God's Agenda (Galatians 4:4-5)
This sermon was preached on Sunday, 11th October, 2009
Paul is writing to a group of churches which he had founded in Galatia, an ancient province that is now located in modern-day Turkey. Along with Barnabas, Paul had made a preaching tour, now called his First Missionary Journey, which included that part of Europe. Despite opposition and persecution they had planted several churches and they could give a good report when they returned to their sending church in Antioch. We can read about these details in Acts 13 and 14.
Paul later discovered that other preachers visited these Christian gatherings after he had left. These preachers, now known as Judaisers, had gone to those meetings with an agenda. The membership of those churches included both Jews and Gentiles, and the preachers’ agenda concerned what should happen to the Gentile converts. Their agenda was to get the Gentile Christians to observe the Old Testament ceremonial law, especially the rite of circumcision. Although this emphasis had not been part of the teaching of Paul and Barnabas, it was accepted by many of their converts. By this time, Paul and Barnabas had gone their separate ways, which explains why the name of Barnabas is not at the head of this letter.
Paul could have made two possible responses to the wrong agenda of the false teachers that had been effective in his churches. One response would have been to create his own agenda and devise a plan by which he could win back his erstwhile converts. The other response was to remind his readers of God’s agenda, the details of which he had already instructed them in when he had visited them. The choice Paul made, and it would not have taken him long to make it (about two seconds), was to remind them of God’s agenda.
We can see an important lesson for ourselves here. What should we do when someone affects individuals or groups in our church with wrong emphases? Should we devise an ingenious strategy of steps by which we hope the wrong ideas will be curtailed or should we repeat to them the truths they previously heard explained by us? Obviously there may be situations which require specific actions, but the best way to recover people from wrong influences is to preach the truth again to them.
Paul had many gifts and many of them are familiar to us through our awareness of his writings. When he wanted to, and when writing Scripture he did so by the Spirit’s guidance, he had the ability to say in a very few words a range of essential aspects of the Christian faith. We have an example of this gift in the verses we have selected as the basis of the sermon. It may be a useful activity for you this afternoon to sit down with a pen and sheet of paper and write out all the doctrines you can see in the two verses. I did a quick count when I was preparing this sermon and was surprised by the number I found. For our sermon, we only want to focus on three of them, and to do so by focussing on the agenda of God the Father. So what did Paul say about the Father in these verses?
1. The sovereign God
The first detail that Paul highlights is that God the Father is in control of time. We see this emphasis in the clause ‘when the fullness of time had come’. Paul is referring to the moment when Jesus was born and indicates that his birth occurred at a divinely-chosen moment. The arrival of Jesus happened once certain preparations had taken place. Can we identify the significance of the time? We may divide the answer into general and specific.
In general, Jesus arrived into a world in which political and social developments had made it very suitable for the spread of the gospel. For example, there was one dominant political system – the Roman Empire, there was a common language – Greek, there were roads and sea routes which could be utilised for spreading the faith, and there were Jewish synagogues in most of the urban locations found in the Roman Empire. John Calvin summarised this situation in his comments on these verses: ‘That season is the most fit, and that mode of acting is the most proper, which the providence of God directs. At what time it was expedient that the Son of God should be revealed to the world, it belonged to God alone to judge and determine.’
Specifically, Paul means by the fullness of the time that a change God had predetermined had arrived. The change was connected to the arrival of Jesus into the world. Just as an earthly father will decide when his children leave the stage of immaturity, so in a far higher sense God the Father had decided when his church would move from the immaturity of the Old Testament period to the maturity that would mark the New. The days of immaturity had involved the ceremonial law as a guardian for the church. Jesus had come and through his work as Saviour had done away with the need for the guardianship of the ceremonial law. The problem with the Galatian church was that instead of living as sons who had grown up and thus able to appreciate their family privileges they were living as little children who needed a nanny all the time. But they had more than a problem of not growing-up. In addition, they were guilty of despising the blessings they had received at conversion. They had failed to appreciate the significance of the spiritual period in which they now lived.
In applying these points to ourselves, we probably don’t have much difficulty with the idea of God’s general providence arranging all the circumstances in which we find ourselves. But how do we rate with regard to appreciating that we live in the period in which God the Father expects his people to live as mature believers who understand the spiritual riches that he has made available to them?
2. The sending God
Paul reminds us here that the initiative of salvation lay with God the Father. This does not mean that he was ahead of God the Son in deciding what should be done for sinners. Instead it is a reminder that there is an order within the working out of God’s plan of salvation, and one feature of that plan is that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour. There used to be a notion that the Father was reluctant to save sinners but that Jesus, because of his work on the cross, caused the Father to change his mind. Such a view is wrong. Instead the Father sent the Son.
But in what manner did the Father send his Son? Paul tells us two details about the way the Saviour came – he was born of a woman and he was born under the law. In saying he was born of a woman, Paul may be alluding to the virgin birth of Jesus. Yet I suspect he is stressing the reality of the humanity of Jesus. He came into the world in the same way as other humans are born. Obviously his conception was miraculous, with no human father involved. His birth was a normal birth.
This way of coming into the world reminds us of the way God usually operates. We tend to imagine that God will always appear in a manner similar to how he appeared at Sinai when he gave his laws to Israel. Perhaps the Judaisers were suggesting that the Christian church needed to preach about a God who shows his power in overwhelming ways. But power can be displayed in more than one way. For example, if I a butterfly lands on my arm, I can use my power to kill it or lift it away. Gentleness is a great method of displaying power. The power and ability of God was displayed at the birth of Jesus, but we need spiritual eyesight in order to see it.
The second detail about the coming of Jesus is that he was born under the law. There has been some disagreement regarding which law is intended here. Some say it is a reference to the moral law and others say it refers to the ceremonial law. As far as I can see, the context would indicate that the second group are correct. Paul is referring to the ceremonial law that governed the church in its immaturity under the Old Testament dispensation.
Elsewhere in this letter Paul states that Jesus delivered his people from the curse of the moral law which condemned them (Gal. 3:13). Here in 4:5, he is saying that Jesus delivered his followers from both the confinement and the childishness of the ceremonial law. Some may be surprised at the use of such terminology to describe the ceremonial law. If we compare it with the religious practices of the pagan world, then the ceremonial law was both liberating from sinful practices and far more informative about the relationship between God and his people. But the confinement has to be seen in light of the freedom Christ gives instead of its restraints and the childishness has to be seen in light of the spiritual maturity expected of his followers.
Why would Paul stress this point? I suspect he wants us to realise the extent to which Jesus identified himself with his people. Where were the ones on earth when he came? They were under the ceremonial law, subject to its many demands. Jesus voluntarily put himself into a situation in which he, as the Son, did not have to be. From one point of view, there was no need for Jesus to be under the ceremonial law. Yet he freely chose to go there at his Father’s bidding.
This then raises the question as to why he identified himself with his people in this way. The ceremonial law enslaved those who were under it and Jesus put himself under it, at his Father’s charge, in order to get rid of it by his death. The blessings of the gospel era could not come while the church was under the bondage of the previous period. Jesus fulfilled all that the ceremonial law pointed to and required – such as the need for sacrifices for sin, the need for an intercessor with God – and set his people free from the demands of the ceremonial law.
The term that Paul uses for this method of freedom is ‘redeem’. In everyday life, it was slaves that were redeemed (purchased). They were redeemed from one owner who had treated them as slaves; and the new owner could either treat them as slaves or do something else with them, such as setting them free. On the cross Jesus paid the price to redeem God’s people from bondage to the ceremonial law. The next inevitable matter concerns what was done with those he purchased. Paul’s explanation is that those formerly in bondage to the ceremonial law were now given by God the rank of adoption as his sons.
3. The sons of God
Today, when we think of adoption we link it with children who for one reason or another do not have functioning parents. In the Roman world of Paul’s time, the opposite of adoption was not orphanhood, but slavery. Today, it is possible for a child from a wealthy background to be adopted by parents from a poor background. That would not have happened in Paul’s time. Adoption was performed by those with power and status.
Another difference between contemporary adoption and ancient adoption concerns the age of the adopted person. Today it is children or teenagers who are adopted whereas in the ancient world it was adults who were adopted. A wealthy patron may have been childless, so he would adopt a suitable person as his son and heir. Or he may not have trusted his physical children to take care of his inheritance, so he would adopt a trustworthy person as his son and heir. The point is that an adopted son had to be able to appreciate his inheritance.
This is what Paul is saying here to the churches in Galatia. They have forgotten two things: one was the poverty and limitations of the ceremonial law and the other was the wealth and prospects of the Father’s inheritance. This is why Paul was so disappointed with what was happening in Galatia, and also why he was perturbed as to whether or not they were, in fact, genuine Christians. They did not seem to value what Jesus had done in liberating his people.
Of course, we are not in danger of returning to the ceremonial law. But we are in danger of creating a religious lifestyle that nullifies the blessings of our spiritual inheritance.
Our catechism summarises for us the significance of adoption: ‘Adoption is an act of God’s free grace, whereby we are received into the number, and have a right to all the privileges, of the sons of God.’ What are these privileges? Some are positional and others are experiential.
Positionally, they are joint heirs with Christ, which means that they have the same inheritance as he has. This is hard to grasp, and we will not appreciate it fully until the new heavens and new earth appear.
Experientially, they receive the Holy Spirit as indwelling them. Their experience is greater than what was known in Old Testament days, particularly in their access to God and in the spiritual blessings they can enjoy. They can know God more intimately and have greater assurance of pardon. Furthermore, they enjoy God’s protection of and provision for their souls throughout their spiritual journey. These benefits come because they have the Spirit and not because they engage in certain religious practices, which was what the Judaisers claimed. Why should they return to an inferior way? Yet sadly many of the Galatians did.
As sons of God, they also have one great aspiration, which is to be like their Elder Brother, Jesus the Son of God. They will not be like him in his divine person, but they will yet be like him in the spiritual character of his human nature. In the glory to come, they will be like him perfectly; in the world of grace, in which they currently live, they are becoming increasingly like him. How could God’s sons forget that their role model is Jesus? Sadly many of the Galatians did.
God wants his people to behave like adult sons and not as immature children. He has provided the means (the Holy Spirit), the path (his commandments in the Bible) and the encouragement (the promises of the Bible). They have been given so that those who once were strangers to his grace will be able to enter into and make progress in the spiritual inheritance he has provided for them. That is God’s agenda, it was also Paul’s, but is it ours?
Paul later discovered that other preachers visited these Christian gatherings after he had left. These preachers, now known as Judaisers, had gone to those meetings with an agenda. The membership of those churches included both Jews and Gentiles, and the preachers’ agenda concerned what should happen to the Gentile converts. Their agenda was to get the Gentile Christians to observe the Old Testament ceremonial law, especially the rite of circumcision. Although this emphasis had not been part of the teaching of Paul and Barnabas, it was accepted by many of their converts. By this time, Paul and Barnabas had gone their separate ways, which explains why the name of Barnabas is not at the head of this letter.
Paul could have made two possible responses to the wrong agenda of the false teachers that had been effective in his churches. One response would have been to create his own agenda and devise a plan by which he could win back his erstwhile converts. The other response was to remind his readers of God’s agenda, the details of which he had already instructed them in when he had visited them. The choice Paul made, and it would not have taken him long to make it (about two seconds), was to remind them of God’s agenda.
We can see an important lesson for ourselves here. What should we do when someone affects individuals or groups in our church with wrong emphases? Should we devise an ingenious strategy of steps by which we hope the wrong ideas will be curtailed or should we repeat to them the truths they previously heard explained by us? Obviously there may be situations which require specific actions, but the best way to recover people from wrong influences is to preach the truth again to them.
Paul had many gifts and many of them are familiar to us through our awareness of his writings. When he wanted to, and when writing Scripture he did so by the Spirit’s guidance, he had the ability to say in a very few words a range of essential aspects of the Christian faith. We have an example of this gift in the verses we have selected as the basis of the sermon. It may be a useful activity for you this afternoon to sit down with a pen and sheet of paper and write out all the doctrines you can see in the two verses. I did a quick count when I was preparing this sermon and was surprised by the number I found. For our sermon, we only want to focus on three of them, and to do so by focussing on the agenda of God the Father. So what did Paul say about the Father in these verses?
1. The sovereign God
The first detail that Paul highlights is that God the Father is in control of time. We see this emphasis in the clause ‘when the fullness of time had come’. Paul is referring to the moment when Jesus was born and indicates that his birth occurred at a divinely-chosen moment. The arrival of Jesus happened once certain preparations had taken place. Can we identify the significance of the time? We may divide the answer into general and specific.
In general, Jesus arrived into a world in which political and social developments had made it very suitable for the spread of the gospel. For example, there was one dominant political system – the Roman Empire, there was a common language – Greek, there were roads and sea routes which could be utilised for spreading the faith, and there were Jewish synagogues in most of the urban locations found in the Roman Empire. John Calvin summarised this situation in his comments on these verses: ‘That season is the most fit, and that mode of acting is the most proper, which the providence of God directs. At what time it was expedient that the Son of God should be revealed to the world, it belonged to God alone to judge and determine.’
Specifically, Paul means by the fullness of the time that a change God had predetermined had arrived. The change was connected to the arrival of Jesus into the world. Just as an earthly father will decide when his children leave the stage of immaturity, so in a far higher sense God the Father had decided when his church would move from the immaturity of the Old Testament period to the maturity that would mark the New. The days of immaturity had involved the ceremonial law as a guardian for the church. Jesus had come and through his work as Saviour had done away with the need for the guardianship of the ceremonial law. The problem with the Galatian church was that instead of living as sons who had grown up and thus able to appreciate their family privileges they were living as little children who needed a nanny all the time. But they had more than a problem of not growing-up. In addition, they were guilty of despising the blessings they had received at conversion. They had failed to appreciate the significance of the spiritual period in which they now lived.
In applying these points to ourselves, we probably don’t have much difficulty with the idea of God’s general providence arranging all the circumstances in which we find ourselves. But how do we rate with regard to appreciating that we live in the period in which God the Father expects his people to live as mature believers who understand the spiritual riches that he has made available to them?
2. The sending God
Paul reminds us here that the initiative of salvation lay with God the Father. This does not mean that he was ahead of God the Son in deciding what should be done for sinners. Instead it is a reminder that there is an order within the working out of God’s plan of salvation, and one feature of that plan is that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour. There used to be a notion that the Father was reluctant to save sinners but that Jesus, because of his work on the cross, caused the Father to change his mind. Such a view is wrong. Instead the Father sent the Son.
But in what manner did the Father send his Son? Paul tells us two details about the way the Saviour came – he was born of a woman and he was born under the law. In saying he was born of a woman, Paul may be alluding to the virgin birth of Jesus. Yet I suspect he is stressing the reality of the humanity of Jesus. He came into the world in the same way as other humans are born. Obviously his conception was miraculous, with no human father involved. His birth was a normal birth.
This way of coming into the world reminds us of the way God usually operates. We tend to imagine that God will always appear in a manner similar to how he appeared at Sinai when he gave his laws to Israel. Perhaps the Judaisers were suggesting that the Christian church needed to preach about a God who shows his power in overwhelming ways. But power can be displayed in more than one way. For example, if I a butterfly lands on my arm, I can use my power to kill it or lift it away. Gentleness is a great method of displaying power. The power and ability of God was displayed at the birth of Jesus, but we need spiritual eyesight in order to see it.
The second detail about the coming of Jesus is that he was born under the law. There has been some disagreement regarding which law is intended here. Some say it is a reference to the moral law and others say it refers to the ceremonial law. As far as I can see, the context would indicate that the second group are correct. Paul is referring to the ceremonial law that governed the church in its immaturity under the Old Testament dispensation.
Elsewhere in this letter Paul states that Jesus delivered his people from the curse of the moral law which condemned them (Gal. 3:13). Here in 4:5, he is saying that Jesus delivered his followers from both the confinement and the childishness of the ceremonial law. Some may be surprised at the use of such terminology to describe the ceremonial law. If we compare it with the religious practices of the pagan world, then the ceremonial law was both liberating from sinful practices and far more informative about the relationship between God and his people. But the confinement has to be seen in light of the freedom Christ gives instead of its restraints and the childishness has to be seen in light of the spiritual maturity expected of his followers.
Why would Paul stress this point? I suspect he wants us to realise the extent to which Jesus identified himself with his people. Where were the ones on earth when he came? They were under the ceremonial law, subject to its many demands. Jesus voluntarily put himself into a situation in which he, as the Son, did not have to be. From one point of view, there was no need for Jesus to be under the ceremonial law. Yet he freely chose to go there at his Father’s bidding.
This then raises the question as to why he identified himself with his people in this way. The ceremonial law enslaved those who were under it and Jesus put himself under it, at his Father’s charge, in order to get rid of it by his death. The blessings of the gospel era could not come while the church was under the bondage of the previous period. Jesus fulfilled all that the ceremonial law pointed to and required – such as the need for sacrifices for sin, the need for an intercessor with God – and set his people free from the demands of the ceremonial law.
The term that Paul uses for this method of freedom is ‘redeem’. In everyday life, it was slaves that were redeemed (purchased). They were redeemed from one owner who had treated them as slaves; and the new owner could either treat them as slaves or do something else with them, such as setting them free. On the cross Jesus paid the price to redeem God’s people from bondage to the ceremonial law. The next inevitable matter concerns what was done with those he purchased. Paul’s explanation is that those formerly in bondage to the ceremonial law were now given by God the rank of adoption as his sons.
3. The sons of God
Today, when we think of adoption we link it with children who for one reason or another do not have functioning parents. In the Roman world of Paul’s time, the opposite of adoption was not orphanhood, but slavery. Today, it is possible for a child from a wealthy background to be adopted by parents from a poor background. That would not have happened in Paul’s time. Adoption was performed by those with power and status.
Another difference between contemporary adoption and ancient adoption concerns the age of the adopted person. Today it is children or teenagers who are adopted whereas in the ancient world it was adults who were adopted. A wealthy patron may have been childless, so he would adopt a suitable person as his son and heir. Or he may not have trusted his physical children to take care of his inheritance, so he would adopt a trustworthy person as his son and heir. The point is that an adopted son had to be able to appreciate his inheritance.
This is what Paul is saying here to the churches in Galatia. They have forgotten two things: one was the poverty and limitations of the ceremonial law and the other was the wealth and prospects of the Father’s inheritance. This is why Paul was so disappointed with what was happening in Galatia, and also why he was perturbed as to whether or not they were, in fact, genuine Christians. They did not seem to value what Jesus had done in liberating his people.
Of course, we are not in danger of returning to the ceremonial law. But we are in danger of creating a religious lifestyle that nullifies the blessings of our spiritual inheritance.
Our catechism summarises for us the significance of adoption: ‘Adoption is an act of God’s free grace, whereby we are received into the number, and have a right to all the privileges, of the sons of God.’ What are these privileges? Some are positional and others are experiential.
Positionally, they are joint heirs with Christ, which means that they have the same inheritance as he has. This is hard to grasp, and we will not appreciate it fully until the new heavens and new earth appear.
Experientially, they receive the Holy Spirit as indwelling them. Their experience is greater than what was known in Old Testament days, particularly in their access to God and in the spiritual blessings they can enjoy. They can know God more intimately and have greater assurance of pardon. Furthermore, they enjoy God’s protection of and provision for their souls throughout their spiritual journey. These benefits come because they have the Spirit and not because they engage in certain religious practices, which was what the Judaisers claimed. Why should they return to an inferior way? Yet sadly many of the Galatians did.
As sons of God, they also have one great aspiration, which is to be like their Elder Brother, Jesus the Son of God. They will not be like him in his divine person, but they will yet be like him in the spiritual character of his human nature. In the glory to come, they will be like him perfectly; in the world of grace, in which they currently live, they are becoming increasingly like him. How could God’s sons forget that their role model is Jesus? Sadly many of the Galatians did.
God wants his people to behave like adult sons and not as immature children. He has provided the means (the Holy Spirit), the path (his commandments in the Bible) and the encouragement (the promises of the Bible). They have been given so that those who once were strangers to his grace will be able to enter into and make progress in the spiritual inheritance he has provided for them. That is God’s agenda, it was also Paul’s, but is it ours?
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