BRETHREN, when the time had fully 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. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then also an heir of God through Christ.
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It is axiomatic that if we want to live a life in Christ we must believe in Christ. Christ is not an idea. Christ is God/man. Christ came into the world to assume the fruits of the covenant between God and man. The law was essential to ensure that humankind stayed in close proximity to God until the coming of Christ. To come into this world Christ self-emptied and entered in the usual way by taking flesh from the Ever Virgin Mary and thereby becoming man. He undertook all that was natural to human nature, without sin. So Christ spent the early stages of his life in full dependence upon his earthly parents. As the Gospel of Luke tells us: once the family was resettled in Nazareth after their return from Egypt, Christ grew strong, filled with wisdom and the favour of God. Christ had to grow and attain maturity just as we all did.
Even as God, Christ was fully dependent in his early years upon his earthly parents. Paul puts it this way: whether Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female you can only be an heir according to the promise once you have sufficiently matured. You may well indeed be sons of God in Christ Jesus but you have to have sufficient understanding to appreciate what this means. It is in this sense that an heir is no better than a slave, even though he is the potential owner of all the estate. Why? Because his lack of years preclude him from being a proper steward of all that he surveys. Paul reminds us in his first epistle to the Corinthians of the virtue of maturity in obtaining spiritual knowledge and insight. He declares: “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.” Time and it’s passing permit growth and, hopefully, maturity so even though we may be the owners of the estate in the future, the here and now of our immaturity makes it imperative that we are under guardians and trustees until the Father considers us sufficiently responsible and mature to continue his work.
Time and it’s passing have always been of perplexity to man. As the book of Ecclesiastes reminds us “for everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven.” Indeed, the preacher says further: “I know that whatever God does endures for ever. Nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it; God has made it so, in order that man would fear before him. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away.”
Paul declares that now is the time for the Son of Man to come forth in accordance with the divine plan and enter human history. So when the time had been set and all things had come to pass, and all prophecies merged into the one point in history, God sent forth his son to be born of a woman and to be born under the law so as to redeem those who are under the law. The fruit of that redemption is that there is now true sonship, the adoption by God of man, through the salvific work of Jesus.
The point of sacred history is this: the Christ enters to bring into fruition the divine plan for the salvation of the human race so we, who were children under the law and therefore slaves to the law, can now lift up our heads, and through Christ be led to maturity – from childhood to adulthood, from being under the law to being under grace. But this does not mean that you are automatically saved – no! Salvation comes through leading your life in Christ. It is the promise that God will make invitation to you and me to become sons of the most high. But in order to accept, we must open our hearts to allow Christ to come in and rule and it is then that the Holy Spirit will fill us with the light and love that He is. Then we become creatures of love, of compassion and of natural kindness, giving of ourselves to others. We are so swept up in exuberant joy that we are Christ’s that we wish to spread that sense of love and gratitude to our fellow man. Above all we want to leap into the air and yell “Abba, Father”, in recognition of the love that God has for us through Christ Jesus. There is no better feeling than to come home – and when you think about it – home is never a place – but the people who inhabit that place. Home is no more than bricks and mortar without people, without our loved ones. It is only people that can make us declare our love for them. Things are things, they are inanimate and cannot love. It is God who loves us and not our material possessions. Consider this: material possessions bind us to responsibility. Material possessions can imprison us but it is only the love that we have for others and they for us that sets us free.
This love gives us the ability to receive sonship by adoption. And here it is: Christ, born of woman has taken on flesh thus sharing in our humanity. He does this really, in order to free us from the tyranny of the law, making it possible for us to be sons by adoption, to be found in God’s household, if we are deemed worthy through grace. If we are found worthy then we share in all the benefits that go with sonship. Now, it is no longer our relationship with the law that determines our relationship with God. Now it is our relationship with Christ, as rightful son and heir that determines our status. Consequently, as adopted children of God we can rightfully and properly refer to God as Abba whilst receiving blessings and inheriting the kingdom.
