So the bottom line for the person
who is in Christ is that the days of the guardianship of the law are over. It
did it's job in the first part of human history but now in Christ it's
responsibility has been completed.
Please don’t interpret any of this
to say that we are free to live in any way we like. I’m talking about the role
of the law and its place in our lives. The reason this is important is that
many Christians put themselves under the law in order to try to please God in
the sense of making Him happy with their level of obedience. What they don't
realize is that perfection is the standard and we fall way short. Even though
you may not lie, steal or cheat, do you really want God to condition his favor
toward you based on whether you loved him with the entirety of your mind,
heart, soul and strength over the last 24 hours? You didn't fall at all short
of that standard? Even though you didn't
rob a bank, you perfectly loved your neighbor as yourself and didn't look with
covetousness or envy at anything at all that another person has or does? You
don't really want to be evaluated by the law, do you?
Another motivation sometimes is to try to use
the law to get our lives in order. If we struggle with certain temptations, we
tend to go back under the law to solve that problem. The trouble is that the
law brings a curse as we have seen. In fact in Romans 7:8 we learn that sin
takes the opportunity in the law to produce all sorts of evil desire. Second Corinthians
15:56 tells us that the strength of sin is the law. Sin gains power when the
law is in force. Life requires self-discipline, but putting oneself under the
law doesn’t work and in fact God pleads with us not to do that.
Returning now to
Galatians 4:7 we find that if we are a son then we are an heir of God. Think
about what that means! We are adult sons, not children. We are heirs of God
with all the rights and privileges of being an adult son. Paul tells us in
Romans 8:17, "“and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs
with Christ." We share in the inheritance that Jesus Christ
receives. We are his siblings, so to speak.
Paul basically spends much of the
rest of chapter 4 begging the people not to return to childhood. Notice his
pleading in verse 9, “But now after you have known God, or rather are known by
God, how is it that you turn again to the weak and beggarly elements, to which
you desire again to be in bondage?”
In Colossians 2:8, Paul writes,
“Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to
the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not
according to Christ. Then in verse 20 he says, “Therefore, if you died with
Christ from the basic principles of the world, (there’s that expression again)
why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to regulations –
do not touch, do not taste, do not handle.” The interesting point here is that
he finishes up this thought in verse 23 by saying, “These things indeed have an
appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of
the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh.” In other
words, it doesn’t work to set up these rules for yourself to try to stifle the
flesh. Returning to law-keeping seems like it has a wisdom to it, but it does
not work! It just stimulates more sin.
So my question was, “does God beg us not to put
ourselves under the law?” Look at verses 11-16 of Galatians 4 and see what you
think. God is serious about this. He uses expressions like “I urge you…” and
“I’m afraid for you….” The answer we need for trying to live a godly life is
not more law. It is in our recognition and accepting by faith the fact that we
are new creatures in Christ, we have the Holy Spirit within us and we need to
yield to His leadership in our lives.
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