Faith in Love: The Book of Galatians. Galatians 4: Children of God

This is the lesson plan for tonight. Use it to his glory.

 

Faith in Love: The Book of Galatians
Galatians 4: Children of God

There is a right time for everything. Jesus came at the right time for his coming. He came as a human in order to minister to humans. And it was a perfect climate for the spread of his gospel to the entire world. The world had a common language, it had a common government, the Roman Empire had the Pax Romana (Roman Peace) which meant there were no real wars going on and everybody got along together under penalty of death, and travel was relatively easy and simple. Not only this, but people were looking for something. False messiahs had come up several times, not only in Israel but around the Roman Empire. The Jews were looking for the Messiah, and the pagans were becoming disenchanted with their multiple gods. It was a society ripe for the message of God to come into and spread. It was also a society that was ready to grow up spiritually.

All of society was waiting for Jesus. And all of society was in slavery. The coming of the gospel was a coming of two things. One was the fact that God’s creation was ready to move to the next level – the level of being his united children rather than a fragmented bunch of people doing all kinds of different things. Two was that the apostle Paul says that God sent Jesus to buy us back from slavery. The whole world was in bondage of one kind or another. The Jews were in slavery to the law and their own myriad interpretations of it. The Romans were in bondage to their immorality and lack of any real purpose to life. The rest of the world had no real goal to life to look toward. All the things that make Christianity unique were missing and people wanted them.

Paul tells the Galatians that when they try to earn their salvation and leave grace behind in favor of works, they are going back into that slavery. He says that God released them from something that they are trying to get back. He calls on them to quit turning from God’s grace and worries out loud that all he had worked for was going to be for nothing. He gave it all up for them and he wants them to follow his lead and give it up and go back to where they were in Jesus – free from those laws.

He says, remember me? I came to you sick and you loved me and took care of me. they had not turned from him but accepted his message of grace. How could it have turned like it did? Whatever had happened here in Galatia caused the church to begin to suspect Paul’s motives. He says that his motives had not changed. He was the same guy they had loved. He would have done anything for them and they for him. Why make him their enemy for telling them the truth. Those who had come to them and turned them around were not their friends even though they pretended to be. They just wanted to re-enslave them. and for the Galatians to really accept what they wanted, they had to tear up their relationship to Paul. Paul’s problem is that they are so far away he cannot just talk to them. All he can do is hope that this letter can bring them back. He doesn’t want to be mean. He wants things to be as they were.

Just as Abraham had two sons, they are trying to be sons of different mothers, too. Paul is like a mother to them, but so are the false teachers. But they are trying to do things by human will for human reasons. Paul is trying to bring them to God. Do they really want to be human children or divine children, children of human effort to impose what somebody wants on God or children of the promise and the Spirit God gave us?

Questions:

1. How would you go about tearing up a church? Is it easy?

2. Everybody comes to a point in their lives that they realize the need for Jesus. When did you?

3. What makes Christianity unique in terms of world religions? How do people see it otherwise? And why?

4. Abba, Father is the term that little children said in that culture, like a child saying Daddy. What does that mean to you that he would use such a familiar term? Does it mean anything to you? Do you think he meant it in a special way?

5. How is it that someone becomes an enemy for telling the truth?

6. Exactly how is it that you see the two sons of Abraham being different. Do you think it makes any real difference? What point is he making?

7. We are children of freedom. What does that mean to you?