Good morning everyone. I pray that today you will discover the richness of Christ's love for you; just how deep, high and wide that love truly is. We are moving on to Galatians 4 this morning.
When I was a child I dreamed all the time what it would have been like to have parents who were rich. It was not that my family was poor; we had everything we ever needed. But I often wondered what it would be like to inherit a great sum of money to do with as I pleased. Of course my dreams as a child were limited to selfish gain: candy, swimming pools, more candy, tons of tv's, still more candy, a huge library of Sci-Fi books, and still more candy. It is a good thing my parents are not rich or I would have ended up with rotten teeth and a few hundred pounds overweight. Yet, in one very important way, I am an heir to a large fortune.
So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir. v. 7
Paul explains in these verses that we are all considered as sons, male and female:
You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 3:26-28
Paul explains that just as a son is no different than a slave before he comes of age, being under guardianship, we were in that same condition when we were slaves to sin. We could not make decisions for ourselves because our sin nature left us with no choice. But the Father has always considered us to be his sons and sent Jesus to set us free from our sin nature so we had a choice and could come of age. He has always intended us to be heirs of the promise, the seeds of Abraham.
This is the reason it is so sad to see so many people not living in the truth of the freedom that is freely ours. People deny it, chase after lies, base their life on half-truths and continue to lose out. Many of us have hearts that are burdened for these other sons who are not stepping into the sonship which has been freely offered them. They are so stubborn that most won't even consider the truth and chose to believe that the rest of us are insecure and need some system of belief to prop us up. If only they knew the richness of life they are losing out on. But I also wonder how many of us who have accepted Jesus are failing to walk in the fullness of this sonship.
It is easy to only believe some of the promises and to doubt the rest. Some of us have come to the throne of grace with a head knowledge and have never really experienced the love of the Father. We deny it to ourselves because something in us tells us that we are not worthy so we cannot receive it. It is true that we are not worthy of any of this. We deserve death. But that is the beauty of grace; not only did we not get what we deserved, we also did not deserve what we got. The Father made a choice to love us even though we deserved death, and he took action to redeem us as his sons. It has nothing to do with you or your worthiness, instead it has to do with our holy and loving Father.
We are heirs of the promise only because the Father pursued us so he could make us his sons. Don't deny his choice today. Don't make the sacrifice of Jesus a wasted sacrifice for you. He went through a lot so you could receive what the Father has set aside for you. Don't throw it away just because you find it hard to believe someone from so long ago could love you that much. Choose to walk this planet as a son of the Lord God Almighty. You an an heir, it is time to claim that promise for yourself.
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