Reading Through The New Testament In 2016. Day 165. Galatians 4

This chapter is all about freedom and slavery. It’s a weird thing that we have this super awesome freedom through Christ, but choose to enslave ourselves to a bunch of things anyways. Sin, law, idols, etc. You name, every one of us has fallen for it at some point.

The Galatians were no exception to this, falling slaves to Torah and works. Paul uses the thread of being in the family of God to show our freedom though. He says basically in a bunch of ways in this chapter that in regards to the law you’re either adopted into being a son of God free from the law, or you’re a slave under it. No middle ground, either it’s all God or all law. This would have been crazy to the Jews of the time, even the Messianic ones who still observed Torah constantly.

Paul says regardless of who you are through the faithfulness of Christ if you’ve been brought into the family you’re an heir of grace, not a slave. So start living that! We all, very much including myself, have this frankly stupid tendency to make ourselves slaves. We try and earn our salvation and become slaves to the Law, we stray from God and become slaves to sin, or we find any number of things to praise instead of God and become slaves to idols. It’s part of the fallen condition, but that can be broken through Christ.

When Paul writes about freedom, mostly he talks not about freedom from things, but rather freedom for Christ. Our salvation has already been bought, and we just need to live in that purchase. We can’t earn it, we have the power to not stray from it, and it’s a free gift of grace. Through Christ we have been taken from slavery and made into heirs of His promise.