Ahoy and welcome to another week here at the contrary disciple. As always I hope this email finds you well and leaves you questioning previous assumptions.
We continue our tour of Galatians with Chapter 4. Paul spends the majority of the chapter using slavery as an allegory to help the Galatians, and us, understand what our relationship with God is like. We aren't mere peons toiling and mindlessly carrying out the orders of some unseen master, but adopted heirs privileged to experience a relationship and blessed with an inheritance.
If you have been following our study, you will remember Paul in the previous two chapters has been beating up the Galatians up for missing the point. They had turned their focus to rote tasks and 'the law' and forgotten the relationship and really the spirit all those rules came out of. In an effort to reset their mindsets, Paul employs the metaphor of slavery to shake them awake.
“Doesn’t that privilege of intimate conversation with God make it plain that you are not a slave, but a child? And if you are a child, you’re also an heir, with complete access to the inheritance.”
Here Paul clearly articulates that we have been brought in and are no longer outsiders but members of God's family. That is a powerful statement that I have previously failed to appreciate. It has always just been something that I've heard and I guess accepted, but never attempted to comprehend. What I thought about this week to help me contemplate this truth was adopting a child. I asked myself: How would I feel about that child? How would I bring them in? How I would do anything to help them feel accepted, to love them, and to take care of any issues they may face.
I am that adopted child. I have been brought in and embraced not by human parents but by someone far greater. This has been what I have meditated on this week and it's far more than I had ever credited it with before.
Paul then moves to encourage the Galatians, and us, to reflect on their lives to this point and recognize all the things they have lived enslaved to: Cultural norms, religion, and base desires are all gods we have incorrectly pledged our fealty to.
“Earlier, before you knew God personally, you were enslaved to so-called gods that had nothing of the divine about them. But now that you know the real God—or rather since God knows you—how can you possibly subject yourselves again to those paper tigers?”
We, like the Galatians, are a fickle people. We understand and accept that God is in control and that it is His standard we should we should champion. However, I often choose to follow a hybrid of my own creation, blending God's direction with a combination of other factors across this life. I want to live clearly on His path and not live beholden to these false gods who only have power because I ascribe it to them. I aspire to follow the only one who has true power, and better still has adopted me to be a part.
I hope you have a great week and I always welcome your feedback and insights. Still working to get our older studies posted and will let you know when they are online. Until then.
-the contrary disciple