Freedom of a Family
(Evening Service)
Text: Galatians 4:1-7, 21-31
We’ve been conditioned to earn for as long as we can remember — earning praise and affirmation from parents, earning grades from teachers, earning playing time from coaches, earning attention from boys or girls, eventually earning paychecks from employers. We learned how to earn before we learned how to speak or even walk. This evening, we’ll look at how the Apostle Paul teaches us to leave that thinking behind when we think about God’s Family.
“I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything, but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father. In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.
(Galatians 4:1–7; Galatians 4:21–31 ESV)”