We Are All Sons
Galatians 3:25-29 · Mike Doyle · Jul 14, 2019
Galatians (2018-20), No. 30
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261915366709

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

what I thought we'd do today, review a little bit. We've been going through chapter three, and it's really a fairly concentrated chapter, although the theme is pretty much clear, but he's used several arguments, and so I thought it would be good for us to quickly just go through a few of the issues and arguments, and it won't take very long, and some of it isn't on the sheet that you've got. Starting in verse one through verse five, Paul asks five questions. And I really like that, because I'm a Socratic teacher, and I like to ask questions, you know? You know what that means, don't you? It means I control the conversation, you don't.

So the first question that he asks is, a question that has to do about their delusion and turning from the crucified Christ. So he calls them, you foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?

Good question. Question number two has to do with the beginning of their Christian life. He says, this one thing I want to find out from you, did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or did you receive the Spirit by the hearing of faith? That has to do with the beginning of their Christian life. The third question he asks them has to do with the root and the means of their spiritual growth and maturity.

He says, are you so foolish? Having begun in the spirit, you're now being made perfect by the flesh? How does your spiritual growth go? What is the root and the core of your spiritual growth? It doesn't have anything to do with the flesh. It has to do with the spirit. Fourth question has to do with suffering due to their belief in Christ. He says, have you suffered so many things in vain? If indeed it was in vain. The fifth question is, therefore, he who supplies the spirit, to you and works miracles among you.

Does he do it by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? The question is on the basis of God's present work among them. We could all ask that question. What God is doing in my life today, is it because of the works of the law, that I'm obeying the law, or is it by the hearing of faith? The answer is simple. It is by the hearing of faith.

Now verse 6 through 14, and I'm going to go pretty fast, and I had to laugh because Roger sent me an email yesterday. He said, I'm looking at your questions and I don't think I understand a couple of them. Right? You know what the great thing about that is? When we get together on Wednesday, we talk about these things and we work through them. And if he has an idea or I have an idea, it's just really good working with him. So I told him this morning, I said, you'll just have to come to the sermon. So anyway.

Now the next part has to do with from verse six through 14. And it has to do, verse six talks about the basic principles of justification or salvation. And it is by faith as illustrated in Abraham. Abraham was accounted righteous because of his belief. And he is the father of the Hebrew race. Second thing is, the second set of verses, seven through nine, in chapter three, any who follow the principles are the true spiritual sons of Abraham. They are followers of and recipients of the same spiritual blessings that Abraham got and received from God on the same basis, which was faith, okay?

And then 3.8, in the middle of that, talks about what God meant in Genesis 12.3 when he promised Abraham that in him all the Gentiles, all the nations of the world, would be blessed, all of them, including, from a Jewish standpoint, the Goyim. We're the Goyim, right? 310 talks about, conversely, those under the law are cursed by the law, and we talked about that, oh, I don't know, four or five weeks ago. The law itself, just by itself, curses those who don't obey it in every single aspect of it. You don't get to pick, I'll do three, five, and seven. I'm gonna let one, two, and four go. Nope. If you're gonna be under the law, you gotta do it all, and by the way, there's 600 plus of them, so good luck with that.

By implication, no one has ever kept the law perfectly except for the Lord Jesus. And therefore, under the law, all are under the curse of the law. Even as a believer, if you leave faith and grace and put yourself under the law, you can expect cursing from God. You can't expect grace. You can't expect blessings because there aren't any under the law.

11 and 12 talked about salvation by the law and salvation by faith are mutually exclusive because the law keeping is based upon merit works, working for merit. Whereas justification before God is based solely on faith rest. I like that term faith rest In what God provides for salvation what he provides? so the conclusion is those that are under the law do not receive the blessings because Blessings come only through faith. It's the only way you get them.

Okay, and the last one are the six 13 and 14, Jesus Christ died to deliver men from the condemnatory curse of the law. Why? Because he was made a curse for us. Blessing and promise, fullness of the spirit comes solely by faith in Christ who is the Messiah, the Son of God, whether you're a Jew or a Gentile. Now in this next part, he shifts gears a little bit, and if the law serves to condemn and curse, and men are counted righteous before God only on the basis of faith, Well, what's the purpose of the law? Why do it? What are the relationships between the covenant of promise given to Abraham and the covenant of law given to Israel?

And we talked about the difference. The problem was is that the Judaizers were telling the Galatians, look, the law came 430 years after the promise and the law supersedes the promise. No, it doesn't. It's the other way around. God made a unilateral covenant with everybody and promised blessing. And when the law came in, it didn't supersede, it didn't take away the blessings that God promised, because God is the one who made the covenant, and it was a one-sided, unilateral covenant. And the question always has to be asked, would God still have done it if Abraham didn't believe him? Answer, yeah, he would've. Abraham wouldn't have been righteous, but God was gonna do these things, okay? So in answering these questions, Paul points out the next four verses, the limitations and the temporal significance of the law. Better go to that next one.

So the argument here in 16 is that we expect man to live up to his contracts. And remember that we talked about contracts one day from a human standpoint. If Courtney and I enter into a contract, he agrees to do something, I agree to do something, we exchange something of value, and once it's signed and ratified, he can't change it and I can't change it. It's in concrete, so they say. And God made this concrete promise to man, contract, I'm gonna do this.

Though God gave both the promise and the law, he in no way is suggesting that by adding the law to the former that his regular method of dealing with men, the grace method, was changed at all. He's not saying that. Put it another way, that the law should alter or annul the promise or change God's grace method of dealing with men was in no way God's intent or purpose of giving the law. What I find interesting from a personal experience, I went to a memorial service last week for a young woman and it was in a law-bound denomination. There wasn't anything in an hour service that had to do with God's promise. Everything was based on the fact that you have to obey before God will act.

If you do this, God will do this. Even the, I forget what the term is, but the pastor up there would make a statement and the congregation would respond. And they would say, well, God, we pray for this. And the congregation would say, Lord, hear our prayer. Well, as I'm listening to this, I'm thinking, well, everything they're asking for, God's already done. What's the matter? Didn't they read their Bible? He's already done all of this. So when you're under a law system, they don't see it. They don't see the blessings. They don't see the grace.

So what was the purpose of God giving the law then? Why did he do it? And Roger talked the last couple of weeks about that. It was really good. Why did he do it? The object of the law was to bring out the sinner's true condition of soul. Whether you're a believer or not, that's why it was there. Not at all to bring him into blessing, but to bring out the fearful ruin in which man had gotten by sin. That's why he did it.

He promised them a blessing, and they took it without looking at themselves to see whether they deserved it or not. Do you understand what he's saying? God promised a blessing, and those that took advantage of it, they never even considered, well, do I deserve this or not? They just took the blessing. If I hold up $5 and say, come get it, well, one of the young guys would come get it. Do they deserve it? No, so God puts a law in there to point out to them his grace.

The unquestioning confidence is all very blessed. It's wonderful to have that confidence, especially if you were a Jew, but it's not good for a man to not know what he is. It's important that we know what we are from Adam. It is a great moment that I should learn what my condition really is.

I've said this and I don't mean to demean anybody, I think you benefit more if you're saved when you're an adult, because you've spent a lot of time over here in the sin, and when you get saved by grace, you appreciate it more. Now, that's not to say, the sooner you can get saved, the better. I've worked with those kids for years downstairs. We tried to get every one of them saved as soon as we could.

Didn't want them to go through what I did. Now the object of the law was to bring out the sinner's true condition of soul, not to bring him into blessing. The law was not designed but to bring out the fearful ruin to which man had gotten into by sin. So a promise doesn't highlight a man's sin. You see that? It doesn't say anything about it.

The law provided an external standard against which one could measure his conscience and his behavior. The law revealed, the other part of the law is it revealed the total inflexibility of the holiness of God. He doesn't compromise. The law highlighted the acts of man were not just foolish impulses, but direct violations of God's righteousness and his will.

We've been studying on Wednesday night Genesis, and to watch Adam and Eve, eat that fruit directly against God's prohibition. They lived in a perfect environment, yet they went for it. And what was it? They couldn't look at God and say, oh, we kind of slipped up. No, they did it, especially Adam. He knew what he was doing, and he did it. And it's good for us to know that.

And when God went into the garden to find them, he asked them where they were, why were they hiding, and who told you you were naked? What was he trying to prove? He was trying to say to them, look, you'll understand what I'm asking you that what I'm asking you to really do is just to come to me tell me you've sinned and ask for forgiveness and I'll grant it what did they do instead they played the blame game Adam said you know that woman you gave me It's not her fault, it's your fault. You gave me that woman. She handed it to me, and I ate. And she said, no, no, no, it was the serpent who gave it to me. He fooled me. The blame game, you know this? Anybody but me, the blame game, rather than confess.

So what the law does is it puts a man in a position where he stands condemned before God, and he can't get loose. So, Paul has made his point, as we can see here. Justification must be solely by faith on the merits of Christ's work for the sinner. Has to be that way.

Work efforts can add nothing to the absoluteness of that righteousness. You and I as believers come into an understanding that we can't add anything to what God has already given us. Our problem is to enter into what we already have. Work's efforts can never improve upon the effectiveness of the merits of Christ's death. You can't improve on that at all. God never implied otherwise when he gave the law. He never said, hey, if you keep the law, you'll do a little better than the guys that aren't.

His intent was to stop every mouth. Stop them. Be quiet and listen. When he gave the law, and conclude that the whole world of humanity was under sin, under it. It controlled everything. So that human beings would stop looking to themselves for salvation, and they'd look only to God's grace in his provided Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, We talked, Jim read verse 24. So this was a chart that Hal Malloy did, longhand. And I said, Roger, can you maybe do this so it isn't longhand? And he did, he did a great job. And what I'm after here is this explains it pretty well.

Because notice where it says in the bottom left-hand corner, it says sin, and the box there is a jail. And that's what the bars are all about. And all men are in that jail. And that jail is called death. Total separation from God. Now, verse 25 says, but now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian. See the guy that's with the gun? That's not politically correct, but he's got a gun. He's the guard. Now here's the thought I had about that. And we were talking about it on Tuesday.

Some of you guys have been in the military, and you went to boot camp, right? Well, when you go to boot camp in the Marine Corps, you show up one day, and out of the building come these three men with these smoky bear hats on, and their uniforms are perfect, and they are the meanest-looking three guys you have ever seen. and they are going to be with you for 12 weeks, night and day. You are never gonna be without these three guys. One of them spends the night in the barracks with you, and wherever you go, you go in formation, and you march, and one of them is there. You know what those guys are? They're the pedagogues.

Did they teach us things? Yeah, they taught us how to be Marines and they taught us what not to do. But they guarded us, they protected us, I mean they would even protect us against other platoons with other drill instructors. They wouldn't let another drill instructor say anything to us. And what was their purpose?

So that at the end of 12 weeks, they always referred to you as anything but a Marine. And some of the language was pretty colorful, right? The day that you get off the island, Parris Island, it's called graduation day. That's the first time you're called a Marine in 12 weeks. And trust me, your chest swells up this big. That's why Marines walk down the street and get in a fight with Navy guys, and the Navy guys beat them up. because their eagles are bigger than them.

But there's a pride in that. Well, how did that happen? What was the methodology? The method was that this pedagogue, this guardian, these three men, that's what they did. That was their job. And so that, I think, explains a lot better than being a tutor. Did they tutor us? Yeah, negatively and positively. There are a lot of times that I took my son to Parasilo one time and he said to me from the back seat, he said, Dad, is this where you learned how to yell? I said, yeah, I think so.

But now that faith has come, there is no longer a need for the drill instructor. for the guardian, for the pedagogue. For we are all sons of God through faith in Jesus Christ or Christ Jesus. For all of you were baptized into Christ and have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ. and if you belong to Christ then you are Abraham's seed according, Abraham's seed heirs according to promise. So how long How long did the pedagogue or the guardian or the policeman or the drill instructor guard us?

Until Christ. That was what he was to do. Was it at Christ's birth? Was it during his ministry? Was it had to do with his death, burial, and resurrection? I think it had a lot to do with his death. Because Romans 6.3 says that, don't you realize that when you were baptized into Christ, you were baptized into his death. So if you draw a timeline of Christ's life, there's a point in which he dies. That's the point in which we are baptized into him by the Spirit. Why then? What was he doing when he died?

He was death means separation he had been made sin for us the law had condemned him had found him out and and had crucified him so when we are put in him if he gets separated from the sin nature what happens to you you get separated too and that's why we enter at that point so what the world has been waiting for, what God has been waiting for is this event, this event of the death of Christ, because that separation means everything to us. On the plus side is the new creation at the resurrection. Everything is new. And as we go through Galatians, we'll see a lot more of that. Verse 25, and Jim read 24, but let's back up a little bit just for a couple of verses so you can see.

Is the law contrary to the promises of God? The answer is, may it never be, for if there had been a law given that was able to impart life then righteousness would indeed have been based on the law, but there isn't. Verse 22 and 23 says, but the scripture has shut up everyone under sin, everyone, so that the promises by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. But before faith came, were kept under this guardian, under law, being shut up to faith, which was later to be revealed.

Okay? Cooperating verses, Romans 3, 19 and 20. And actually, I didn't put them all in there, but 23, 27, 28, 31, all contribute to this understanding. Now we know, in verse 19 of Romans 3, that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law.

So if you're under the law, the law talks to you. It is for you. And here's what it says. So that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God. That's what the law's gonna do. You're gonna become accountable to God and you're gonna be quiet. You won't be able to give your excuses anymore. You have to just be quiet and listen.

Because by the works of the law, no flesh, no flesh will be justified in his sight for through the law comes what? The knowledge of sin. For all have sinned, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. You know what that verse tells you? That if you wanna be saved, you have to match the glory of God. The law can never do that. You're not gonna ever get there. You can't achieve that through your effort. He says, and where then is boasting? What are you bragging about? It's excluded. You can't boast about that. But what kind of principle? Of the principle of works? No, by the principle of faith. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law, and do we nullify the law through faith?

May it never be. On the contrary, we establish the law. So, verse 24 told us about the essence of the law, that it was the guard or the jailer. Now verse 25 makes a huge switch. Telling us our essence, our standing, and our position as a result of being justified. Everything has changed. We got out of jail. We got out of the jail of sin. And that for all eternity. And we're not on parole. We no longer have to mess around with a guard or a drill instructor. One of the great reliefs was walking off that island and never having to look in that guy's face again. But I had nightmares about that guy for years. His name was Sergeant P.C. Formez. He was the meanest man I have ever met. And I was free, and you're free. We have life in the resurrected, glorified Christ. So it's really, really important what faith gives us, what it frees us from. We are no longer in jail. We are no longer under a law system. Now, it says, what faith is he talking about here? It's interesting that the word here, faith, has a definite article in front of it.

And those of you who have been to the faith class, some of you have, we study four kinds of faith. There's the essence of faith, what is it? There is the faith, which this is talking about. There is faith as a principle. And then there is my personal faith. We're not talking about your personal faith here. We're talking about the faith.

And so what does that include? It includes everything that Paul the Apostle has taught us in all of his epistles. Everything that has to do about our position in Christ. Everything that has to do about how we got there. Everything we have to do about new life in Christ. When that came, we got free, so. It appears in the Greek text, the, so that faith is a historic Christ, which is referred to as in the new birth, about who we are in Christ, has arrived.

The truth that we are totally cut loose and free from the lost system, Galatians 2.19. The truth that we are cut loose or separated from our old man via identification with Christ's death. and burial and resurrection, we're free. And the truth about our identity with Christ seated in the heavenlies, we are in him and he's in us.

And we, some weeks ago, took a look at Galatians 2.20, very interesting verse.

I have been crucified with Christ. Not I'm gonna be, I have been, already done. My old life, I was separated from it. It's still in me, but it doesn't control me anymore. Christ took us with him into the death of the cross. Nevertheless, I still live. I'm still walking around on the planet.

What's the difference? The difference is I'm new creation. I'm born from above. I'm born out of the dead ones. I'm brand new. I'm raised with him in newness of life. His resurrected life. He's the source of my new life, not Adam anymore. Nevertheless, but the life I now live in the flesh, walking around in this body, how do I do it? I live it by faith. Oh, there's that faith thing again. I do it by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. That's how I live, every minute of every day.

But when this particular faith has come, we're no longer under a guardian. So, now verse 26 through 29 present seven realities of the Christian life. We're not gonna get through all of these this week. We'll get through a couple, three. But every one of these realities that are gonna be presented in these verses came to the Galatians out from grace. This is a, how do I say this? Until a man is saved, or a woman is saved, we know nothing about grace, God's grace. And so Paul has to teach us, and now he's going to teach the Galatians what it is for you to be under grace now. It did not come from the law.

The same realities also pertain to every believer in Christ today, every one of these principles. These realities are expressed in the indicative mood. For those of you who are Greek geeks, know that the indicative mood is the mood of reality. If Paul says something in indicative mood, this is real, this is reality. And these realities have to do with what?

Our standing before God, our position in him. Have you ever taken consideration in your mind, how does God look at me? Do I have a standing before Him? Do I belong there? Is it okay that I'm there? Is God sort of peeking at me and hoping I clean up my act so He can be nicer to me?

No, you're standing there positioned in Christ, totally free from anything that would be displeasing to Him, because He took care of it, and I'm there. And you know what? I get to stay there for all eternity, and so do you, because He wants it. Not because I'm so crazy about it, but as I'm growing in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus, it's becoming more valuable to me. I'm looking forward to that. Imagine, we get to spend all eternity with Christ right there in front of us. And it will never change. You know why? Because he can't change. Never change. So, reality number one. You are all sons of God through faith in Christ. Imagine that statement. You are all sons of God through faith in Christ.

There's a contrast in verse between verse 24 and 26. In 24 it says, therefore the law was become our jailer to lead us to Christ so that we may be justified by faith. What am I in that verse? I'm an inmate. I'm in a jail house, right? Now he says, you're all sons. That's different than being an inmate, don't you think? I'm a son of God. The contrast between these two is the contrast between law and grace. Under law, I'm an inmate. Under grace, I'm a son.

In 24, we were kept under a guarding, a policeman, a drill instructor to keep us in line. In 25, but after faith came, the Jews, the Gentiles, the Galatians were no longer under a guard. Now I know how your mind thinks. When the guard goes away, I get to do what I want. I can be crazy if I want, no. Now I'm a son.

How does a son function with his father? He functions because he loves him. The father doesn't have to put handcuffs on him. He functions because he loves him. What a contrast. Now, you're a son because you have faith in the person and work of Christ. That's what made you a son. Every believer literally has two fathers. You have a regular human father. As best I can tell, all of you have fathers. And you have a spiritual father. Who's the spiritual father? God the Father himself. So you have two fathers.

Galatians 3, seven, therefore be sure that it is those who are of faith who are the sons of Abraham, the sons of Abraham. Under these context he's telling these Galatians by the way Abraham was a righteous man and he's the father of the faithful and if you're Faithful or you enter into God's promises by faith. He's your father too Abraham is why because he's a man of faith How about this idea The Lord Jesus is in the bosom of the father, right?

You okay with that? We are in Christ in an inseparable union. Therefore, we are in the bosom of the Father. That's our position. That's kind of cool, isn't it? It's a place of blessing. It's a place of comfort and security, of love and tenderness and total security.

Notice in this verse two, he says, he has changed from the first person, we, with reference to the Jews, to the second person, you, with reference to his readers, both Jew and Gentile, both Jew and Gentile. Paul shows that the wall of separation between the Jew and the Gentile is now broken down, and we're gonna see in the later verses why. and it was broken at the cross because everyone who believes in Christ, no matter where you came from, were crucified with him, and that took your earthly identity away. Paul shows that the wall of separation was down and broken down for both Jew and Gentile, and we all became sons of the God of the universe. and we are, this word here for sons is the word weos, which means adult sons.

He didn't recreate us in Christ as little infants, like Karen's grandson. When we were recreated in Christ, we were instantly adult sons, grown up inheritors. Under the law, the individual was in a minority all the time because he was under a guardian, but now, Being in Christ, we are under grace. And as being under grace, we have arrived at what is known as majority. We're mature adults now. We are outgrown the surveillance of a guardian.

How'd you become a son? Real simple, by faith in Christ and His work. That's how you got there. Is it just a title that we now possess? Is there a recreation involved here, or did they just pin a badge on you that says, now I'm a son? It shows that in Christ must be separated by the word faith. It's a position that I have. It's put at the end of the sentence so as to form a distinct proposition that Paul enlarges upon in the following verses. And I'm gonna, I look at the time, I'm gonna stop here and we'll pick up next week, because we're gonna do the Lord's Table.

But all my life I was a realtor. You know what the most important thing to a realtor is? There are three of them. Location, location, and location, right? What's the most important thing for you and I as believers? Location, location, location. You know why? Where are you seated right now? in Christ, in the heavenlies, in the bosom of the Father. So I would say location is really important to us as believers, really important to us because it serves everything that we are to be united with Christ in the heavenlies. So let's close. Father, how we thank you for your word, how we thank you, how gracious you are towards us in all that we do and all that you do and that we may continue to grow in the knowledge and grace of your dear Son. Amen.