God's Offspring.
I. Men were children before Christ came, ignorant and unable to take care of themselves. St. Paul told the heathen Athenians that they were God's children. He put them in mind that one of their own heathen poets had told them so, and had said, "We are also God's offspring." And so in this chapter he says, You were God's children all along, though you did not know it. You were God's heirs all along, though you differed in nothing from slaves, for as long as you were in your heathen ignorance and foolishness God had to treat you as His slaves, not as His children; and so you were in bondage under the elements of the world till the fulness of time was come.
II. Therefore is every child that comes into the world baptised freely into the name of God. Baptism is a sign and warrant that God loves that child, that God looks on it as His child, not for itself or its own sake, but because it belongs to Jesus Christ, who by becoming a man redeemed all mankind, and made them His property and His brothers. Therefore every child, when it is brought to be baptized, promises repentance and faith when it comes to years of understanding. It is not God's slave, as the beasts are; it is God's child. No slavish, terrified, superstitious coaxing and flattering will help us with God. He has told us to call Him our Father, and if we speak to Him in any other way we insult Him, and trample under foot the riches of His grace.
III. This thought and the peace which it brings, St. Paul tells us, is none of our own; we did not put it into our own hearts, from God it comes, that blessed thought that He is our Father. We could never have found it out for ourselves. It is the Spirit of the Son of God, the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ, which gives us courage to say, "Our Father which art in heaven," which makes us feel that these words are true, and must be true, and are worth all other words in the world put together: that God is our Father, and we are His sons.
C. Kingsley, Sermons for the Times,p. 213.
References: Galatians 4:7. S. Pearson, Christian World Pulpit,vol. iv., p. 90; T. Arnold, Sermons,vol. ii., p. 230. Galatians 4:9. Wilkinson, Thursday Penny Pulpit,vol. viii., p. 120. Galatians 4:15. Homilist,vol. v., p. 128; S. Pearson, Christian World Pulpit,vol. iv., p. 115; Preacher's Monthly,vol. ii., p. 248.