Inheritance that cannot be lost

We are looking at this wonderful epistle, which emphasizes salvation by faith alone. That is the Christian message. That is why there was a Protestant Reformation. Salvation is not by faith plus works. It’s not a cooperative effort between the sinner and God – God does a little, and you do a little; and together it all works to come about that your sins will be forgiven, and you can enter God’s holy heaven. But, rather, the Bible is crystal clear that salvation is totally a work of God, and all the sinner contributes is simply an open hand. We just reach out to receive the gift by believing in the Lord Jesus Christ.

As we’ve been saying all along, however, all false religion, all false religion, including false forms of Christianity, want to make salvation a combination of God’s work and ours, faith and works – that God does a part, and we do a part, and in that kind of synergism God brings about our salvation. That is the defining heresy in all false religions, that somehow you can contribute to being rescued from judgment by your own works.

Paul preached the true gospel of salvation by faith alone in Christ. He planted some churches in Galatia, as he did many other places in the Mediterranean world back in the first century. And not long after Paul would preach the gospel and churches would be planted and people would be converted, not long until some Jewish teachers would come along and tell the believers that what Paul had told them was not true. Salvation is not by faith alone, it’s by faith plus works. That was the message of those who became known as the Judaizers, because they tried to make Jews out of the Gentiles who had come to know Christ through the gospel. And what they were basically saying was, you have to keep the law of Moses; and by that, they meant the external law, as it becomes clear in the passage today – the ceremonial laws, the ritual laws, the festival laws, the dates, the days, the years, the months – all of those things that were external behaviors, and not the moral law of God.

They were prescribed by God for the purpose of insulating Israel and making them a unique people in the midst of a multi-idol world. They were to be the monotheists who worshiped the true and living God. And so God did give them some external, symbolic laws and rituals to point to Him in kind of the infancy of the development of true religion. But when Christ came, all of those ABCs, all those elemental things ceased, and the bondage of the law was done, and Christ became the substance, and all that passed away as the mere shadow. But nonetheless, there were Jews who claimed to come from James, the leader of the church in Jerusalem - claimed to be believers in Christ, and advocated that you needed to add works.

So Paul in the book of Galatians is giving a series of arguments against salvation by faith and works. And the one that we’re looking at in chapter 4:1-11 is a very powerful, powerful argument. It has to do with adoption, and he is telling the Galatians, “You have already been adopted as sons of God, with all the rights and privileges that come with that sonship. Why do you think something is missing? Why would you want to go back to what you used to have, the shadow, when you have the substance and the reality. So this is another of his arguments for salvation by faith alone. Let me read you the opening eleven verses - chapter 4 of Galatians.

“I say, as long as the heir is a child, he doesn’t differ at all from a slave though he is owner of everything, but he’s under guardians and managers until the date set by the father. So also we, while we were children, were held in bondage under the elemental things of the world. But when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God.

“However at that time, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those which by nature are no gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things, to which you desire to be enslaved all over again? You observe days and months and seasons and years. I fear for you, that perhaps I have labored over you in vain.”

This is so serious that Paul wonders whether his efforts have been for nothing. The Galatians had heard the true gospel of salvation by faith, believed it, put their trust in Christ, and they had become true believers. Verse 3 of chapter 3: “You have begun, you have begun by the Spirit.” They were true believers. We just read you verse 8: “You didn’t know God,” verse 9, “but now you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God.” He is affirming the reality of their salvation. “You are believers, you have begun in the Spirit, you have experienced the power of the Spirit, you have heard the truth of the gospel, your lives have been transformed; now why are you going back to a system of external behaviors?” That is the daunting question for which Paul sets up many, many arguments in this brief epistle.

Now let me just point out that in the verses I read, the issue is about adoption. He talks about a child, a child who doesn’t differ from a slave when he’s young. He talks about the fact that, “When we were children in that condition we were held in bondage to the elemental things of the world,” that is to say, bondage to the law, bondage in the case of the Gentiles to a false religion. Then Christ came and we were redeemed. We came to a point of being adults. We were mature in Christ, and received the adoption as sons. And he says that in verse 5.

Now the theme here of adoption I want to spend a little time on this morning. Again in verse 6, “You are sons.” Again in verse 7, “No longer a slave, but a son.” This is all about adoption.

Paul is the only one who uses the word “adoption” in the New Testament, and he uses it in the book of Romans and in the book of Ephesians and in the book of Galatians. The word is simply a compound word in the Greek language: huios, “son”; tithmi, “to place.” It means “to place someone as a son.” That’s what an adoption is.

Adoption from the theological standpoint, as Paul uses it, is God placing us as His sons in His family, God putting us into His own family. Now that simply stated doesn’t have all the rich texture that I want you to understand about adoption, so I’m going to give you a little background on this.

As always when we’re dealing with the Bible, we’re dealing with an ancient book. We’re talking about social customs and mores and behaviors that are two thousand years old. When today talk about adoption we’re talking about something very different from what was in the mind of a citizen of the Roman-Greek world in New Testament times. And as always with all Bible interpretation, we have to go back and recreate the social structure, the cultural structure, the linguistic structure, so we know what something meant in that day, because that’s what it still means.

When Paul mentions the word “adoption” he doesn’t define it, doesn’t say anything about it, doesn’t give its features. And that’s because he knew that his audience understood it , and that’s the way he wanted them to understand it. And in understanding that, they would get the full, rich reality of what he was saying here spiritually, because they knew what adoption was in their world; we don’t. So we need to go back. We need to separate ourselves from the contemporary concept of adoption and go back.

Now let me just say this first of all. Paul is dealing with a Roman idea here. There is no set of laws in the Old Testament with regard to adoption.

Did Jewish people adopt? Yes, they did.

They adopt for two reasons.

They adopted, one, because they were childless, and there was a certain stigma with being childless; and so they would adopt to have a child.

They adopted, secondly, very frequently when parents were in old age and needed someone to care for them; they would adopt someone who could be a kind of caretaker.

So that is familiar to any Jewish historian in terms of Jewish adoption. But, again, they have no laws on adoption, and there are no statements regarding it in the New Testament. Paul is not talking about that. He’s talking to Gentiles in the Greco-Roman world. He’s talking in terms that they understand. So let’s see if we can’t get a grip on this; it’s going to completely redefine your understanding of the doctrine of adoption.

Now modern adoption is a kind of charitable action. Modern adoption is done by people who want to rescue children primarily, whether they are children from a foreign country who are in an orphanage and living a very difficult life, or whether they are even more difficult, disabled children, or ill children, children with birth defects or whatever. There are beloved Christian parents and others as well who want to relieve the suffering of those children by getting them out of those orphanages, out of that kind of environment, and they bring them into their family as babies. There are adoptions of those babies who are born to mothers who didn’t want to have an abortion, but don’t want to handle the child; and so those children are adopted. But typically speaking, adoption in the Western world and in our country is an adoption of babies or children, small children from foster homes may be adopted as well. But, basically, people don’t adopt adults. They do not adopt adults; they adopt children.

In the ancient Roman world they did not adopt children. They adopted adults, and they adopted male adults. Rarely does anyone in our society adopt an adult. There wouldn’t be any compelling reason to do that basically in our society.

Lets talk about Roman adoption - almost always an adult male twenty years of age and up, even into the thirties. They were adopted into wealthy families, families of status, families with an estate, families of prominence, and virtually all those kinds of families did adoptions. Even if they had children, even if they had sons, they would adopt. If they had no sons, obviously they would adopt in order to have an heir. But if they had sons that they didn’t think were suited for the future of the family, they would adopt another son.

And by the way, there was a power in ancient Rome called patria potestas, which essentially says “the father’s power.” And a father could disown a born child. More frequently than not, it would be a girl. But the father could also disown a son. He could also sell a son for adoption. He could also kill a son for whatever reason he wanted.

So the father had absolute power over his children. And if he had no sons or if he had sons that he didn’t want to become the heirs of his estate, he would adopt. They were chosen, not as babies, because many babies didn’t survive childhood. You wouldn’t go through all the adoption to have a baby that would die. And furthermore, you didn’t know what kind of a young man this baby would become.

So they waited until they were in their twenties or thirties and they could see their leadership potential, their mental skills, their physical strength, their wisdom. They were looking for someone who would be the next patria familias, “father of the family.” The father wanted someone to take over the estate. The purpose was really singular: to bring an heir into the family who was worthy of this estate and could guarantee the future of that estate going forward.

And this would happen either because they had no son, or they had no son they felt was qualified. And there were families who had more sons than they needed. They would have sons to carry on their line, and they would be happy to have one of their sons adopted by one of these patrician families (The patricians were originally a group of ruling class families in ancient Rome).

In Roman times, the head of the family was both a manager of the family’s estate – a bookkeeper and a financial caretaker for the family’s fortune, and a priest, who basically ran the family religion – whatever gods they worshiped, whatever household gods, whatever forms of worship were part of that heritage were his responsibility. He was patria familias, “the family father.” And so when they adopted young men they were looking for an heir who could step into that role – very, very important: be the keeper of the family’s fortune and the keeper of the family’s reputation in the future. Poor, again, less noble parents who had such desirable sons would gladly make those sons available to a noble family for a price. And the price could be very high. It was an honor, by the way, not a dishonor. It was an honorable act to give your son to one of the ruling families, one of the families of the senators, the people who were elite.

Keep this in mind. Somebody might say, “Well, wait a minute. If you’ve got a really bright, sharp young son, maybe he could take the family he’s in and elevate that family and move that family up the social ladder to make them one of the elite families.” Couldn’t happen; didn’t happen. There was an elite class of patricians in the Roman world that was essentially unapproachable and unavailable to the rest of the plebeian society. So if you wanted to advance your capable son, this would be a great way to do that, and maybe the only way to elevate him.

It wasn’t secret. It was very public. It was very official. In fact, it was so official that at a high level it required senate confirmation, senate confirmation. A lot was involved. You’re talking about wealthy families with estates and reputations. Many of them senators. Many of them, by the way, emperors in Rome.

So this had senate involvement. It was a long drawn out, very official, very formal ceremony, like a wedding. It was that public. It was that kind of celebration. And like a wedding when the bride gives herself to the husband, she doesn’t intend to never speak to her family again. She doesn’t intend to forget her family, even though they cleave together and create a union all their own; they continue to be connected to the family that was their birth family. They create a new family, but they have a connection to the family of the past in some way.

That was true in adoption. It was not a complete forsaking of your family, so that the family in the future would in some ways be able to enjoy something of the success of the adopted son as they stayed connected in some way with him. However, he would take the father’s name, the new father’s name, and he would bear that name for the rest of his life. He would get all of the rights and privileges of that family. In fact, he would be the heir of everything that family possessed, and he would bear the name of his new father.

Adoption – here’s a definition: “The condition of a son, chosen and given to a father and family to which he doesn’t naturally belong, to formally and legally declare a son who is not a son by birth, but a son by choice, granting him complete rights and inheritance.” That’s Roman adoption.

There were four results of this adoption. Number one: You had a new father. You had a new father. Number two: You were heir to his estate. And that’s the primary reason for this adoption. And if you were adopted to become the primary heir, and the couple had more sons, those sons could never supplant the adopted son who was declared the heir. They could share in the inheritance like co-heirs, but that adopted son would be the ultimate heir.

Third thing: all the adopted son’s previous debts and responsibility were wiped out. If he owed anything to anyone anywhere, that was all gone. They erased his past life, except the connection with his family. It was as if he had never lived before. Everything was set aside; everything was erased. He is now legally and absolutely the son and heir of his new father, and there is no past life to take into account.

The fourth element is: he would have to be purchased with a high price, which is one of the reasons that poor families would make this overture of a son that was desired by a wealthy family. So the results were significant.

One other thing to say - according to the Roman-Syrian law book, I found an interesting quote there on this subject. It says, and I quote, “A man cannot disown an adopted son,” end quote. So once you were adopted, it was permanent.

So much care was taken about who was adopted. The adopted son – listen – then is more secure in his inheritance than a born son. The adopted son is more secure in his inheritance than a born son. A born son could be disowned, sold, adopted out, or even killed, as I said earlier.

This is such a noble event that nine of the Caesars were adopted. Julius Caesar had no children, so he adopted Augustus. Augustus had no sons, so he adopted Tiberius. Nine Caesars, nine emperors were adopted from other families into the royal line. So this is a very richly textured picture of what Christian believers experience in being adopted into God’s family.

And if you look at it in the breadth of that, you begin to see what the Galatians would have understood, and what Paul intended them to understand, that what happens when God adopts us into His family is, first of all, we are in another family. We are comparatively in an impoverished family. We are in a family with no future, no hope of ever achieving what that new family possesses. We are chosen; we are chosen. We are then purchased. We are then given the name of the new family. We then become heirs of everything that that father possesses; and that can never change. That’s adoption. And we say, “Abba! Father!”

We have a new Father, and we’re so intimately connected to Him that we say, “Papa. Daddy.” It’s that intense a relationship. And we have all the rights and privileges, so that Jesus says in John 1:12, to those who believed in Him, He gave “the authority to be called sons of God.” It is a position of authority. In the millennial kingdom we will rule and reign over the world with Christ. In heaven we will sit with Him on His throne. We will be, as we have read in Romans 8, “heirs and joint heirs with Christ” of all that God possesses.

By the way, in the adoption ceremony, according to one source, there were seven witnesses, seven witnesses. Why would you have witnesses of the adoption? To establish the legality of it and testimony to it, in case in the future other children of that wealthy family would contest to that adoption and say, “Wait a minute.” When the estate starts getting passed out and they are overlooked, there could well be conflict in the family.

And so one source says there were seven witnesses required, which fascinates me, because we have in our text, if you’ll look down at verse 6, “Because,” verse 5, “we have received the adoption as sons,” verse 6, “because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts.” And what is the Spirit sent into our hearts to do? Romans 8 says, “To witness that we are the sons of God.”

The Holy Spirit is the witness that we are the sons of God. And according to

Isaiah 11:2 NASB95

The Spirit of the Lord will rest on Him, The spirit of wisdom and understanding, The spirit of counsel and strength, The spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

the Holy Spirit is the sevenfold spirit. In Isaiah 11:2 there are seven features of the Holy Spirit. They are demonstrated in the menorah with its seven flames. The fullness of the Spirit is a sevenfold fullness. And so the fullness of the sevenfold Spirit is God’s witness to the legality of our adoption that can never be contested, because of the witness of the Holy Spirit.

“You are no longer a slave, but a son;” – and here it comes – “if a son, if a son, then an heir through God.” The point of adoption was to give the estate to that adopted son. It was that he would be the heir through God, dia, by the immediate agency of God. God is choosing an heir.

Think of your salvation that way. He chose you before the foundation of the world to be an heir of everything that He possesses. This is the nature of the grace and love of God.

So the point of all of this is that through God’s choice and through God’s power we have become an heir. God the Father has chosen us, brought us to maturity in Christ, paid for us by the blood of Christ, made us sons and heirs; and it’s all by love and grace.

And here’s the larger point: this is what the gospel of faith did for you; this is what Christ gave you when you believed in Him. You have that inheritance. You are a son; you have been adopted. You have everything that God can give you; you have it all.

Look over at Romans 8; I mentioned it. Let me take you there for a few moments, because this is the other place where Paul waxes eloquent on adoption. We have been adopted as children of God, verse 15; “sons of God,” verse 14; “children of God,” verse 16; children of God, verse 17.

And you say, “Well, we are heirs,” verse 17, “heirs of God, fellow heirs with Christ.” What does it mean to be an heir of God? It means to inherit everything God possesses, to inherit everything that God possesses. It will all be ours in the glory of heaven, and we are fellow heirs with Christ. That is to say, our inheritance is the same inheritance Christ receives, which is all that God possesses.

“He didn’t spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?” You want to know what your inheritance is? All things. All things. If He sent His Son to die to redeem you, to make you an adopted son, if He did that, the more difficult thing – reasoning from the greater to the lesser – if He gave His Son to die to make you a son, then He will also give you everything that sonship promises.

Well, somebody might come along and make accusations against us. Verse 33: “Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God’s the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns?” Christ Jesus is He who died, rather was raised.” Whatever sins they bring up against you, the Lord Himself says, “By the way, I died for that. I died for that. I died for that one too. I died for all of those. That’s all paid for: paid in full, paid in full, paid in full.” He’s at the right hand interceding.

So, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? For it is written, ‘For Your sake we are being put to death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.’ But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.” Why do we conquer? Why do we get all the way to our inheritance? Through Him who called us, because He loved us; and He will bring us to glory.

So, “I’m convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” God loved us, that’s why He chose us; and He will bring us to the fruition of that love. Staggering, staggering realities.

“You have everything by faith in Christ,” he’s saying to the Galatians. “You have all that God possesses. You are a son, as Christ is a son, an heir and a joint heir. You have the full inheritance. Everything is yours. Everything is yours. Everything in God’s glorious heaven is yours. All spiritual blessings in the heavenlies are in Christ.