What do you think of when you think about God? Do you imagine Him to be a demanding master, always on you about something, never satisfied even with your best efforts? That can be the impression we get if we just look at God’s Law. For no matter how loving its requirements may be, and no matter how commonsensical they are as a basis for human society, the closer you look at them, the more impossible they are to do. Sinful, self-focused human beings just can’t love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength and our neighbors as ourselves. We’re just too far removed from God and from other people.

And so the sad truth is that far too many Christians find themselves on the hamster wheel of service, constantly trying to earn God’s favor by doing more and more things to please him, but never confident of His approval. Too many of us engage in worship only out of duty to our King. And if we keep our eyes focused only on God’s Law, that’s as far as our faith can take us.

In today’s passage, Paul invites us to a deeper, a more wonderful truth. For the fact is that Christ came, not to make us servants of God, but to make us children of God. By shedding His own blood for us, Christ came to redeem us from bondage to sin, and to adopt us into God’s family. And no matter how far away from God we might feel, Christ came to close the gap completely, filling us with the very Spirit of God. Moreover, Christ gave Himself to us and for us so that we might be God’s heirs, so that we might inherit all that God has, all that God is.

So, what does all that mean for us? When we think of God’s Law, of the way He wants us to live our lives in loving relationship with Him and with others, our response should be not that of fearful slaves, but of loving children, confident in His love and rejoicing in His protecting power.

So yes, let us seek to love and serve God today – not because we have to, but because we want to. Let’s pray that God would fill us anew and afresh with His Spirit, so we might not only be able but willing to give ourselves completely to the One Who gave Himself for us.

Galatians 4:1-20 (ESV)

I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything,
2 but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father.
3 In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.
4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law,
5 to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.
6 And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”
7 So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.
8 Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods.
9 But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more?
10 You observe days and months and seasons and years!
11 I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain.
12 Brothers, I entreat you, become as I am, for I also have become as you are. You did me no wrong.
13 You know it was because of a bodily ailment that I preached the gospel to you at first,
14 and though my condition was a trial to you, you did not scorn or despise me, but received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus.
15 What then has become of your blessedness? For I testify to you that, if possible, you would have gouged out your eyes and given them to me.
16 Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth?
17 They make much of you, but for no good purpose. They want to shut you out, that you may make much of them.
18 It is always good to be made much of for a good purpose, and not only when I am present with you,
19 my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you!
20 I wish I could be present with you now and change my tone, for I am perplexed about you.