The kiss of experience
But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba, Father.’ Galatians 4:4-6 (NIVUK)
Paul starts verse six of our header scripture by saying, ‘Because you are his sons’. In other words, it’s a done deal, it’s already happened. All Christians, men, and women, have the status of a son, one who will inherit from their father. As a Christian, we are now a child of God. That transaction is over, but there is something else Paul tells us. While the phrase ‘Because you are his sons’ shows that our sonship is assured, there is something additional:
God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts (v.6).
There is a very important difference between verses 4-5 and verse 6 of the header scripture. God sent his Son into the world, but God sends the Spirit into our hearts. This means the Son came to procure something objective, something out there in the world, external, through a historical action: his death and resurrection. He secured for us the full rights of sons. But the Spirit moves into a different realm: he moves inside, and it is his job to give us an experience. It’s the Spirit’s job to help us feel like sons.
It’s the Son’s job to make us sons, though we might not feel like sons. But it is the powerful work of the Spirit to help us appropriate that subjectively, to experience it, and to grasp it. We can claim what the Son does, but we can only experience what the Spirit does. What the apostle Paul wants us to understand is this: we can objectively be adopted as God’s sons and not experience our adoption. We can be completely accepted, and not live that way, not experience it, nor feel it. Martyn Lloyd Jones in trying to explain this experience of adoption quoted the Puritan Thomas Goodwin:
‘A man and his little child [are] walking down the road and they are walking hand in hand, and the child knows that he is the child of his father [this is God and the Christian], and he knows that his father loves him, and he rejoices in that, and he is happy in it. There is no uncertainty about it all, but suddenly the father, moved by some impulse, takes hold of the child, picks him up…kisses him, embraces him, and showers his love upon him, and then he puts him down again and they go walking on their way. That’s it! The child knew before that his father loved him, and he knew that he was his child. But oh! The loving embrace, this extra outpouring of love, this unusual manifestation of it—that is the kind of thing. The Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.’ 1
May the Holy Spirit take the Father’s loving embrace and kiss to us, his children, and give us the awareness and assurance of his love.
Prayer
Loving Father, thank you for adopting us as your children, through your Son Jesus, and thank you for sending the Holy Spirit to make the joy of this adoption real in our lives. In Jesus’s name, we pray, Amen.
Study by Barry Robinson
1 Martyn Lloyd Jones, Joy Unspeakable, pp. 95-96.
Barry Robinson is a minister in Grace Communion International and Regional Pastor for Southern England, the Midlands, and Wales
Local congregation:
Grace Communion West Hampstead
Sidings Community Centre
150 Brassey Road
West Hampstead
London
NW6 2BA
Meeting time:
Sunday 12.30 pm
Local congregational contact:
Gordon Brown
gordon.brown@gracecom.church
Word of Life contact:
wordoflife@gracecom.church