Post 1: Galatians 4:4-5
“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:4-5).
I’m sure you have been keeping your New Year’s Resolutions, but if not, or if you didn’t make any, I invite you to join me and my church family in memorizing Scripture. We’ll be trying to memorize one to two verses every week or so depending on the difficulty. I’ll also write a post about the verse to help me understand what it says. My goal is not simply to memorize verses, but I will seek to understand them. Hopefully God can use it to strengthen my faith and my relationship with him. By sharing it, my hope is that it may help you understand the verse and draw closer to Jesus. Two of my resolutions for this year were to memorize Scripture and to start blogging again, so I am killing two birds with one stone.
So about our first memory verse and its meaning in its context:
“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son”
Paul had just been talking about the idea of waiting. He uses the example of a child being similar to a household servant, or slave, except the child will eventually inherit everything in the house. For now, the child has to wait before he becomes an adult to inherit money from his father “until the date set by his father. In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved” (Gal. 4:2-3).
In Galatians 3:15-29, Paul was referring to the differences between having a relationship with God before Jesus finally came and then after he came. The good news is we don’t have to wait for Jesus--he has come. “God sent forth his Son.”
“Born of woman, born under the law”
Even though Jesus is God, the Son of God, he was also a man; he was “born of woman.” He is 100% God and also became 100% man. His birth was unique in that he had no earthly biological father. When the angel Gabriel first told Mary about all of this, she replied, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God” (Luke 1:34-35).
Isaiah prophesied (700 years before Jesus came) about the promise God makes to his people about sending his son. Isaiah 7:14 says, “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel (which means God with us).”
Not only was Jesus “born of woman” and a human just like us, he was a person that grew up Jewish and was required to obey God’s law. “Under the law” is the idea of being under the authority of the law, or in other words, required to obey it. It’s similar to how a parent tells his teenager, “As long as you live under my roof, you have to do as I say.” Even people that aren’t Jewish are required to obey God’s law. Everyone knows murder is wrong, either because their own conscience tells them so, or the laws of the government say so.
The main idea of the book of Galatians is that only Jesus saves; we can’t save ourselves by being good or religious. Jesus earned our salvation by his obedience to the law and his obedience to God as seen in his death on the cross. We can never be obedient enough to earn our salvation. Paul writes is Galatians 2:16, “We know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ.”
We would have to obey God perfectly and constantly to save ourselves, and we cannot. “For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them” (Gal 3:10).
One of the things different about Jesus is that he could perfectly obey God’s law while no one else can. Jesus is “one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15).
“To redeem those who were under the law”
Jesus came, God became a man, “the Word became flesh” (John 1:14), so that he could save us. The words “redeemed” or “redemption” are important in the Bible. It means to set free by paying a price, to pay a ransom. It was often used back then when referring to someone buying a slave to set them free. The Bible says that we are slaves to sin. Jesus said, “Everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin” (John 8:34).
In this passage, Paul is referring to how some people are choosing to be slaves to the law. By thinking they can obey the law and save themselves, they are making themselves slaves to something that they cannot obey. No one, except Jesus, can obey the law perfectly. Jesus came to set us free from sin and every religious belief that keeps us separated from God. “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Gal 5:1). In chapter three Paul said, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree (crucified on a cross)” (Gal. 3:13).
As sinners, our only hope is for Jesus to save us through the price he paid by dying for us on the cross. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:23-24).
“So that we might receive adoption as sons”
The Son of God came to earth as the newborn child of Mary, grew up and died on a cross, so that we can also become sons and daughters of God. Jesus didn’t just save us from the negative things, sin, death, and trying to save ourselves, but Jesus saved us for the positive results: “so that we might receive adoption as sons.”
Being a child of God brings positive benefits. We now have a heavenly father who loves us, takes care of us, listens to our prayers, and answers them. Before we were saved, we were not God’s children; we had no real relationship with him. Jesus has removed the separation of sin and trying to save ourselves, and we now have a relationship with God.
In the context, being a son or a daughter of God means that we are his heirs; as adopted children we receive the inheritance of all the blessings that God has prepared for us. If you are saved by Jesus, “you are heirs according to the promise” (Gal. 3:29). “So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God” (Gal. 4:7). The only way you can be saved, become a child of God, is by trusting in Jesus and what he did for you on the cross, “for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith” (Gal. 3:26).
-David Foust
I’m sure you have been keeping your New Year’s Resolutions, but if not, or if you didn’t make any, I invite you to join me and my church family in memorizing Scripture. We’ll be trying to memorize one to two verses every week or so depending on the difficulty. I’ll also write a post about the verse to help me understand what it says. My goal is not simply to memorize verses, but I will seek to understand them. Hopefully God can use it to strengthen my faith and my relationship with him. By sharing it, my hope is that it may help you understand the verse and draw closer to Jesus. Two of my resolutions for this year were to memorize Scripture and to start blogging again, so I am killing two birds with one stone.
So about our first memory verse and its meaning in its context:
“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son”
Paul had just been talking about the idea of waiting. He uses the example of a child being similar to a household servant, or slave, except the child will eventually inherit everything in the house. For now, the child has to wait before he becomes an adult to inherit money from his father “until the date set by his father. In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved” (Gal. 4:2-3).
In Galatians 3:15-29, Paul was referring to the differences between having a relationship with God before Jesus finally came and then after he came. The good news is we don’t have to wait for Jesus--he has come. “God sent forth his Son.”
“Born of woman, born under the law”
Even though Jesus is God, the Son of God, he was also a man; he was “born of woman.” He is 100% God and also became 100% man. His birth was unique in that he had no earthly biological father. When the angel Gabriel first told Mary about all of this, she replied, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God” (Luke 1:34-35).
Isaiah prophesied (700 years before Jesus came) about the promise God makes to his people about sending his son. Isaiah 7:14 says, “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel (which means God with us).”
Not only was Jesus “born of woman” and a human just like us, he was a person that grew up Jewish and was required to obey God’s law. “Under the law” is the idea of being under the authority of the law, or in other words, required to obey it. It’s similar to how a parent tells his teenager, “As long as you live under my roof, you have to do as I say.” Even people that aren’t Jewish are required to obey God’s law. Everyone knows murder is wrong, either because their own conscience tells them so, or the laws of the government say so.
The main idea of the book of Galatians is that only Jesus saves; we can’t save ourselves by being good or religious. Jesus earned our salvation by his obedience to the law and his obedience to God as seen in his death on the cross. We can never be obedient enough to earn our salvation. Paul writes is Galatians 2:16, “We know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ.”
We would have to obey God perfectly and constantly to save ourselves, and we cannot. “For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them” (Gal 3:10).
One of the things different about Jesus is that he could perfectly obey God’s law while no one else can. Jesus is “one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15).
“To redeem those who were under the law”
Jesus came, God became a man, “the Word became flesh” (John 1:14), so that he could save us. The words “redeemed” or “redemption” are important in the Bible. It means to set free by paying a price, to pay a ransom. It was often used back then when referring to someone buying a slave to set them free. The Bible says that we are slaves to sin. Jesus said, “Everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin” (John 8:34).
In this passage, Paul is referring to how some people are choosing to be slaves to the law. By thinking they can obey the law and save themselves, they are making themselves slaves to something that they cannot obey. No one, except Jesus, can obey the law perfectly. Jesus came to set us free from sin and every religious belief that keeps us separated from God. “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Gal 5:1). In chapter three Paul said, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree (crucified on a cross)” (Gal. 3:13).
As sinners, our only hope is for Jesus to save us through the price he paid by dying for us on the cross. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:23-24).
“So that we might receive adoption as sons”
The Son of God came to earth as the newborn child of Mary, grew up and died on a cross, so that we can also become sons and daughters of God. Jesus didn’t just save us from the negative things, sin, death, and trying to save ourselves, but Jesus saved us for the positive results: “so that we might receive adoption as sons.”
Being a child of God brings positive benefits. We now have a heavenly father who loves us, takes care of us, listens to our prayers, and answers them. Before we were saved, we were not God’s children; we had no real relationship with him. Jesus has removed the separation of sin and trying to save ourselves, and we now have a relationship with God.
In the context, being a son or a daughter of God means that we are his heirs; as adopted children we receive the inheritance of all the blessings that God has prepared for us. If you are saved by Jesus, “you are heirs according to the promise” (Gal. 3:29). “So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God” (Gal. 4:7). The only way you can be saved, become a child of God, is by trusting in Jesus and what he did for you on the cross, “for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith” (Gal. 3:26).
-David Foust
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