And because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba, Father!” Galatians 4:6
Yesterday I left you with a question: when you picture yourself finally getting it right, whose face do you see? We named the problem and stopped there. That was on purpose. Today Paul starts handing us the cure, and it is found in one small word most of us read right past.
Picture a hired hand on a farm. He shows up at daylight, bales hay, mends fence, and at the end of the week he’s paid for what he did. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s honest work. But under that arrangement, his standing is only as good as last week’s work. At noon he eats his lunch on the porch. The family eats inside at the table.
After over thirty years of preaching, I’m convinced a lot of us run our whole walk with God on hired-hand math. I read my Bible four days this week. I kept my temper with the kids. I made it Wednesday night. I’m probably in pretty good shape. Or the other column: I blew it the other day. I haven’t prayed in a week. I’d better lay low with God until I’ve made up some ground.
In by Grace, Kept by Effort?
That is the very thinking Paul was fighting in Galatia. Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning by the Spirit, are you now finishing by the flesh? Galatians 3:2–3. The teachers who came in behind Paul had a simple message: you got in by grace, so now stay in by effort. Paul calls that foolish.
Then he points to something that has already been settled: for through faith you are all sons of God in Christ Jesus. For those of you who were baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ, Galatians 3:26–27. If you’ve put your faith in Jesus and been baptized into him, you became God’s child the day you came up out of the water.
So why do so many of us live like the help? Paul answers with a picture in Galatians 4:1–3. A wealthy family’s son will own the whole estate someday, but while he’s small you can’t tell him apart from the servants. Someone else tells him when to get up and what to eat, and someone else holds the checkbook. That lasts until the time set by his father. The tragedy in Galatia was that the time had come. The father had handed his son the keys to the house, and the son was asking for a bunk out in the barn. Grace felt too good to be true, and rules felt safe.
Two Sendings
Now read the heart of the passage: When the time came to completion, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God 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 God has made you an heir, Galatians 4:4–7.
Paul uses the same verb twice. God sent his Son, and he sent the Spirit of his Son. Both were God’s idea, and both were God moving toward us.
Jesus came born under the law, inside the very system that had us boxed in, and he kept it perfectly all the way to the cross. He came to redeem, which is a purchase word. It is the price paid to buy someone out of slavery. And the purchase had a purpose: he came so that we might receive adoption as sons.
The Greek word is huiothesia, literally “placing as a son.” Paul is the only New Testament writer who uses it. In the Roman world adoption was serious business. A man without an heir would often adopt a grown man to carry his name and receive his estate. Julius Caesar adopted his great-nephew Octavian in his will, and that adoption put him on the road to becoming Caesar Augustus. An adopted son took the family name, stood on equal footing with a son born in the house, and left his old life behind. It was a legal act, settled on paper. God adopted you, gave you his name, and wrote you into the will.
Sisters, this includes you. Paul says “sons” on purpose. In that world the son was the heir, and Paul gives every Christian the son’s standing: There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female; since you are all one in Christ Jesus, Galatians 3:28. You inherit with every one of God’s children.
Because You Are Sons
Now slow down at verse 6. And because you are sons, God sent the Spirit. There’s the small word I promised you: because.
Why does the order matter? The hired hand assumes the Spirit is the reward. If I get my act together, maybe God will draw near. If I pray more, maybe I’ll feel his presence. Paul runs it the other direction. The sonship comes first, and the Spirit comes because it is already true. When I wrote on this text for a Galatians study a few years ago, I put it this way: the Spirit is God’s proof that he has accepted us as sons.
God sent him into our hearts. He brought his children in off the porch and moved in with them. If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to him, Romans 8:9.
And once he is there, he cries Abba. It is an Aramaic word, what a child called his father at home. It is also the word Jesus prayed in Gethsemane, hours before the cross: Abba, Father! All things are possible for you. Take this cup away from me, Mark 14:36. The Spirit of that Son lives in you, and he puts the same word in your mouth. Some of us pray like we’re reporting to a supervisor. You don’t have to work up the right mood to call God Abba. The Spirit gives you the word, even on mornings you don’t feel spiritual at all.
Some of you had a father you could never talk to like that. He was hard or he was gone, or he sat at the supper table every night and never really saw you, and you’ve carried that picture into how you see God. The Father who adopted you is the one who put Abba in your mouth.
Assurance You Receive
Paul says it again to the church in Rome, and notice how he uses courtroom language. Can you spot it? For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear. Instead, you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father!” The Spirit himself testifies together with our spirit that we are God’s children, Romans 8:15–16.
Maybe you know that fear. You have a bad week and wonder if this is the time God finally gets tired of you. Paul says you did not receive that spirit. When the question is whether you belong to God, your feelings aren’t the only witness, and neither is the accuser. The Spirit takes the stand. He testifies through every promise he put in Scripture about sons and heirs, and through his own life in you.
For most of our lives, assurance has been something we generate. We add up the week and decide how confident we’re allowed to feel. Paul says the Spirit gives that testimony, and we receive it.
You may be asking, “If that’s true, why obey at all?” Well, … sons obey their fathers. What changes is the why. The hired hand works so he’ll get paid. The son works because it’s his father’s farm, and one day it will be his.
Finish the Sentence
Get a pen and an index card. Finish this sentence. Be honest: God is pleased with me when ____.
Maybe you wrote when I read my Bible every day, or when I’m a better husband or wife, or when I finally stop doing that thing. Maybe you couldn’t think of an ending, because you’ve never once felt like he was.
Now draw a line through the word when and everything after it, and look at what’s left. It feels too short. God is pleased with me. Something in us wants to add a clause. Read it next to verse 7: So you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then God has made you an heir.
Underneath, write what God has said about you.
I’m his child.
I carry his name.
His Spirit lives in me.
I’m in the will.
Tomorrow we’ll stand at the Jordan River and hear the Father speak over his Son before that Son had preached a sermon or worked a miracle. Keep the card where you can find it.
MEMORY VERSE
And because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba, Father!”
Galatians 4:6 (CSB)
Weekly Challenge
Put your card in your wallet or tape it to your bathroom mirror. The next time you have a bad day and feel the urge to lie low with God, pull it out and read it out loud. Then pray one honest sentence that begins with “Father.”
