Because You Are Sons

Introduction:

Imagine with me a home with what seems like a joyful family. The home has a loving mother and father with two children. Everything in the way in which they care for and parent the kids is the same. Both both boys are loved, supported and raised with the same standard. As they come across different ages, they receive the same chores to participate among the family. They eat have a spot at the dinner table. They have the same rules whether it’s bed times, tv time, play time, and activities they can participate in. From the outside, everything is completely identical.

But once you begin to know the boys, something is clear. One of them is always watching their father’s face. At any opportunity when he takes out the trash, he’s looking to see if his father is please. When he brings hope is graded project he spent hours working on with his father, he wondered if it would be enough. When he slips up, he’s constantly wondering if him and his father are okay even when he’s been met with love and correction.

The second son, he receives the correction about his spilled milk and forgets about it within minutes. When he comes home with the graded project, he sometimes forgets to celebrate together. He never second guesses his fathers pride in him and knows he’s dearly loved.

Same house, same love, same style for each son. But each of them has a completely different inner world. One finds himself constantly performing for his father. The other feels at home because he knows and believes his father loves him.

The problem in the story isn’t that the Father loves one sone and not the other. The problem is that the first son who is crippled by trying to perform forgets that his fathers love was always present and outward toward him before he could do anything for him. The son lives like a slave, not like his true identity as a son.

I fear that this scenario isn’t just something that we can imagine and see how to encourage the boy to know what’s true, but that story is actually true of many of us. We live like slaves when our Father wants to us to live like sons.

Out main point from our passage this morning is this: Stop living like a slave. In Christ, you are a son.

Point 1 — You Were a Slave (4:1-2)

Paul has just introduced at the end of chapter 3 that the purpose of the mosaic law was to be our guardian until Christ came.

But he keeps building his argument about why that matters to the Galatians in chapter 4 as he slow transitions more. He uses this illustration about being a heir as a child being no different than a slave. While the heir is promised that one day he will have everything, right now he doesn’t. And neither does the slave.

But where the difference is, that the child is under guardians and trustees until an appointed time in which the father would turn everything over and the child now has the fulfillment of their inheritance. A roman child was considered a minor until the age of 14. But even then, the child would still be under trustees until the age of 25. The tutor of the heir would be someone who’s responsibility it was to make sure they went to school, they would keep them in line, and hand them off when needed.

Paul is once more drawing the picture that the law was a tutor for us. It walked alongside us to lead us towards right living and honoring God with our lives. It would teach us what to know, believe and how to live.

But as children under the law, what happens is that the heir owns everything, but experiences nothing of what will come. Functionally, their life is like that of a slave.

This is the problem Paul is naming — not moral failure, but status confusion. You belong to the father but you're not living like it.

Point 2 — Christ Entered Your Slavery to End It (4:3-5)

The fullness of time. God’s Sovereignty.

Completion of Time : no longer a child, but an adult receiving his heir.

Born of woman, born under the law : Christ stepped into the full conditions of bondage deliberately. Not to commiserate but to redeem. He got under the system that was holding you in order to pull you out of it.

This is the mechanism of adoption: not self-improvement, not religious performance, not calendar observance.

Point 3 — You Are a Son, Not a Slave (3:27-29, 4:6-7)

The verdict has been declared. This whole time, Paul has been arguing for the doctrine of justification. How you are made right with God is through faith in Christ. But here, Paul begins his shift into the doctrine of union with Christ.

Justification tells you that you’re forgiven. Adoption assures you that you are loved by God.

Listen to how wild this is in v. 6. The entire trinity is present in these verses, where perfect union is. And yet, there is a fourth person involved in the conversation. It’s YOU! WHAT???

Think of everything this passage shows us that is true of us. Grab your bible, underline all of these starting in v. 27.

27, Baptized into Christ

27 clothed with Christ

28 one in Christ

29 Belong to Christ

29 Abraham's seed

29 heirs according to promise.

5 redeemed by Christ

5 Adopted by Christ

6 Sons

6 the Spirit inside you is the internal confirmation of the external verdict

6 crying Abba, Father.

You didn't earn this. You can't lose this. The inheritance is already yours. The power that honestly feels heretical to say but is completely biblical is that if it’s true for Jesus it’s true for you.

Application

Diagnostic question running through all three:

What are you trusting for your standing before God, before others, before yourself that isn't Christ?

1. The Striver

You're performing for a status you already have. Measuring up, being enough, doing enough. That's not faithfulness, that's unbelief.

You're the heir living like a slave. The guardian stage is over. Stop reporting to a tutor who no longer has authority over you.

2. The Passive One

You've accepted sonship intellectually but the Spirit's cry hasn't moved you. Comfortable Sunday attendance without life reorientation is also unbelief, just in the opposite direction. You're sitting on an inheritance you don't believe is real, which is why it produces no urgency, no risk, no sacrifice.

3. Sons Live From Security, Not Toward It

the inheritance isn't something you earn or wait passively for. It reorients everything now. But Paul's logic runs the other direction.

The person living as a slave is constantly stuck.

They're anxious about whether they're doing enough.

They're risk-averse in their faith because failure feels like it might cost them something ultimate.

They're easily destabilized by suffering because suffering feels like evidence that maybe the inheritance isn't real.

They're approval-seeking because they need external confirmation of a status they don't internally feel settled about.

The person living from it is fundamentally different in posture. Not because life is easier, but because the verdict is already in.

They can suffer without despair because the inheritance doesn't depend on circumstances.

They can serve sacrificially without resentment because they're not performing for status.

They can take risks for the kingdom because they're not protecting something fragile.

They can be honest about their failures because their standing doesn't rest on their record.

Slaves live like they don’t want to disappoint. Sons spend time with their dad with no worries. Slaves wonder if they did the job right. Son’s enjoy the time & relationship. Slaves worry about not crossing boundaries. Son’s have no boundaries to their father.

We are sons. Stop living with a slave mentality.

The pressure isn't just reduced, it's been removed at the root. You don't perform to become a son. You already are one. Christ didn't die to give you a better shot at earning it, he died to end the earning entirely. So you can walk out of here not because you got your act together this week, not because you've been faithful enough, not because you're finally measuring up, but because the Father sent his Spirit into your heart and called you his. That's not a feeling to chase. That's a fact to live from.