Christmas 1
Gal
4:1-7
12/31/17
As
parents we recognize that we aren’t the only ones who are involved in teaching
our children how they are to live.
Certainly this kind of training also goes on at church and school, and involves
the people who serve in these settings.
At the same time, we believe that these settings are only meant to assist us. We think that the primary responsibility for
training our children belongs to us – the parents
However things were very different
in the first century Greco-Roman world.
If you were a person of any means at all, you did not believe that the
primary responsibility fell to the parent.
Instead, it was the task of the pedagogue. The pedagogue was a slave who
was assigned the responsibility of providing for the safety and moral training
of the child. The job of the pedagogue was to restrain wrong doing in the child
and to teach right behavior.
This set up the unique situation in
which a slave had authority over a child, who could one day be his master. The pedagogue had this role
for a fixed period of time. In the early
to mid teens, the youth came out from under the tutelage of the pedagogue. Needless to say, more than a few youth
indulged to excess in this new freedom.
We have examples where youths mocked the paedagogue in writing because
of the freedom they now possessed.
Just prior to our text, Paul has
used the paedagogue as an illustration of the role that the Law – the Torah –
had until the coming of Christ. It’s
something he needs to address because he has been telling the Galatians that
they are saved by faith in Christ and not by works of the law. God’s salvation is a gift based on his own
promise. Paul has written, “Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It
does not say, ‘And to offsprings,’ referring to many, but referring to one,
‘And to your offspring,’ who is Christ.”
The apostle argues that the Law which came centuries later does not
invalidate the promise God had made to Abraham that “In you all nation will be
blessed.” As he concludes, “For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by
promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise.”
Yet this immediately raises a
question, and so Paul says, “Why
then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring
should come to whom the promise had been made.” Because this sounds similar to
what Paul says in Romans, many have said that the role of the law was to increase sin and make us see our need
for Christ. The problem with this is
that it is the exact opposite idea of
everything the pedagogue meant. It would
be like using Michael Jordan as a metaphor of failure and defeat – it just
doesn’t make sense.
Instead, Paul is saying that until
the coming of Christ the law restrained sin and kept Israel separate from the
pagan nations as they looked for Yahweh’s Messiah. The law did this, but only until Christ came. Paul says, “Now before faith came, we were held
captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So
then, the law was our pedagogue until Christ came, in order that we might be
justified by faith.
But
now that faith has come, we are no longer under a pedagogue, for in Christ
Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.”
The Galatians need to hear this.
They are being told by men who have come to Galatia that if they really want to be part of God’s people,
they need to do parts of the law such
as being circumcised, and only eating certain foods, and observing certain
Jewish religious days and festivals.
Instead,
Paul says that because they are in Christ, the offspring of Abraham, they are already sons of God through faith. The
guarantee of this fact is their baptism.
As Paul says immediately before our text, “For as many of you as were
baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there
is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in
Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs
according to promise.”
The problem
with the law, Paul says in our text, is if you act like Christ had not come; if
you now keep acting as if the law of Moses is necessary for being a part of
God’ saved people. The apostle says in
our text, “I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from
a slave, though he is the owner of everything, but he is under guardians and
managers until the date set by his father. In the same way we also, when we
were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.”
Paul begins
to talk again about being under the law before the coming of Christ. But now things have changed. He describes it
instead as a time of slavery. And he does something shocking because as a
Jew he writes to Gentiles and says that we
were all enslaved under the “elementary principles of the world.” He takes the law of Moses – the Torah – and
tosses it in with all of the paganism that had been the life of the Galatians! How can Paul do this?
The reason
Paul does it is because the law and doing has never been able earn anything
except the curse of the law. In chapter three he wrote: “For
all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, ‘Cursed
be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law,
and do them.’” The law gives life – if
you can do it perfectly in thought, word and deed.
But think about your life. How often do you do the right thing, for the
wrong reason? How often do you carry out
your vocations with a grudging heart, resenting the fact you have do this thing
when you would rather be doing something else?
How often do you really desire to serve yourself?
That’s why the law can only bring
curse and judgment. The problem is not the law. The problem is you the sinner. And so Paul says, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of
the law by becoming a curse for us--for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who
is hanged on a tree.’” The language of
“redemption” comes from the world of commerce.
Originally it meant to buy a person out of slavery. Eventually it meant more generally to free
from slavery.
In our text
Paul is warning the Galatians that after believing in Jesus, to take up the
doing of the law as if it necessary to be saved will put them back in the exact
same situation they were before they heard the Gospel. They will be cut off
from God. Paul describes the law of Moses from the “now time” when Jesus Christ
has died on the cross and risen from the dead. The time of its purpose for
God’s people has come to an end. After all, God’s people in Christ are now both
Jew and Gentile.
On this
First Sunday of Christmas Paul’s words in our text reveal what Christmas means
for us. He says, “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.”
The apostle
uses the phrase “fullness of time.” This is a reminder that God’s saving action
was a plan that moved through time. God
worked in the midst of human history using Israel and the surrounding nations
of the Near Eastern and Mediterranean worlds.
At his choice moment, in the first century A.D. he sent his Son into the
world as he was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. He did this to redeem us. Jesus received the curse of being cut off
from God because of sin when he was crucified.
But he did this for us. He did it
in our place. He did it to redeem us –
to free us from the slavery of sin; the slavery of being under the law’s curse
imposed on all who fail to keep God’s will in thought, word and deed.
God sent
forth his Son. The baby in the manger was the incarnate Son of God who had been
sent to redeem us. The Father sent forth the Son so that we could receive that
adoption of sons. We deserved the curse.
We deserved God’s judgment. But
instead, because of what Jesus the Son did for us, now we are considered by God
to be his sons and daughters. And here’s
the thing – if God says it is that way, then it really is.
God has
given you this status. And because he has, he has also sent his Spirit into our
hearts. Paul says in our text, “Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit
of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba, Father.’” Those who are sons and daughters receive the
Spirit who enables us to call out to God. The Spirit prompts us to call upon
God the Father in faith on the basis of the Son’s work. We have been rescued
from the slavery of sin and the curse. As Paul says in the last verse of our
text, “So you are no longer a slave, but God’s
child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.”
Through faith and baptism you are in
Christ. You are the children of God and
so are heirs of eternal life. Those who had come to the Galatians were going to
take this away from them by sending them back to doing the law. Paul went on to conclude this section of the
letter by saying, “It is for freedom
that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be
burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”
But Paul also wanted the Galatians
to know that this was only part of the story.
And so he went to add, “You,
my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to
indulge the flesh; rather, through love serve one another. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping
this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
In the
world, where sin reigns, freedom is all
about me. Freedom allows me to do
what I want to do. But Paul says it is not that way for those
who are in Christ. He writes, “For
in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only
thing that counts is faith working through love.” Those who are in Christ are freed to serve.
At Christmas the Father sent the Son
into the world. He did it to redeem you from slavery. He did it in order to make you a son or
daughter of God. He did it to save you.
And he also did it to remake you into his instrument of love and care
for those around you. Faith in Christ saves apart from works. Faith now works
in love because of Christ. And all of this
finds it source in God the Father who in the fullness of time sent his Son into
the world.
