CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES
Galatians 4:1. The heir, as long as he is a child.—An infant, one under age. Differeth nothing from a servant.—A slave. He is not at his own disposal. He could not perform any act but through his legal representative.
Galatians 4:2. Under tutors and governors.—Controllers of his person and property.
Galatians 4:3. Under the elements of the world.—The rudimentary religious teaching of a non-religious character. The elementary lessons of outward things.
Galatians 4:4. God sent forth His Son.—Sent forth out of heaven from Himself. Implies the pre-existence of the Son. Made of a woman.—Made to be born of a woman. Indicating a special interposition of God in His birth as man. Made under the law.—By His Father’s appointment and His own free will, subject to the law, to keep it all, ceremonial and moral, for us, as the Representative Man, and to suffer and exhaust the full penalty of our violation of it.
Galatians 4:5. The adoption of sons.—Receive as something destined or due. Herein God makes of sons of men sons of God, inasmuch as God made of the Son of God the Son of man (Augustine).
Galatians 4:6. Abba, Father.—Abba is the Chaldee for father. The early use of it illustrates what Paul has been saying (Galatians 3:28) of the unity resulting from the gospel; for Abba, Father, unites Hebrew and Greek on one lip, making the petitioner at once a Jew and a Gentile.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Galatians 4:1-7
The Nonage of the Pre-Christian World.
I. Mankind in pre-Christian times was like the heir in his minority.—
1. In a state of temporary servitude, though having great expectations. “The heir differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all; but is under tutors and governors” (Galatians 4:1-2). Under the Old Testament the bond-servant had this in common with a son, that he was a recognised member of the family; and the son had this in common with the slave, that he was in servitude, but with this difference, the servitude of the son was evanescent, that of the slave was permanent. The heirship is by right of birth, but possession and enjoyment can be reached only by passing through servitude and attaining majority. The minor is in the hands of guardians who care for his person and mental training, and of stewards who manage his estate. So the world, though possessing the promise of great blessing, was held for ages in the servitude of the law.
2. Subject to the restraint of external ordinances.—“Were in bondage under the elements of the world” (Galatians 4:3). The commandments and ordinances imposed by the law belonged to an early and elementary period. In their infantile externalism they stand contrasted with the analogous things of the new dispensation, in which the believer is a grown man who casts away childish things. The Mosaic system watched over and guarded the infancy of the world. It exacted a rigid obedience to its mandates, and in doing so trained mankind to see and feel the need and appreciate the rich inheritance of the covenant of grace. Mosaism rendered invaluable service to Christianity. It safe-guarded the writings that contained promises of future blessings, and educated the race throughout the period of its nonage.
II. The matured sonship of mankind is accomplished through redemption.—
1. The Redeemer is divinely provided and of the highest dignity. “God sent forth His Son” (Galatians 4:4). The mystical Germans speak of Christ as the ideal Son of man, the foretype of humanity; and there is a sense in which mankind was created in Christ Jesus, who is “the image of God, the firstborn of every creature.” But the apostle refers here to a loftier dignity belonging to Christ. He came in the character of God’s Son, bringing His sonship with Him. The Word, who became flesh, was with God, was God, in the beginning. The divine Son of God was sent forth into the world by the all-loving Father to be the Redeemer of mankind and to put an end to the world’s servitude.
2. The Redeemer assumes the nature and condition of those He redeems.—“Made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law” (Galatians 4:4-5). Christ was born of woman as other men are, and, like them, was at first a weak and dependent babe. His child-life has for ever beautified and consecrated child-nature. He was born under law—not the law as a mere Jew, which would have limited His redeeming work to the Jewish nation, but under law in its widest application. He submitted not only to the general moral demands of the divine law for men, but to all the duties and proprieties incident to His position as a man, even to those ritual ordinances which His coming was to abolish. The purpose of His being sent was “to redeem them that were under the law”—to buy them out of their bondage. He voluntarily entered into the condition of the enslaved that He might emancipate them.
3. The sonship acquired through redemption is not by merit or legal right, but by adoption.—“That we might receive the adoption of sons” (Galatians 4:5). The sonship is by grace, not of nature. Man lost his sonship by sin; by grace he gets it back again. Adoption we do not get back; we simply receive it. It is an act of God’s free grace.
III. The attainment of sonship is a conscious reality.—
1. Made evident by the Spirit of God witnessing in us and crying to Him as to a Father. “Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father” (Galatians 4:6). God sent forth His Son into the world of men: He sent forth the Spirit of His Son into their individual hearts. The filial consciousness was born within them, supernaturally inspired. When they believed in Christ, when they saw in Him the Son of God, their Redeemer, they were stirred with a new ecstatic impulse; a divine glow of love and joy kindled in their breasts; a voice not their own spoke to their spirit; their soul leaped forth upon their lips, crying to God, “Father, Father!” They were children of God, and knew it.
2. Confirmed by the heirship that results from the divine adoption.—“If a son, then an heir of God through Christ” (Galatians 4:7). The nonage, the period of servitude and subjection, is passed. It gives place to the unrivalled privilege of a maturer spiritual manhood, and the heirship to an inheritance of indescribable and imperishable blessedness.
Lessons.—
1. The law held the world in bondage.
2. The gospel is a message of liberty by redemption.
3. Redemption by Christ confers distinguished privileges.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Galatians 4:4-5. Christ’s Mission for the Adoption of Sons in the Fulness of Time.
I. The mission of Jesus Christ and the manner in which He manifested Himself.—“God sent forth His Son.” These words present the great fact of Christ’s mission from the Father and His appearance in the world. To denote the inexpressible dignity of Jesus, as being one with the Father in His most essential prerogatives and perfections, He is here styled, “His Son.” He was “made of a woman.” The circumstances of His incarnation placed Him at an immeasurable distance from all other parts of the human race. He was the immediate production of God, by His divine power He was conceived of the Holy Ghost, and thereby completely exempted from the taint of original sin. He was the holy thing born of a virgin. He was by constitution placed in the same state as our first parents. He underwent a similar but severer trial, and maintained His innocence against all the assaults of Satan. He was “made under the law”; whereas all other creatures are under it by the very terms of their existence, by the condition of their nature. He was made under the ceremonial law, under the moral law, under the mediatorial law.
II. The design of Christ’s mission.—“To redeem.” He came not merely to exemplify a rule of life, but to satisfy its violation; not to explain the statutes of heaven, but to pay the penalty arising from the curse announced against their transgression. He came essentially to change the moral situation of mankind. Christ has added to our original brightness; He has not only redeemed us from the first transgression, but accumulated blessings which man, even in innocence, could never have obtained.
III. The fitness of the season at which Christ was manifested.—“The fulness of time.”
1. It was the period foretold by the prophets. Hence the general expectation of His coming.
2. It was a period of advancement in politics, legislation, science and arts, and manners; an age of scepticism.
3. It was a period of toleration. The epoch will arrive when this world shall be thought of as nothing but as it furnished a stage for the manifestation of the Son of God.—Robert Hall.
Galatians 4:4. The Fulness of the Time.—Christ comes when a course of preparation, conducted through previous ages, was at last complete. He was not the creation of His own or any preceding age. What is true of all other great men, who are no more than great men, is not true of Him. They receive from their age as much as they give it; they embody and reflect its spirit. Christ really owed nothing to the time or the country which welcomed His advent.
I. The world was prepared politically for Christ’s work.—There was a common language—the Greek; a common government—the Roman.
II. There was a preparation in the convictions of mankind.—The epoch of religious experiments had been closed in an epoch of despair.
III. There was a preparation in the moral experience of mankind.—The dreadful picture of the pagan world which St. Paul draws at the close of the first chapter of his epistle to the Romans is not a darker picture than that of pagan writers—of moralists like Seneca, of satirists like Juvenal, of historians like Tacitus; and yet enough survived of moral truth in the human conscience to condemn average pagan practice. It led them to yearn for a deliverer, although their aspirations were indefinite enough. This widespread corruption, this longing for better things, marked the close of the epoch of moral experiments.
Lessons.—
1. The earthly life of Christ stood in a totally different relation towards moral truth from that of every other man.
2. It was a life at harmony with itself and a revelation of higher truth.
3. His incarnation delivers us from false views of the world and of life, from base and desponding views of our human nature, and from bondage.—H. P. Liddon.
Christ Obedient to the Law.
I. This obedience was not a matter of course, following upon His incarnation. He might have lived and died, had it been consistent with His high purpose, in sinless purity, without expressly undertaking as He did openly to fulfil the law. It was a voluntary act, becoming and fit for the great work He had in hand.
II. This obedience was not only an integral but also a necessary part of His work of redemption.—Had this not been so, redemption would have been incomplete. Not only God’s unwritten law in the conscience, but God’s written law in the tables of stone, must be completely satisfied. It being shown, by both Gentile and Jew, that neither by nature nor by revealed light was man capable of pleasing God, all men were left simply and solely dependent on His free and unmerited grace. All cases of guilt must be covered, all situations of disobedience taken up and borne and carried triumphantly out into perfection and accordance with the Father’s will, by the Son of God in our flesh.
III. This obedience for man was to be not only complete, so that Christ should stand in the root of our nature as the accepted man, but was to be our pattern, that as He was holy so we might be holy also.
IV. This obedience arose from the requirements of His office connected with the law.—He was the end of the law. It all pointed to Him. Its types and ceremonies all found fulfilment in His person and work. All has been fulfilled. All looked forward to One that was to come—to one who has come, and in His own person has superseded that law by exhausting its requirements, has glorified that law by filling out and animating with spiritual life its waste and barren places. So that God has not changed, nor has His purpose wavered, nor are His people resting on other than their old foundation.—Dean Alford.
Galatians 4:5. Under the Law—
I. As the rule of life.—Thus angels are under the law, Adam was before his fall, and the saints in heaven are so now. None yield more subjection to the law than they, and this subjection is their liberty.
II. As a grievous yoke which none can bear.—
1. It bound the Church of the Old Testament to the observance of many and costly ceremonies.
2. It binds every offender to everlasting death.
3. It is a yoke as it increases sin and is the strength of it. The wicked nature of man is the more to do a thing the more he is forbidden.—Perkins.
Adoption.
I. In what adoption consists.—
1. The points of resemblance between natural and spiritual adoption.
(1) We cease to have our former name, and are designated after the name of God.
(2) We change our abode. Once in the world, now in the Church and family of God.
(3) We change our costume. Conform to the family dress: garments of salvation.
2. The points of difference between natural and spiritual adoption.
(1) Natural adoption was to supply a family defect. God had hosts of children.
(2) Natural adoption was only of sons. No distinction in God’s adoption.
(3) In natural adoption there was only a change of condition. God makes His children partakers of His own nature.
(4) In natural adoption only one was adopted, but God adopts multitudes.
(5) In natural adoption only temporal advantages were derived, but in spiritual the blessings are eternal.
II. Signs of adoption.—
1. Internal signs. Described in Galatians 4:6; Romans 8:14 to Romans 16:2. External signs.
(1) Language;
(2) Profession;
(3) Obedience.
III. Privileges of adoption.—
1. Deliverance from the miseries of our natural state.
2. Investiture into all the benefits of Christ’s family.
3. A title to the celestial inheritance.
Learn—
1. The importance of the blessing.
2. Seek the good of God’s family.
3. Invite strangers to become sons and heirs of God.—Sketches.
Adoption and its Claims.—Among the American Indians when a captive was saved to be adopted in the place of some chieftain who had fallen, his allegiance and his identity were looked upon as changed. If he left a wife and children behind him, they were to be forgotten and blotted from memory. He stood in the place of the dead warrior, assumed his responsibilities, was supposed to cherish those whom he had cherished and hate those whom he had hated; in fact, he was supposed to stand in the same relation of consanguinity to the tribe.—Bancroft.
Galatians 4:6-7. Evidences of Sonship.
I. The presence of the Spirit in the heart.—
1. The beginning of our new birth is in the heart, when a new light is put into the mind, a new and heavenly disposition into the will and affection.
2. The principal part of our renovation is in the heart where the Spirit abides.
3. The beginning and principal part of God’s worship is in the heart.
4. Keep watch and ward about thy heart, that it may be a fit place of entertainment for the Spirit, who is an Ambassador sent from God to thee.
II. The work of the Spirit.—
1. Bestowing conviction that the Scriptures are the word of God.
2. Submission to God and a desire to obey Him.
3. The testimony of the Spirit—a divine manner of reasoning framed in the mind—that we are God’s children.
4. Peace of conscience, joy, and affiance in God.
III. The desires of the heart directed towards God.—
1. Our cries are to be directed to God with reverence.
2. With submission to His will.
3. With importunity and constancy.—Perkins.
The Character and Privileges of the Children of God.
I. The distinguishing characteristic of the children of God.—
1. It is a spirit of filial confidence as opposed to servile fear. No unpardoned sinner has a sufficient ground of confidence in God. Till assured that God loves him, he knows not how God may treat him at any particular time. But we cannot believe that God loves us and at the same time doubt His mercy. He that heartily reposes on God’s favour cannot dread His vengeance.
2. This filial spirit is one of holy love as opposed to the bondage of sin.—The love of God is a powerful element well calculated to change the whole of our inner man. It gives a new bias to our wayward affections and a healthful vigour to every good desire.
3. The filial spirit is one of ready obedience as opposed to the gloomy spirit of servitude.—The service of a slave is unwilling, extorted, unsatisfactory; the obedience of a child is ready, loving, energetic. Love is self-denying, soul-absorbing, devoted.
II. Some of the distinguishing privileges of the children of God.—
1. The child of God has a part in the Father’s love and care.
2. Has a filial resemblance to the heavenly Father.
3. Children of God have the privileges of family communion and fellowship.
4. Have a share in the family provisions.
5. Have a title to the future inheritance.—Robert M. Macbrair.
Galatians 4:7. God’s Offspring.—
1. This is the state of all poor heathen, whether in England or foreign countries: they are children, ignorant and unable to take care of themselves, because they do not know what they are. Paul tells them they are God’s offspring, though they know it not. He does not mean that we are not God’s children till we find out that we are God’s children. You were God’s heirs all along, although you differed nothing from slaves; for as long as you were in heathen ignorance and foolishness God had to treat you as His slaves, not as His children. They thought that God did not love them, that they must buy His favours. They thought religion meant a plan for making God love them.
2. Then appeared the love of God in Jesus Christ, who told men of their heavenly Father. He preached to them the good news of the kingdom of God, that God had not forgotten them, did not hate them, would freely forgive them all that was past; and why? Because He was their Father, and loved them so that He spared not His only begotten Son. And now God looks at us in the light of Jesus Christ. He does not wish us to remain merely His child, under tutors and governors, forced to do what is right outwardly and whether it likes or not. God wishes each of us to become His son, His grown-up and reasonable Song of Song of Solomon 3. It is a fearful thing to despise the mercies of the living God, and when you are called to be His sons to fall back under the terrors of His law in slavish fear and a guilty conscience and remorse which cannot repent. He has told you to call Him your Father; and if you speak to Him in any other way, you insult Him and trample underfoot the riches of His grace. You are not God’s slaves, but His sons, heirs of God and joint-heirs of Christ. What an inheritance of glory and bliss that must be which the Lord Jesus Christ Himself is to inherit with us—an inheritance of all that is wise, loving, noble, holy, peaceful, all that can make us happy and like God Himself.—C. Kingsley.