The Birth of Jesus Christ
Galatians 4:4-7
Anyone who drives knows the satisfying feeling of “perfect timing.” By “perfect timing,” I mean when you’re driving a long stretch of road and all the lights turn green right as you approach them, or when you approach a parking spot near the entrance to a store in a crowded parking lot just as another customer is leaving, making the spot available to you. “Perfect timing!” we might say whenever things like this occur.
As satisfying as things like this may be in our day-to-day lives, they are only nice circumstances that make our day easier. But “perfect timing” is of absolute importance in other scenarios. Making a trade on the stock market or in crypto at the right moment can make the difference between making or losing millions of dollars. Timing a concrete pour correctly before a storm hits can determine not only whether you will waste a large sum of money but, more importantly, whether the building will have structural integrity.
Then there are countless examples of how two people cross paths at the perfect time with life-altering effects. An unemployed person just happens to cross paths in a checkout line with an employer who is looking for his exact skillset. Two unmarried people just happen to cross paths at a restaurant leading to a lifetime of marriage. Or a doctor just happens to be sitting next to a stranger at a baseball game who suffers an unexpected heat stroke, only to provide critical life-saving guidance.
Christ’s birth happened at the right time.
According to Scripture, the birth of Christ which we celebrate at Christmastime happened with perfect timing. Paul says Christ was born “when the fullness of time had come” (Gal 4:4). This envisions a woman giving birth to a child at full term, after a long period of waiting, when everything has progressed well and the time is just right.
The birth of Christ was not an emergency response, backup plan, or random act of intervention by God. It was a perfectly planned event which happened at precisely the right time in history, like when NASA carefully prepares to launch a space mission. After thousands of years of promises, prophecies, and preparation, Christ was born at the precisely the right time to save people from their sins.
Anyone who drives knows the satisfying feeling of “perfect timing.” By “perfect timing,” I mean when you’re driving a long stretch of road and all the lights turn green right as you approach them, or when you approach a parking spot near the entrance to a store in a crowded parking lot just as another customer is leaving, making the spot available to you. “Perfect timing!” we might say whenever things like this occur.
As satisfying as things like this may be in our day-to-day lives, they are only nice circumstances that make our day easier. But “perfect timing” is of absolute importance in other scenarios. Making a trade on the stock market or in crypto at the right moment can make the difference between making or losing millions of dollars. Timing a concrete pour correctly before a storm hits can determine not only whether you will waste a large sum of money but, more importantly, whether the building will have structural integrity.
Then there are countless examples of how two people cross paths at the perfect time with life-altering effects. An unemployed person just happens to cross paths in a checkout line with an employer who is looking for his exact skillset. Two unmarried people just happen to cross paths at a restaurant leading to a lifetime of marriage. Or a doctor just happens to be sitting next to a stranger at a baseball game who suffers an unexpected heat stroke, only to provide critical life-saving guidance.
Christ’s birth happened at the right time.
According to Scripture, the birth of Christ which we celebrate at Christmastime happened with perfect timing. Paul says Christ was born “when the fullness of time had come” (Gal 4:4). This envisions a woman giving birth to a child at full term, after a long period of waiting, when everything has progressed well and the time is just right.
The birth of Christ was not an emergency response, backup plan, or random act of intervention by God. It was a perfectly planned event which happened at precisely the right time in history, like when NASA carefully prepares to launch a space mission. After thousands of years of promises, prophecies, and preparation, Christ was born at the precisely the right time to save people from their sins.
You and I – like every other human – have enough trouble with showing up to events on time and with scheduling and planning out the timing of events and goals in our lives. How much more overwhelming would it be to schedule, prepare for, and plan out the birth of Jesus over thousands of years of history and civilization? Even the most skilled obstetrician or midwife cannot guarantee the accuracy of a baby’s due date.
But Christ was born at the perfect moment, at the perfect time. World conditions were just right and even the stars in the universe were perfectly aligned for his birth! But not only was he born at the perfect time, he was born for a special purpose.
His birth was for a special purpose.
Paul says that when Christ was born, “God sent forth his Son” (4:4). This “sending forth” is far more meaningful than a stork sending a cute baby down from the sky. It means to send out someone on a mission – to dispatch them for a special purpose or task, like when a special operations soldier is sent on a mission to protect and defend his nation or when a humanitarian worker is sent to provide critical aid and relief after a natural disaster.
In this case, God the Father was sending God the Son to save his people from their sins. Said another way, first person of the triune God (or Trinity) was sending the second person of the triune God to save us – God was sending God on a mission.
This statement says some important things. First, it shows that God, who like us, only has one nature, is not like us, being only one person. He is a single, unified being comprised of three persons – Father, Son, and Spirit, all three mentioned in this passage (4:4, 6).
That God is three co-equal persons in one divine being and with one divine nature is a core, fundamental belief of biblical Christianity. But according to a recent Barna survey (March 26, 2025), only 11% of American adults believe in the Trinity, incl. only 16% of self-proclaimed Christians. The percentage is higher for Protestants than Catholics, and the percentage per generation differs, too: Boomer (18%), Gen X (11%), Millennial (7%), Gen Z (8%). Knowing this should encourage us to emphasize this truth in our teaching.
This statement – that “God sent forth his Son” – also shows us that when Christ was born, he did not begin to exist at that time. He was, instead, sent on a mission to be born. In other words, he already existed – eternally in fact – and was simply changing the form of his existence in order to become a human being. Unlike every other human being, he did not begin to exist the moment he was conceived. He had already existed as God the Son for eternity, having no beginning nor end, but became a human being at his conception.
He received a human nature.
At his birth (or conception), Christ was “born of a woman” (4:4). This means he became a human being like you and me. By doing this, he took for himself all the qualities of human nature, except for sin. He would now understand what it’s like to be human, not only because he is omniscient as God, but because he is also now a human being. Like you and me, he experienced tiredness and pain, hunger and thirst, weakness and rejection, and – most importantly – temptation to sin. But unlike you and me, he never sinned. He fully experienced temptation but never gave in.
For in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted. (Heb 2:18)
Now that God the Son has become human, he is both able to assist and understand us in our weaknesses and temptations. And as a human being, when he died in our place for our sins, he really, truly bled and really, truly died. This means he was able to perfectly serve as an actual, legitimate substitute for our sins. It also means that he perfectly understands whatever experience you have as a human being, no matter how difficult your experience may be. Jesus is both God and man, making him our perfect Savior.
He submitted himself to the law.
Not only did he receive a human nature at his birth, but he also placed himself under the authority of God’s law. He was “born under the law” (4:4). This means that he lived with the full expectations of God’s law placed upon him. He did not get special treatment and exemptions because he was God. He faced the same expectations that God places on every human being through the divine, moral law.
Though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. (Heb 5:8)
This means that he did everything the law of God required a person to do and he refrained from doing all the things that the law of God prohibits a person from doing. He did all this perfectly without exception. In doing so, he revealed through his attitudes, behavior, and words a complete and perfect love for God and for other people. In this way, he “fulfilled the law,” doing what no other human being is able to do.
Now, what is the purpose of God’s law? It is to show us two things. First, it is to show us what it means – in practical terms – to love God with all your heart and to love your neighbor the same way. Second, it is to show us – in practical, provable ways – that we do not love God with all our heart and we do not love our neighbor as ourselves.
But Christ is the great exception. He actually lived a life of perfect love for God and perfect love for neighbor in a way that perfectly fulfilled the law of God. And by doing this, he made the impossible possible for us. We are unable to fulfill God’s law, so God is unable to accept and recognize us as his children. But because Christ fulfilled the law perfectly, he did so for us. He died in our place to absorb the guilt of our sins (our own failure to fulfill God’s law), then he offered us his record of perfect obedience to God instead. By doing this, Paul says that Christ “redeemed [rescued/freed] us who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons” (4:5).
He made a way for servants to become sons.
When Paul says that people who believe on Christ for salvation are “sons of God,” he is not referring to becoming children of God through birth. He is referring to becoming children of God through adoption. This adoption does not refer to our modern concept of adoption, either. Instead, it refers to how Jewish fathers would officially acknowledge either their children or servants as “official, independent adults.”
In first-century Jewish culture, fathers would care for their young children and any servants that their household employed. These people would follow strict rules, be assigned mentors, tutors, and supervisors to govern their actions and behavior, etc. But when household servants or children proved to their fathers that they were mature, reliable, and responsible, fathers would then “adopt” them.
This “adoption” meant that they would formally and officially announce that the child or servant be recognized as an independent adult in his own right, able to form his own house, establish his own business, and – most importantly – represent and carry on his father’s personal and family reputation in the community at large.
Such a person was no longer subjected to meticulous rules, guidelines, and oversight assigned by their father, as they had been in their developmental years. Why? Because they had proven themselves to be reliable and responsible and the father believed that the child no longer needed such regulations.
This did not mean that they could now go on living loosely, however they wanted. There would certainly be consequences for making poor or wrong decisions – as every adult well knows. But this did mean that their father was not trusting them to make good, moral, noble, and right decisions on their own, without rules, regulations, and parental supervision monitoring their every turn.
Oh, and this “adoption as sons” meant one more thing for people who reached this status. They would become full inheritors of their father’s estate. This meant that they would become entitled to all the rights, privileges, and resources associated with their father’s legacy and estate. Paul calls this being an “heir” (4:1, 7).
All of this leads to a serious but special conclusion…
Those who believe on Christ should live as adult children of God.
We won’t take the time to do so today, but if you reach the surrounding verses in Galatians 4, and if you read even more fully the entire letter that Paul wrote to the churches and believers in Galatia, you will find that this is what this letter was all about.
Paul wrote to people who claimed to turn on Christ as God and Savior. But as he followed the progression of their life after they claimed to believe, many were returning to their way of living before they believed on Christ. They were doing this by resubmitting themselves to Old Testament (OT) laws – OT ceremonies, circumcision, dietary practices and restrictions, and the required observance of religious seasons and holidays.
In this letter, he makes the point very strongly that living this way is like a mature adult person going back to living like an immature child. A young child needs meticulous rules, responsible guardians, sticker charts and incentives, imposed schedules, and more. But a reliable, responsible adult no longer needs such things. And if an adult returns to childish ways, it raises the question of whether they can be trusted as a reliable, responsible adult.
In the case of our faith in Christ, when people who claim to believe on Christ submit themselves (or re-submit themselves) to ceremonies, rituals, rules, guardians, dietary restrictions, required holiday observances, etc. to live out their faith in Christ, it raises the question of whether they understand Christ at all. People with a complete, correct view of Christ don’t live that way. Those things were not given to us by God to make us God’s children. They were given to us to reveal our need for Christ.
When Christ came at Christmastime, he came at the perfect time to life out a perfect life – becoming the only person to fulfill the law of God. Knowing this, we must turn away from and move on from the law to put our complete faith and trust in Jesus Christ as our God and Savior, trusting completely in him. When we do this, then God accepts us fully as his children on the basis of Christ’s perfect, obedient life and death. This is why God the Father sent God the Son at the perfect time. To free us from the law so that we might live as fully accepted and responsible children of God.
When the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. (Gal 4:4-5)
The birth of Christ frees us from childish observance of the law to be faithful, reliable followers of Christ who love God and love others freely and genuinely by the power of the Holy Spirit, not because the law tells us what to do. As we wrap up this holiday season and year and prepare our hearts for a new year head, I have two important messages for you today based upon Christ’s birth and life as Paul explains it in Gal 4:4-5.
Rest in Your Identity
First, because Christ came at the perfect time to redeem us, you no longer need to live like a helpless, immature child under the law. If you have trusted Christ as your God and Savior, you are fully accepted as a reliable, responsible adult child. You are adopted by God thanks to the birth, life, and death of Christ for you.
This means that you cannot earn God’s favor through rituals, rules, or performance—it is already completely secured by Christ’s perfect obedience and sacrificial death. So, stop striving to prove yourself to God. Instead, rejoice in the security of your relationship with him and you’re your full access to all that he is and all that is his forever. Let this truth quiet your fears and free you from the exhausting cycle of trying to measure up. You belong to him, and nothing can change that.
If you have not yet turned to Christ alone for salvation from the law’s demands, then I urge you to put your trust in Christ today as your God and Savior. He will forgive your sins and give you a close and complete relationship with God forever, one that rests entirely upon his birth, life, and death for you and not on your own performance. What rest and peace this will bring to your tired, sinful soul.
Live Like a Mature Child of God
Second, with acceptance by God as a reliable and responsible adult child comes privilege, but with it also comes responsibility. Just as an adult child represents the family name, you represent your amazing heavenly Father in the world. Therefore, we should live out the freedom Christ gives us not to indulge our fleshly, selfish desires but to love God and others sincerely by the power of the Spirit.
This is why Paul goes on to urge them to leave fleshly behaviors and pursue godly virtues by the power of the Holy Spirit (not as legal obligations).
I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. (Gal 5:16-25)
Mature sons and daughters don’t need sticker charts or rigid rules to guide them – they live out of love and gratitude, instead. So, ask yourself whether you are living like a mature child of God, or have you slipped back into childish rule-keeping and religious duties? True freedom in Christ is not lawlessness—it is Spirit-led obedience that reflects the character of your Father.
Imagine a child who has spent years in foster care, moving from home to home, never sure if they truly belong. Then one day, a loving family adopts them—not just legally, but relationally. They give the child their name, their home, and their inheritance. That child no longer needs to live in fear or try to earn acceptance by an adoptive family; they are fully part of the family. But with that new status comes responsibility: to honor the family name and live in a way that reflects the love they’ve received.
That’s what God has done for us through Christ. We were spiritual orphans under the law, but at the perfect time, God sent His Son to redeem us and adopt us as His own. We don’t have to earn His favor—it’s already secured. And now, as His sons and daughters, we live in freedom—not to indulge ourselves, but to represent our Father well in the world.
How will you put your acceptance and freedom in Christ to work in a responsible, reliable way this coming New Year? How will you show your love for Christ and share that love with others as God the Father calls his children to do? This is why Christ was born.
But Christ was born at the perfect moment, at the perfect time. World conditions were just right and even the stars in the universe were perfectly aligned for his birth! But not only was he born at the perfect time, he was born for a special purpose.
His birth was for a special purpose.
Paul says that when Christ was born, “God sent forth his Son” (4:4). This “sending forth” is far more meaningful than a stork sending a cute baby down from the sky. It means to send out someone on a mission – to dispatch them for a special purpose or task, like when a special operations soldier is sent on a mission to protect and defend his nation or when a humanitarian worker is sent to provide critical aid and relief after a natural disaster.
In this case, God the Father was sending God the Son to save his people from their sins. Said another way, first person of the triune God (or Trinity) was sending the second person of the triune God to save us – God was sending God on a mission.
This statement says some important things. First, it shows that God, who like us, only has one nature, is not like us, being only one person. He is a single, unified being comprised of three persons – Father, Son, and Spirit, all three mentioned in this passage (4:4, 6).
That God is three co-equal persons in one divine being and with one divine nature is a core, fundamental belief of biblical Christianity. But according to a recent Barna survey (March 26, 2025), only 11% of American adults believe in the Trinity, incl. only 16% of self-proclaimed Christians. The percentage is higher for Protestants than Catholics, and the percentage per generation differs, too: Boomer (18%), Gen X (11%), Millennial (7%), Gen Z (8%). Knowing this should encourage us to emphasize this truth in our teaching.
This statement – that “God sent forth his Son” – also shows us that when Christ was born, he did not begin to exist at that time. He was, instead, sent on a mission to be born. In other words, he already existed – eternally in fact – and was simply changing the form of his existence in order to become a human being. Unlike every other human being, he did not begin to exist the moment he was conceived. He had already existed as God the Son for eternity, having no beginning nor end, but became a human being at his conception.
He received a human nature.
At his birth (or conception), Christ was “born of a woman” (4:4). This means he became a human being like you and me. By doing this, he took for himself all the qualities of human nature, except for sin. He would now understand what it’s like to be human, not only because he is omniscient as God, but because he is also now a human being. Like you and me, he experienced tiredness and pain, hunger and thirst, weakness and rejection, and – most importantly – temptation to sin. But unlike you and me, he never sinned. He fully experienced temptation but never gave in.
For in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted. (Heb 2:18)
Now that God the Son has become human, he is both able to assist and understand us in our weaknesses and temptations. And as a human being, when he died in our place for our sins, he really, truly bled and really, truly died. This means he was able to perfectly serve as an actual, legitimate substitute for our sins. It also means that he perfectly understands whatever experience you have as a human being, no matter how difficult your experience may be. Jesus is both God and man, making him our perfect Savior.
He submitted himself to the law.
Not only did he receive a human nature at his birth, but he also placed himself under the authority of God’s law. He was “born under the law” (4:4). This means that he lived with the full expectations of God’s law placed upon him. He did not get special treatment and exemptions because he was God. He faced the same expectations that God places on every human being through the divine, moral law.
Though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. (Heb 5:8)
This means that he did everything the law of God required a person to do and he refrained from doing all the things that the law of God prohibits a person from doing. He did all this perfectly without exception. In doing so, he revealed through his attitudes, behavior, and words a complete and perfect love for God and for other people. In this way, he “fulfilled the law,” doing what no other human being is able to do.
Now, what is the purpose of God’s law? It is to show us two things. First, it is to show us what it means – in practical terms – to love God with all your heart and to love your neighbor the same way. Second, it is to show us – in practical, provable ways – that we do not love God with all our heart and we do not love our neighbor as ourselves.
But Christ is the great exception. He actually lived a life of perfect love for God and perfect love for neighbor in a way that perfectly fulfilled the law of God. And by doing this, he made the impossible possible for us. We are unable to fulfill God’s law, so God is unable to accept and recognize us as his children. But because Christ fulfilled the law perfectly, he did so for us. He died in our place to absorb the guilt of our sins (our own failure to fulfill God’s law), then he offered us his record of perfect obedience to God instead. By doing this, Paul says that Christ “redeemed [rescued/freed] us who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons” (4:5).
He made a way for servants to become sons.
When Paul says that people who believe on Christ for salvation are “sons of God,” he is not referring to becoming children of God through birth. He is referring to becoming children of God through adoption. This adoption does not refer to our modern concept of adoption, either. Instead, it refers to how Jewish fathers would officially acknowledge either their children or servants as “official, independent adults.”
In first-century Jewish culture, fathers would care for their young children and any servants that their household employed. These people would follow strict rules, be assigned mentors, tutors, and supervisors to govern their actions and behavior, etc. But when household servants or children proved to their fathers that they were mature, reliable, and responsible, fathers would then “adopt” them.
This “adoption” meant that they would formally and officially announce that the child or servant be recognized as an independent adult in his own right, able to form his own house, establish his own business, and – most importantly – represent and carry on his father’s personal and family reputation in the community at large.
Such a person was no longer subjected to meticulous rules, guidelines, and oversight assigned by their father, as they had been in their developmental years. Why? Because they had proven themselves to be reliable and responsible and the father believed that the child no longer needed such regulations.
This did not mean that they could now go on living loosely, however they wanted. There would certainly be consequences for making poor or wrong decisions – as every adult well knows. But this did mean that their father was not trusting them to make good, moral, noble, and right decisions on their own, without rules, regulations, and parental supervision monitoring their every turn.
Oh, and this “adoption as sons” meant one more thing for people who reached this status. They would become full inheritors of their father’s estate. This meant that they would become entitled to all the rights, privileges, and resources associated with their father’s legacy and estate. Paul calls this being an “heir” (4:1, 7).
All of this leads to a serious but special conclusion…
Those who believe on Christ should live as adult children of God.
We won’t take the time to do so today, but if you reach the surrounding verses in Galatians 4, and if you read even more fully the entire letter that Paul wrote to the churches and believers in Galatia, you will find that this is what this letter was all about.
Paul wrote to people who claimed to turn on Christ as God and Savior. But as he followed the progression of their life after they claimed to believe, many were returning to their way of living before they believed on Christ. They were doing this by resubmitting themselves to Old Testament (OT) laws – OT ceremonies, circumcision, dietary practices and restrictions, and the required observance of religious seasons and holidays.
In this letter, he makes the point very strongly that living this way is like a mature adult person going back to living like an immature child. A young child needs meticulous rules, responsible guardians, sticker charts and incentives, imposed schedules, and more. But a reliable, responsible adult no longer needs such things. And if an adult returns to childish ways, it raises the question of whether they can be trusted as a reliable, responsible adult.
In the case of our faith in Christ, when people who claim to believe on Christ submit themselves (or re-submit themselves) to ceremonies, rituals, rules, guardians, dietary restrictions, required holiday observances, etc. to live out their faith in Christ, it raises the question of whether they understand Christ at all. People with a complete, correct view of Christ don’t live that way. Those things were not given to us by God to make us God’s children. They were given to us to reveal our need for Christ.
When Christ came at Christmastime, he came at the perfect time to life out a perfect life – becoming the only person to fulfill the law of God. Knowing this, we must turn away from and move on from the law to put our complete faith and trust in Jesus Christ as our God and Savior, trusting completely in him. When we do this, then God accepts us fully as his children on the basis of Christ’s perfect, obedient life and death. This is why God the Father sent God the Son at the perfect time. To free us from the law so that we might live as fully accepted and responsible children of God.
When the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. (Gal 4:4-5)
The birth of Christ frees us from childish observance of the law to be faithful, reliable followers of Christ who love God and love others freely and genuinely by the power of the Holy Spirit, not because the law tells us what to do. As we wrap up this holiday season and year and prepare our hearts for a new year head, I have two important messages for you today based upon Christ’s birth and life as Paul explains it in Gal 4:4-5.
Rest in Your Identity
First, because Christ came at the perfect time to redeem us, you no longer need to live like a helpless, immature child under the law. If you have trusted Christ as your God and Savior, you are fully accepted as a reliable, responsible adult child. You are adopted by God thanks to the birth, life, and death of Christ for you.
This means that you cannot earn God’s favor through rituals, rules, or performance—it is already completely secured by Christ’s perfect obedience and sacrificial death. So, stop striving to prove yourself to God. Instead, rejoice in the security of your relationship with him and you’re your full access to all that he is and all that is his forever. Let this truth quiet your fears and free you from the exhausting cycle of trying to measure up. You belong to him, and nothing can change that.
If you have not yet turned to Christ alone for salvation from the law’s demands, then I urge you to put your trust in Christ today as your God and Savior. He will forgive your sins and give you a close and complete relationship with God forever, one that rests entirely upon his birth, life, and death for you and not on your own performance. What rest and peace this will bring to your tired, sinful soul.
Live Like a Mature Child of God
Second, with acceptance by God as a reliable and responsible adult child comes privilege, but with it also comes responsibility. Just as an adult child represents the family name, you represent your amazing heavenly Father in the world. Therefore, we should live out the freedom Christ gives us not to indulge our fleshly, selfish desires but to love God and others sincerely by the power of the Spirit.
This is why Paul goes on to urge them to leave fleshly behaviors and pursue godly virtues by the power of the Holy Spirit (not as legal obligations).
I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. (Gal 5:16-25)
Mature sons and daughters don’t need sticker charts or rigid rules to guide them – they live out of love and gratitude, instead. So, ask yourself whether you are living like a mature child of God, or have you slipped back into childish rule-keeping and religious duties? True freedom in Christ is not lawlessness—it is Spirit-led obedience that reflects the character of your Father.
Imagine a child who has spent years in foster care, moving from home to home, never sure if they truly belong. Then one day, a loving family adopts them—not just legally, but relationally. They give the child their name, their home, and their inheritance. That child no longer needs to live in fear or try to earn acceptance by an adoptive family; they are fully part of the family. But with that new status comes responsibility: to honor the family name and live in a way that reflects the love they’ve received.
That’s what God has done for us through Christ. We were spiritual orphans under the law, but at the perfect time, God sent His Son to redeem us and adopt us as His own. We don’t have to earn His favor—it’s already secured. And now, as His sons and daughters, we live in freedom—not to indulge ourselves, but to represent our Father well in the world.
How will you put your acceptance and freedom in Christ to work in a responsible, reliable way this coming New Year? How will you show your love for Christ and share that love with others as God the Father calls his children to do? This is why Christ was born.
Posted in Christmas, Sermon Manuscript
Posted in Law, Legalism, Christmas, New Testament, Galatians, Gospel
Posted in Law, Legalism, Christmas, New Testament, Galatians, Gospel
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