Coney Hill Baptist Church
Demonstrating God’s Love Together
God in Me - Profound and Personal
Galatians 4:1-7
1 What I am saying is that as long as the heir is a child, he is no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate.
2 He is subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his father.
3 So also, when we were children, we were in slavery under the basic principles of the world.
4 But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law,
5 to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.
6 Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, Abba, Father.
7 So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.
Introduction:
Now Jesus has been born, yet Christmas is over. Now a New Year has come, but, so far, seems much like the old one. Now ‘Immanuel’ – God is with us, yet we can’t see him, Jesus has ascended. What are we to do?
The only possible, appropriate cry, for a Christian is ‘Come Holy Spirit…’
It’s a vital and necessary cry if we are to be anything more than a Jesus fan club, if we are to have any lasting strength or hope or influence.
Too often we think of the person, role and work of the Spirit too narrowly. We associate him solely with Pentecostal exuberance, assume he is only for those within certain Christian traditions or of particular, extroverted, personalities. We imagine that His role is, exclusively, the giving of gifts, or the heightening of experience. We think we can get by ignoring Him, doing without Him. We are wrong.
In 2012 we need God’s Spirit, perhaps, more than ever. Individually and as a Church – humanly speaking times are tough, in many ways. We’re not without encouragement, but we worship and celebrate a God who we believe to be alive, active, involved, empowering and, if we are to be true to that calling, we will not be able to somehow ‘work it up’ within ourselves, all of our energy must come from Him. We, all of us, each of us, need his Spirit afresh.
And so, from now until near Easter, we will look again at the work of the Spirit in the early Church. As Paul describes it that work is deep and varied, there will be some familiar things and some surprising ones. Some things that will console us, others that will stretch us. As ever, we do so not principally to understand the New Testament, or Paul, or the early church, better, but to be challenged afresh by that same Spirit today for this church, for us.
First of all then, something about the very nature of the Spirit and, consequently, the extent, the depth, the scope of his work with us.
In Galatians, Paul is arguing for a gospel that takes such a hold of those who trust in it that it is quite unlike anything else. Jews in his audience were used to obeying religious law to please, or appease, God. Gentiles had their own rituals, superstitions or idols which performed, by and large, the same function. Paul says now, in the gospel, all of that’s gone, it’s in the past. Some of those things might’ve been useful once, but not anymore. Now there’s a whole new situation and we are to be influenced, challenged, directed not by any exterior thing but by something within, inside us. More specifically, not ‘something’, but someone – God. He, himself, wants to live through us, out of us – by His Spirit.
Rich but Not – The Unknown Slave (v’s1-3)
Paul paints a picture of a child, the son, or daughter, of wealthy parents. We can imagine the lovely home, the wealth of toys, the staff and help to support and supply every whim. We also know that this child is privileged – rich, is more than likely to lead a life of power and luxury. He, or she, is certainly more entitled to the opulent surroundings than those staff who teach or care for him. But, all the same he, or she, is dependent on them totally. Depending on their age, they can’t dress or feed themselves, read or write, make sensible decisions – anything much really – they’re a child. They need that instruction, they require looking after, however rich or privileged they are totally in the hands of their carers – in a sense they’re slaves.
This is the 3rd of a series of pictures Paul has painted in this letter. Previously he has alluded to prison guards (3:22) and baby-sitters (3:24). The point is the same, the guard, the sitter, the nanny or teacher are all necessary external supports to a prisoner, a baby, or a child. But when they are free, or grown, they are no longer needed and the child, especially, can enjoy the full fruits of their own position. Religion, tradition and the like, he says, the law for the Jews and a variety of practises for the Gentiles, are just like those things, appropriate for a season maybe, but not the real thing. There comes a time when people freely enter into all that is rightfully theirs. That time, he says is now, time for the children of God to come into their own.
Freedom of the Spirit - (v’s 4-7)
But how? Through the sending, by God, of His own Son, that’s what we’ve just been celebrating. (v’s 4-5) But that’s history, past, completed accomplishment. What makes that real today is verse 6 – “God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts” This very son, this same Jesus, into our hearts! That is who the Spirit is, that is what the Spirit’s for, no longer ‘God with us’ but ‘God in us’ each of us, all of us. Setting us free, releasing us from all other ties, enabling our rightful inheritance to be entered into – children of God, heirs of a kingdom. (v.7)
That’s what the freedom of the Spirit is, not the opportunity to behave un-self-consciously, but the removal of all artificial means to guide us towards our true place in God’s heart - a bit like the taking down of those guiding bars along the edges of a 10-pin bowling lane – because now we have it (Him) within us to walk straight.
Finally, a comment about this verse (v.6) which is very familiar…
‘Abba’ – Intimacy not Infancy…
This is so well known but so, I think, miss-understood. I guess we all know that ‘Abba’ is the Aramaic term for father and, further-more that it’s a close family term – the sort that would never have been used for addressing God. ‘Daddy’ is often cited as the best English equivalent.
Well yes, and no. It is a family term and it is personal, even passionate – it’s been described as a cry of the heart rather than merely a word – the sort of thing you might shout out when being separated or after returning from a long absence. But it’s not childish, or associated with infancy. It’s a term found in legal documents of the time, to indicate not the age of a child but the genuine closeness of the relationship – a bit like our term ‘next of kin’.
‘Abba’ than is about intimacy more than infancy. It doesn’t emphasise our weakness but our closeness.
Conclusion:
How close are we to God at the beginning of 2012? He wants not just to come nearer to us but to be invited afresh within us – to set us free all over again, to lead us into the riches of our inheritance.
Office Address:
Coney Hill Road
West Wickham
Kent
BR4 9BU