What do you think God is really like? 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 Galatians chapter 4, 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 redeeming love and joyful 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 4:1-7 (NASB)

Now I say, as long as the heir is a child, he does not differ at all from a slave although he is owner of everything,
2 but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by the father.
3 So also we, while we were children, were held in bondage under the elemental things of the world.
4 But when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law,
5 in order that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.
6 And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”
7 Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God.