other hand, is being protected.  The two circumstances are different, but they do have important parallels, and recognizing that will help us to follow what Paul wants to tell us in Galatians 3 and 4.

3.                   Today, St. Paul reminds us that we’re the children of God through faith in Christ, and this didn’t come about by our keeping of God’s law.  In the book of Romans, St. Paul reminds us that there’s no one who is righteous, no not one, that we’re all sinners who can’t keep the law perfectly as God our Heavenly Father requires. And yet, surveys conducted indicate that more than 60 percent of Lutherans believe that if a person lives a good life and does good things for others, he or she will earn a place in heaven. In our national religious pluralism, people, many of them our own members, believe that all religions lead to the same God and to eternal life. This is due to the deceptiveness of sin, which uses the Law as an agent to keep people in bondage.  St. Paul reminds us that the Law binds us to our sins and to the consequence and destiny determined by sin—eternal death and separation from God. But, thanks be to God that in Jesus we have been set free and become children of God and heirs together with him. Through Jesus we can now call God our Heavenly Father, our Daddy. Jesus was made to be a curse on our behalf; so the curse has been lifted from us, and we receive our inheritance together with him. 

4.                   St. Paul reminds us in Galatians 3 & 4 that the Law can’t make us children and heirs of God.  The Law tells us what we are to do and not to do, what sort of persons we are to be. “Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy” (Lev 19:2). Summarized in the Ten Commandments—not 10 suggestions—love God with all your heart, mind, and strength. Love others as you love yourself.

5.                   That we’re commanded doesn’t mean we’re able to be or to do what the Law requires. The deceptiveness of sin actually uses the Law as its agent to increase sin. When we can’t do what we want, we become angry. The religious pluralism in our country, the natural religion, teaches that you earn your way into heaven. If you trust that your good life and love for others will earn you a place in heaven—you are under a curse (Gal 3:10). Tell God, “I want what is coming to me,” and that is what you will receive.  As the hymns says, “It was a false, misleading dream That God his Law had given That sinners could themselves redeem And by their works gain heaven. The Law is but a mirror bright To bring the inbred sin to light That lurks within our nature” (TLH 377:3).

6.                   St. Paul reminds us here in Galatians that the Law serves only as a “tutor” to lead us to Christ.  Galatians 3:22-23 says, “23Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. 24So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.”  A babysitter is necessary when you’re young, but not when you’re an adult. This is Paul’s argument to the Galatians concerning their relationship to the Law of Moses. It seems as though some within the Galatian church were seeking to “graduate” into spiritual maturity by rigidly following all sorts of the Law of Moses concerning, “days and months and seasons and years” (Galatians 4:10). They thought that spiritual maturity is to be found in the works of the Law that a person performs rather than in the faith in Christ that a person holds.

7.                   Paul argues exactly the opposite: “The law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian” (3:24–25). The Greek word for “guardian” is paidagogos , a word for “babysitter.” Paul says that a person who believes he can follow the Law unto salvation is “enslaved” (4:3) to a babysitter.

8.                   A fascinating use of paidagogos comes in a dialogue between the great Greek philosopher Socrates and a son named Lysis. Socrates notes that this son has a pedagogue who watches over him. He finds it strange that a man who is a slave to the family, as was a pedagogue, would exert control over a son who is member of the family. So Socrates asks the son how this pedagogue controls him, to which the son answers, “He leads me to my teachers.”

9.                   According to Paul, this is precisely the function of the law. It was “our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith” (3:24). The Law, then, isn’t an end in itself nor is adhering to it a sign of spiritual maturity. The Law is only a babysitter to lead us to Christ.  The purpose of the Law, in other words, was to prepare us for the justification through faith God had in mind. When we understand that the Law demands of us that which we can’t do, we realize our helplessness and need for a Savior.

10.               We’re the children of God through faith in Christ.  The hymn says, “Yet as the Law must be fulfilled Or we must die despairing, Christ came and hath God’s anger stilled, Our human nature sharing. He hath for us the Law obeyed And thus the Father’s vengeance stayed Which over us impended” (TLH 377:5). This speaks of Christ’s pure and holy obedience to all the Law of God—for us, in our place, on our behalf.

11.               Our Savior Jesus has “redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (3:13; 2 Cor 5:21; Zech 12:10; Rom 8:3). He died our death under the Law. We are children of God through faith in Christ. And so, we become God’s heirs together with Jesus.  The promise to Abraham (Rom 4:13) that he should inherit the world was based on his descendant Jesus (3:16; Heb 1:2). He’s God’s Son and God’s heir, heir of everything (Heb 2:5–9).

12.               We are heirs together with Christ (Rom 8:17; Heb 1:2; Gal. 4:7). God’s meek who inherit the earth are those who believe in Jesus (Mt 5:5; 1 Cor 3:21–23). We, therefore, are heirs of God together with Christ—inheriting all that God can give. Our sins became his; his glory becomes ours. Imagine what this means!

13.               Seeking salvation by the Law isn’t a sign of spiritual maturity, but a sign of spiritual immaturity, as Paul says when he labels such an attempt as part of “the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world” (4:9). What, then, is the hallmark of spiritual maturity? In a word, it is “faith.” Not our own works. And so, as maturing sons of God, we bid goodbye to the babysitter of the Law and gladly welcome our Savior in faith. For we can never outgrow or out-mature Him.  Amen.