When you were a child, you probably had some precise rules. “Don’t
touch that! Don’t go there!” As you grew older, those rules changed. The
earlier rules may have seemed reversed, but with hindsight, you can see they always
had a particular trajectory. “Stay away from the stove” gradually turned into
learning to cook with less and less supervision. It is not that your parents
were randomly changing their minds, but that we need more detailed instruction
when we are children than when we are mature.
Older kids: What are some rules you used to
have which have changed form? How do they follow the same intention?
Today’s text refers to a Roman custom where children were
under the care of “tutors and governors” until they reached adulthood. The
child did not have freedom but answered to a servant who, in modern English, was
something like a nanny. His job was not to explicitly teach the boys but to
discipline them and prepare them for adulthood. The child was free, and in some
sense, the servant belonged to him, yet he was under the servant’s authority.
So sons were treated like servants until they grew up.
Paul explains that the Law was like that. Perhaps the
clearest example was when Jesus said that man was not made for the Sabbath but
the Sabbath for man. There is no Law without humanity, so in some sense, the
Law exists to serve us, not the other way around. Yet, for a period, God’s people were placed under the Law until the
time to grow up came. The goal was never to stay under the rule master forever,
but to grow up.
Jesus, the very Son of God, became a slave to the Law Her
had made so that He could redeem us from the Law. There is no need to act like
a child; the full blessings of heirs are ours. A Christian being bound by the
requirements of the Law is like an adult chewing on a bottle or climbing into a
crib. Jesus has set us free by the gospel, so we should not be entangled again.
Discussion idea: Why would Christians want to place
themselves back in bondage? What kind of wrong thinking was leading the
Galatians astray?
Prayer focus: Pray for the maturity to follow God,
not by Law but by the gratitude of grace.
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