Galatians chapter 4, once again the first seven verses. Be careful how you listen, for this is God's Word. Now I say, as long as the heir is a child, he does not differ at all from a slave, although he is owner of everything. But he is under guardians and managers until the date set by the father. So also we, while we were children, were held in bondage unto the elemental things of the world. But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order that He might redeem those who are under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And 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. In my dating years of late high school and throughout my three years in seminary, as a Christian man, I was concerned to take my date to some place or to something that was appropriate. One of my first dates with Ruthanne We went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. And that so impressed her that she said yes when I married her. But another thing I did with the multitude of girls that I dated, all two of them, I took them to see the movie The Sound of Music. And it just come out. It was popular. And it was decent. So it was an okay thing to do. You remember the movie. It's about the Von Trapp family. A man who was widowed, had a number of children, I forget how many. The plot involves the way that Captain Von Trapp runs his home and family. And how he relates to his children. Now no one I believe, would accuse the captain of not loving his children. No one would accuse him of in any way denying that they were his sons and his daughters. But he had a very strange way, in the beginning of the story, of showing it. As a Navy man, he runs his family, he relates to his children like he would the crew of one of his ships. order and discipline, response to whistle signals, marching in step, everything about them from their dress to their behavior tightly managed and controlled. You always knew that in his way he loved his children, but it seemed in his family that they were around only to serve him, only there to obey him, He kept a distance from them. He placed them in the hands of others. They were given over to managers. They were given over to governesses. The children were treated like servants. Yes, they were children. But it seemed that they existed only for the pleasure of the Father. They were abundantly required to show that they were His possessions. that they were His children, they were to honor Him and do all that He said and they were to do all that He required, but they hardly felt that He was their Father. He hardly gave of Himself to them. He hardly made them feel His love. He hardly made them feel His love by His actions. By His actions they did not know, in fact, that He was their Father or that they were His children. The attraction of the story is that this man learns to show his children that they are not just his legally and formally, but he learns to show them experientially that they are his children. In the story, he becomes a father who learns to really love his children. to have an intimate relationship with them, to give of Himself to them so that they experience His love, so that they know and are assured that their Father loves them. Their fear of Him, their hesitancy of approach to Him, their feeling like they were merely servants in His house was replaced by a Father who welcomed them into His embrace who hugged and caressed them, who made them feel loved, who assured them that He was their Father and they were His children. That not only were they His possessions, but that He, as their Father, was their possession as well. Now we have to be careful with this illustration, because we can find fault with the Captain. But as it relates the way I want to relate it to the difference between the relationship that God has with His people in the Old Testament and the relationship that comes in the coming of Christ in the New, certainly our God has no fault. There is certainly nothing wrong with the way that our God relates to His people and in that relationship He is their God. and he tells them that he is their God, and he tells them that they are his people, and the covenant is in place, and that covenant exchange of mutual possession is in place. God in the Old Testament gives himself to his people for them to enjoy, and in the Old Testament he claims them as his possession, and they are to show that they are his possessions by glorifying him. The covenant of grace is intact in all of its ways. But yet, we will not understand what the Apostle Paul is getting at in these verses in the book of Galatians if we do not understand that Paul will still insist that with the coming of Jesus, there is a great difference, a great transition that occurs between Old Testament and New Testament. There is a great transition that occurs in the way that it appears that God relates to his people in the Old Testament, and the new thing that appears in the coming of Christ. Paul is not denying that there is sonship in the Old Testament, but he is most certainly saying that with the coming of our Savior, there is the coming of new sonship. He's not denying that there is fatherhood of God in the Old Testament, but he's saying that what comes in Jesus is so different and so great, that in contrast, it looks like there is no fatherhood of God in the Old Testament. It looks like the relationship of the people of God to God in the Old Testament was one of servant in the house, slave in the house, rather than son in the house. This is the case that he's making in these verses. What Paul is talking about in Galatians 3-4 when he contrasts the condition of Old Testament Israel under the law with the coming of Christ in the new era that he summarizes his faith. In that contrast that he makes, Paul introduces the change that comes in Christ from Old Testament to New Testament by talking about the change that takes place in sonship. Paul's doing this all the time as I've shared that with you. He will say that he's not denying that there were not all of these things in the Old Testament. He's not denying that there was truth in the Old Testament. He's not denying that there was grace in the Old Testament. He's not denying any of those things, but he's saying that what came with the Savior was so great and so wonderful that it contrasts with the Old as though in the Old there was no truth and there was no grace. He's not denying that there was glory in the Old Testament, but he's talking about that the glory that comes in the Gospel and comes with Christ is such a tremendous glory, it's like the Old Testament had none. Do you see what he's doing? For the sake of comparison, he's talking in these ways. In the final verses of Galatians 3, as he is fond of doing, Paul contrasts the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament can be referred to as a time when God's people were under the custody of the law. under its guardianship, under managers, under tutors, under governesses. In contrast, the New Testament era he will call the time when faith came. Again, he's not denying that there was faith in the Old Testament. He affirms that. But he's saying that what came with Christ brought something much more glorious, much more perfect and complete that stands out in contrast like Old Testament Israel in that era there was no faith. Now again, lest there be misunderstanding, in the contrast, Paul is not making an absolute contrast, but a comparative one. Paul is not a dispensationalist. He does not believe that Israel in the Old Testament was saved by keeping the law. That's not what he's talking about. No, for Paul, the covenant theologian, the covenant of grace is one since Genesis 3.15. Salvation is always by grace through faith. He never denies that there was faith in the Old Testament. As a matter of fact, when he wants to prove to the Galatian people ever against the Judaizer heresy, that justification is always by faith and not by works of the law. He goes back where? He goes back to Abraham and cites Abraham as the example. He goes back to the Old Testament example in Galatians 3.6. Abraham was justified by his faith, he believed, and it was reckoned unto him as righteousness. So Paul, in making the contrast, is saying that fullness of salvation, completeness and perfection comes in Christ. Such saving faith, such justification by grace through faith, comes with Jesus as compared to what faith there was in the Old Testament. It's like faith came with Christ for the first time. It's like it came for the first time. You find this great appreciation for the far superior day that has arrived in Christ expressed by Paul in a place like Romans 8, 31-39, where he says, If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how will he not also with him freely give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies. Who is the one who condemns Christ Jesus as He who died, yes rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us, who shall separate us from the love of Christ. Nothing shall be able to separate us as He ends that chapter. You see what he's doing. In the Old Testament, the covenant could be broken because of sin laid to the charge of God's people. They could be separated from Him. In exile, they were separated from Him. But Paul is rejoicing in the coming of Christ, and in the death of Christ, and in the work of Christ. In the Savior, sin is forgiven, once and for all, and perfectly forgiven. We are justified forever. No charge can be laid against us, and nothing can separate you from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Do you see the kinds of things that he's seeing? and the kind of contrast that he is drawing. Further, again, lest we misunderstand Paul, in the contrast between Old Testament and New Testament, Paul is not making an absolute contrast, but rather a comparative one. Paul is not antinomian. Paul is not saying that the law has no function in the New Testament once Christ comes. What he is saying is that when Christ comes, everything changes. As the Old Testament saints were oriented to the law under Moses, now the New Testament church, the New Testament saints are oriented to the law under Christ. The law is ministered to them through the grid of Christ, through the grid of heaven, and through the perfection of Christ's work. So all of the law is fulfilled, he will argue in Romans chapter 8. All of the law is fulfilled. But does that take the law away? No, it doesn't take the law away. For Christ fulfilled all the law, he goes on to say, in order to fulfill it in you. What it's saying is the law no longer stands external to you, outside of you, and impinging upon you and keeping you under its threat and under its bondage. You are free from all of that. The law has been fulfilled. Christ has satisfied all the demands of the law. But it means also that that does not take away from you demand. It does not take away from you command. But now you are to keep the law as those from whom it proceeds on the inside, from your heart. a willing love and service to God. Again, what's that look like? What's the pattern that you are to follow in regard to that? The commandments, the law of God. Faith must work through love. And that's what Paul argues in all of his writings. His approach to you as people of God is not, you better do things or else bad things will happen. His approach to you is, why do you not want to do good things? Why do you not want to obey the Lord? Why do you not want to serve Him? So such a wonderful and glorious shift is taking place in redemptive history with Christ coming. The new era stands in stark contrast to the old. And it's the new day then for Paul. And it's the new day for everything. Everything that he has to say, everything that he sees is new. because it's come with Christ and the coming of Christ. And so, also for Paul, it's a new day of the fatherhood of God. It's a new day of the sonship of the people of God. Again, not that there weren't those things in the Old Testament, but what comes with Christ is so new and so different and so far richer, it's like the old did not have it. In Galatians 4, 1-5, Paul picks back up on his illustration of the Tudor from Greek culture. The Old Testament people of God under the law were justified, adopted, and were being sanctified, and they were to be glorified, all as a gift of God's grace. They were God's adopted children. But as we've seen in Paul's use of this illustration, God dealt with them as underage children. They were under the discipline of their tutor. They were under the management, under the guardianship of the law to discipline them. Their underage time under the law was not for the purpose of teaching them to think that the law, if they kept it, would reduce sin in them. Rather, the law was given by God to increase transgression. Paul will say that in a number of different places. The law is given to teach them that they could never earn their salvation by the keeping of the law. The law requires perfect obedience, entire obedience, the kind of obedience that was required by Adam in the covenant of works in the garden. Not just a good intent, not just a sincere heart, not just a good practice, but yet failures. Adam was required to obey God perfectly and entirely. And for one transgression, he was exiled from the garden. Israel isn't related to that way by God. Israel is required. to maintain and reflect and to show their sonship by obeying the Lord. But they are not required to offer an entire and perfect and complete obedience and they are never exiled from the land of Egypt because of one transgression. They are exiled, as I shared with you last week, from the land of Canaan, not because they sinned, but because they will not repent. They were given the law to increase sin, to increase their sense of their bondage. Galatians 4.3, they were held in bondage under the elemental things of the world. The elemental things, a reference to the way that the world thinks about religion. The way the world thinks about religion. You know the way that the world thinks about religion, all of them, no matter what we're talking about. The way that all the world thinks about religion is you do this, you do that, you do this thing, you do that thing, and that merits and earns some kind of reward and favor from God. That's elemental religion, and it's false religion. And the law in Israel's life is to demonstrate to them that that whole approach, do this, do that, keep this law, keep this thing, is never a path that will bring anybody, Jew or Gentile, bring them to a path of salvation, bring them to a path of freedom, and is only a path that leads them to bondage, more bondage and to more slavery. God intended to show Israel that law keeping is not the path to justification and salvation, but rather the path to bondage. Paul is saying that the Old Testament saints under the law felt like little more than slaves. They felt bound. They felt like they had little freedom. That's the image of the Tudor. They were like underage children. And though they were sons of God, and though they held title to the inheritance, they felt like slaves who earned their place in the house by what they do. They could begin to think of it that way. And it could give them perhaps the impression of it being that way. That they were like slaves in God's house who earned their place in the house by what they do. And that their relationship to God looked like merely a legal one. that it looked like merely a formal one defined by the law. Now God is never satisfied to leave his people thinking that way. The covenant is legal and involves law. But God is never content to allow the covenant to rest at that level of understanding. As I've put it to you before, the covenant is legal and formal. But it's much deeper than that and much richer than that. It is a relationship of love between God and His people. Just as you, husbands and wives, have legal documents that show that you are married. It's called your marriage license. And when it comes to Valentine's Day and you're going to tell your wife in some way or other that you love them, here's an advice for you. Go get your marriage certificate and fold it in an envelope and send it to her. And then run for the hills. Because although that marriage certificate does define your marriage, it's never going to satisfy or explain or exhaust the nature of your marriage. It's a part of it, but your marriage is always much more than that. It is an exchange of love between husband and wife. The same way with God. God will always push Israel. in that direction. But it does not take away from the fact that Israel in their history in the Old Testament comes to have this sense, probably inappropriately so, with this sense that what they are in relationship to God is more like slaves in his house and in his family who earned their keep in in his family by obeying and doing it. So that though they were children under the law, their relationship to their father, what was the relationship that God, that Israel had to God? Okay, God is their father, yes. They have that relationship, and Israel are his sons. There is that relationship. But think about all of the Old Testament. Think about Israel's approach to God. How did they feel about approaching Him? How did they feel about approaching their father? They were fearful. They were timid. They hesitated. Their relationship to their father was characterized by these things, and it restricted their approach. The family, if we can put it this way, looked like, gave the appearance of being like Captain Von Trapp's family before the change. Under age, Old Testament Israel, under the tutor of the law, seemed like little more than servants in God's house. They had little freedom. Their relationship to God was characterized by law. And because it was characterized by law, it was also characterized by fear, by hesitancy, by intimidation. And as a result, they were being taught to long for the day. What's it all doing? It's all creating in them. We talked this morning about how God will do this. He will use things to create within the hearts of His people a certain longing, a certain looking forward to the future, As a result, they were being taught to long for the day when they would come of age, as it were, when they would be mature, when they would be in relationship with God and in his house as grown-ups, to put it that way. The day when they would receive and possess actually the inheritance that was promised them. And just as the Greek father Paul is picking up on this, just as the Greek father set that day when the underage child would no longer be under his tutor, but the day when he inherited his father's estate. In Galatians 4, 4 and 5, Paul states that God set the date for the change in Israel's status. God set the date for the change in Israel's status from underlaw to receive the adoption of full sonship. But when the fullness of time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order that He might redeem those who are under the law, that they might receive the adoption as sons." What's Paul getting at in this whole imagery? Sounds like he's saying that with Christ comes adoption of son at the first time, but he's not saying that. He's saying Old Testament Israel were sons, underage sons, held title to the inheritance, but now with the coming of Christ they are received as full sons and have full title and possession of the inheritance. The day when Israel no longer is under the Tudor, no longer seems to be little more than slave in God's house, that day ends in the coming of Christ. with Christ God's people come into the day when they are received in God's house and family as his fully adopted sons. How does this change take place? Paul talks about that in Galatians 4.4 the same way he answered in Galatians 3.13. Christ redeemed us from the law, the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. This adoption that he talks about, this fullness of adoption into the family of God comes about as a result of the accomplished work of Christ. From the fullness of time came God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order that he might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. God the Father set the date when Israel, his underage minor son, would be set free from the Tudor. And that date was the date of Christ's coming. The fullness of time. The fullness of time. That means not merely the best time. It doesn't mean it's the time when the world enjoys the Roman peace. It doesn't mean it's the time when there are roads to carry the gospel throughout the world. It doesn't mean that it's the time where there's a common language that that gospel can be proclaimed in. What it means is, redemptive historically, is the fullness of the times. It's the time that God has promised. The time that he promised throughout the whole of the Old Testament from beginning in Genesis 3.15, and now with the coming of Christ, that time is filled and filled and filled and filled in itself. It's the time of the coming of Christ, the coming of the kingdom, and the coming of the freedom of the sons of God. How does this change take place? How does the fullness of time work? So as to free the people from their bondage to the law and all of its demands and bring them into possession of full sonship in the family of God. How do we get free from the curse of the law? Under law, if not keeping the whole thing entirely and perfectly, if we do not do that, it brings curse. How do we get free from that? How do we escape the bondage of that curse? He says that it's because of Christ who redeems those who are under the law. Christ alone can set you free from bondage to the law. Christ not only rescues us from under the law, Christ redeems you from the law. He pays a price to set us free from the curse of the law and from under its power. Christ comes. He is born of a woman. He must, if He's going to do this and do this on our behalf, He must be like us, so He is born of a woman. And in fulfillment of the promise of Genesis 3.15, the seed of the woman, He is it. He is born of a woman. He is born under the law, namely He is under its judgment, under its curse. He is born. Christ pays a price by His passive obedience. He dies the death that the law requires. He redeems us from the curse by becoming a curse for us, as Paul has said in this letter. Further, Christ is born under the law's demands. It demands perfect obedience. Christ, in His active obedience, pays the price and He satisfies that demand. Only when the law's demands are paid are we set free from it. Payment has to be made. A price has to be given. In Galatians 4-5 we read Christ redeems those who are under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. We only are adopted into God's family when sin is taken out of the way. By obeying the law perfectly and giving us the righteousness that is like God's own, our Savior takes sin out of the way. And then the way is clear for us to have communion and fellowship with God, to be adopted into God's family, to be his adopted sons and daughters. No longer underage, with no more freedom than a slave. No longer sons who only hold title to the inheritance, but sons who receive and possess the inheritance. Our sonship, our adoption in Christ, an already benefit of our salvation. an already benefit of our salvation. All the benefits of our salvation in Christ are both already and not yet. So there is a future adoption. Paul will talk about it in Romans chapter 8. And it again is the resurrection of our body. The future aspects of all of these benefits that we share from Christ are connected to the future resurrection of the body of believers. So we are adopted, he argues, but he also talks about we look forward to the day when sons of God are adopted and receive their resurrection bodies. In Christ we have received the adoption as sons. In Him, those who believe in Him, those who receive Him, to them He gave the right to be called the children of God, John says in chapter 1. Don't doubt it. God declares sonship to those who believe in Christ. God declares it in the Gospel. Too often Christians doubt it. They feel so bad about themselves. They feel so bad that they are such sinners that they doubt that they are in God's family. And what happens with these folk is that they begin to fall back into thinking that they are in the family on the basis of what they do. They fall back into thinking that they are but slaves in the family, whose position in the family is on the basis of performance. Old Testament Israel might succumb to that way of thinking. Spurgeon in his little book, All of Grace, says that when Satan comes around you and he starts to poke you with that, when he takes his sword and he begins to poke you about how can you be a Christian, how can you be a member of the family of God when you're such a sinner, Spurgeon suggests that you take the sword out of Satan's hand and you turn it around and you lop his head off with it. And that you declare to Satan that I'm a sinner, yes, but I'm a sinner who has been justified by faith in Christ alone. I am a sinner, but I am adopted into God's family. And I am not in that family on the basis of what I do, but I'm in that family on the basis of who I am, an adopted son or daughter of God. Christianity is not a religion of bondage. Paul will say that. It is not a religion of fear again unto bondage. It is not a religion of slavery. It is a religion of freedom and liberty of the full and blessed sons and daughters of God. It is not a religion of work, salvation, of the elementary principles of religion, ideas in this world, a bondage to rules and regulations that can never save Never merit reward from God. Our adoption is objectively accomplished in the work of redemption that Christ has done. The Gospel summons you to stand in that adoption. Regularly, Paul's language will be a summons to you to stand in the objective truth of these things. Not in the first place how you feel about anything, but to stand objectively in the objective reality and the history of these things that have been accomplished, to put yourself there and to see yourself. there. He summons you to stand in the adoption that Christ has accomplished on your behalf. God declares it to us in the Gospel of His Son. Don't think that Christians can not fall into the pattern of thinking that it is by their own efforts and by their own works, godly things that they do, that still those things are what merits them in their position in the family of God. Philip Reitman, who is now president of Wheaton College, or soon will be, writes this about John Wesley. He says that before Wesley came to Christ he was a better Christian than most believers. Listen to this. This is before Wesley was a Christian. What Wesley was before he was a Christian was a pietist. What he was was somebody who believed that by his works, and those works he would dedicate to the God of the Bible, but he believed that those works are that which made him holy and saved him. Before Wesley came to Christ, he was a better Christian than most believers, at least as far as his outward behavior was concerned. During his days at Oxford, he helped establish a group called the Holy Club. The students in the club went to church, studied their Bibles, fasted and prayed. They went into the prisons and workhouses to do evangelism. They provided food, clothing, and education for the poor children of the city. Yet all the while they were spiritual orphans in bondage to their own religiosity. It was not until years later that Wesley finally came to trust in Christ only for salvation. As he looked back on everything he had done for God before he came to Christ, he wrote, I had then the faith of a servant, though not that of a son. I have the faith of a servant, but not that of a son." Aren't those marvelous things that he was doing? They certainly were, and this is certainly not a message to deter you from doing those marvelous things. But you see out of what spirit he did them. The spirit of fear, the spirit of serving in the sense of a slave who earns and merits something before God. Don't be fooled, don't be mistaken. It's not people. People who do these kinds of things are not at all necessarily Christians in any way, shape or form. Paul will remind you in 1 Corinthians 13, though I give my body to be burned, you know how many people out there will give their bodies to be burned? All kinds of people will give their bodies to be burned. Don't think that just Christians might do such a thing. Even the world will do them, even maybe faster than Christians might. But if I give my body to be burned, what does Paul say? And I have not love, it profits me nothing. And you know from our study of 1 Corinthians 13, when Paul talks about love, he's talking about Jesus. If I give my body to be burned and have not Jesus, it profits me nothing. That's what he's saying. And that's what Wesley came to see. I do all these things, but I have not Jesus. I have not the accomplished work of Jesus. I have not the adopting power of Jesus. It's nothing. It means nothing. I am in the family of God on the basis of that adoption alone. Adoption is a forensic act. It's a legal act. When you adopt a child, if you adopt a child, you go to court. The judge hammers his gavel and says that from this day forth this child is your son or your daughter and then you give the name and those kinds of things. But as I said earlier, God will not leave our new status at that level. It's legal. It's set. It's unchangeable. It's declared. But in Galatians 4, 6-7, Paul has more to say. You are the sons of God. And because you are sons, God has sent forth the spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. God will not allow the covenant relationship with his people to reside and to rest at the level of legal only and formality only. but he will press the issue to inward, subjective realities. The Father and Christ not only want us to know our adoption, objectively speaking, they want us to have the inner assurance, the certainty of it. Galatians 4.6, God wants us to know for certain that we are loved. He wants us to know that we are his children. This is the right way for any family, is it not? This is the right way of parenting in any family context and situation. The father loves the children and he wants the children to know that. At least I hope that's the way we're doing things in our families. I hope we as parents are not just telling our children things and expecting things from them and demanding things of them and we're not showing them that we love them. by the way that we deal with them, the way that we embrace them, the way that we hug them, the way that we talk to them. We're not in the work of making our children feel and understand that they are loved. God wants us to know for certain that we are loved, that we are his children. The Father and the Son send the Spirit. The Spirit of the resurrected Christ is sent to us to come and dwell in us. Just the fact that God wants to dwell with you is an indication of the intimacy and the love and the affection that God has for his people. The Spirit of Christ comes to dwell in us and that Spirit of Christ in us speaks of the Father's relationship to us in the same language that was used by Jesus of his relation to the Father. As our Lord prayed in the garden before his death Expressing the love and affection and intimacy, the closeness that he had with the Father, he used that term, Abba. That's what the term Abba means. It is a term of endearment, of closeness and intimacy. In Mark 14.36, our Lord praying in the Garden of Gethsemane says this, and Jesus was saying, Abba, Father, all things are possible for thee. Remove this cup from me, yet not what I will, but what thou wilt. The Holy Spirit assures you of the same intimate, affectionate, close father-son relationship that Jesus had. After all, after his resurrection, he sends word to his brothers, that's the language, go to my brothers and tell them that I go before them into Galilee. And then in John he says, to Mary, tell my disciples, tell the church that I go to my father and your father. Something new has happened. A new fatherhood of God, a new sonship of his people. F.F. Bruce says in his commentary that Abba Father is the voice when we, when the Spirit puts within us that cry of our intimate relationship with God as our Father, that we know that we have with As we come into His presence, as we beseech Him, as we draw nearer to Him, we know that He receives us. We know that we are welcome. We know that He embraces us. We know that, as it were, in a sort of way that He seats us upon His lap to hear from us and to exchange with us His own fatherly care and interest as He hears from us. That as we say, Abba, Father, as we say it, what we are saying is the same thing that our Savior said. The voice of the resurrected Jesus is on the lips of His people. In Galatians 4.7, God the Father and the Son want us also to know that as sons who have come of age, this means that now we have inherited. In the Spirit being given to us, God Himself gives Himself to us. Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son. And if a son, then an heir. through God. The Father and Christ want us to know that we are no longer underage sons waiting to inherit. What we come to know and understand is that in Christ we have inherited. We have inherited. Paul will say that in Christ we are co-heirs with Christ of God. Our inheritance is God Himself. God gives Himself to us as our possession to enjoy. He gives Himself to us in a relationship of affection and love and embrace. The Father and Christ want us to be assured that in Christ we have come of age. We are now heirs of God. We have inherited not just blessings, not just benefits, but we have inherited God Himself. Not only are we God's possessions to glorify Him, But now we have inherited God Himself. Now God is our full possession. We can now claim God as our Father. Not just that He's our parent. Not just that He's the source of our life. Not just that He's the provider for your existence, but He is our Father. And He gives Himself completely for our well-being. Not in a mere legal relationship under law, but now also loving and intimate communion and fellowship with Him. Christ has not only accomplished the adoption of his people, Paul says, but the Holy Spirit applies that adoption inwardly to our hearts. In the fullness of time, redemption comes. We are delivered out from under the curse of the law, adopted as God's special sons. We know it objectively and we also know it subjectively. It is objectively declared and legally sealed unto us and also the assurance of it is provided in our hearts by the Spirit. Jesus declares it regularly in His ministry. He teaches and declares the new day of the fatherhood of God. God indeed was known as Father in the Old Testament, yet in the Old Testament the approach to God, access to Him, was restricted. Jesus declares the arrival of the new day of Sonship, intimacy and access to God. He does so right in the Lord's Prayer when He tells you to pray this way in Matthew 6, Our Father. When He tells you to pray, Our Father. The New Testament also testifies on every hand. John 1, 12-13, As many as received Him, to them He gave the right to be called children of God. 1 John 1, How great a love the Father has bestowed upon us that we should be called the children of God. This is the new thing that has come. the new thing that has come. Jonathan reminded us from Mark 2.5 of the same kind of thing. Our Lord speaking out of the new day that has come in His coming says to the paralytic, my son, my son, your sins are forgiven you. The relationship between Captain Von Trapp and his family changes from one in which they felt like little more than crewmen on a ship who had a captain to children who indeed had a father. A father who loved them, embraced them, lifted them up on his lap, drew them into his bosom, showed them affection, loved them and made them feel loved. Our son Aaron puts his son Nathan to bed each night. He bends down and kisses him and he says, Daddy loves you buddy. Daddy loves you, buddy. Your relationship with your God is Abba, Father. He's Daddy. And Daddy loves you. Daddy loves you. It's a new day of adoption and sonship. Be assured that God loves you in just that way and even more and deeper and better. Let's pray.