Take Your Vitamin Z: Preaching the Book of Galatians to Yourself

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Guest post by BJ Stockman

Chapter Four

As a son of God, I am no longer a slave to the elemental spirits of the world. Satan and demons do not have authority over me because I am God’s son. (4:1-3)

I have been redeemed because God sent Jesus who is a man like me, yet who fulfilled the law of God on my behalf. Jesus has redeemed me from living under the curse of the law because he bore the curse and fulfilled the requirements of the law for me. (4:4-5)

I am God’s adopted son. He did not have to love me, but he chose to love me. (4:5)

God has sent the Spirit of Jesus within me so that I have an intimate relationship with the Father like a child has with his/her Daddy. (4:6)

I am no longer a slave to anything, but Christ, and Christ is my brother and God is my Father. (4:7)

As God’s son, I am an heir of a great inheritance beyond any wealth that can be achieved in this world or bigger than any estate in this world. I am an heir through the means of God’s grace, and am an heir of God Himself and all that Jesus owns, which is everything. (4:7)

Because God has known me and chosen me, and I have known and chosen Him, I will not turn back to slavery to demons or anything else, but will live as a son in the freedom Jesus has purchased for me and in the victory Jesus has won for me. (4:8-9)

I will not be held captive to observing special days and religious traditions, but I will be captivated by Christ and not the shadows that pointed to him. (4:10)

I recognize that sometimes God uses physical infirmities, whether sickness or pain, in believers to further the spread of the Gospel. More than physical prosperity I desire that the Gospel prosper throughout the world. I will value the Gospel as the greatest good and not my own health as the greatest good. (4:13)

I will welcome those who have physical infirmities, and not despise them. I will seek to do all I can to help alleviate the physical infirmities of others. (4:14-15)

I desire Paul’s passion that Jesus be formed in those around me. Similar to a mother enduring the pain of childbirth to enjoy a baby, I will endure all things to see that Jesus is formed within my friends and family. When life is difficult, trials come, and those around me disappoint and begin to drift away from the Gospel. I will not lose hope, but I will strive even more, even when it causes me emotional pain, to see that they love and trust Jesus. (4:19)

I will listen to the true meaning of the law, as it always points to the freedom that Christ brings. (4:21, 31)

I recognize that Abraham had a child of promise from Sara who is free and a child of flesh from Hagar who is enslaved, and that I am a child of promise who should live in freedom. (4:22-28)

I will not trust in a life of law-centered living, which is the false gospel of Ishmael and Hagar and Mt. Sinai, but will entrust my whole being to Jesus, which is the Gospel of Isaac and Sara and the Jerusalem above. Therefore I do not need to follow the Jewish law to be a true son of God or to reach a higher level of Christian spirituality; I just need to trust the person and work of Jesus alone, which is the only pathway to Christian maturity. (4:22-28)

I will not take things into my own hands like Abraham did with Hagar to achieve the blessing of God, but I will trust God’s promises that he will accomplish what He promised in due time. (4:23)

I believe that God does supernatural miracles and brings supernatural blessing to desolate people. (4:27)

I know that there are those, children of the flesh, who would seek to bring me back into enslavement according to law and legalism, and persecute me because of my freedom, doing it in the name of God and covenant. I will not submit to them and act contrary to who I am in Christ, as if I am a son of bondage to law, but will live as a son of God in freedom. (4:29)

I believe that those who distort the truth of the Gospel of Christ and turn it into slavery to law, like Hagar’s children, are to be driven out of the church. (4:30)