August 23 | Bible in a Year: Psalms 113–115; 1 Corinthians 6

God's Family

You are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir. Galatians 4:7

Galatians 4:7

READ Galatians 4:4–7

A family I know welcomed the opportunity to host an Eastern European girl for a month. As their time together ended, this couple found themselves engaging in the long and costly process to adopt her, because in a few years she’d be deemed too old for her orphanage. My friends feared that she’d fall prey to human trafficking, which is the sad fate of a large number of the young women who ‘age out’ of the system. My friends extended the love of Christ to her and wanted her to enjoy being their daughter and heir.

Her story of adoption points to the deeper truth that those who have accepted the gift of Jesus as their Saviour are fully adopted into the family of God. As we see in Paul’s letter to the Galatians, we are no longer slaves but heirs; now we can call God our Father (vv. 7, 6). Our adoption has been made possible through the coming of God’s Son as a baby, “born of a woman” (v. 4). Jesus was born under the law so that He could redeem us and give us the gift of a secure family.

If we believe in and follow Jesus, we have many sisters and brothers in Christ. We’ll never be alone, for not only do we have the presence of God with us, but we belong to the family of God.

By Amy Boucher Pye

How could you reach out to someone who struggles to accept that they truly are a child of God? How can you grasp this truth more deeply in your own heart and mind?

Loving Father, You welcome me into Your family, which is an amazing truth. Help me to seek out those who are lonely and lost, that they too might come to know You.

SCRIPTURE INSIGHT

It’s hard not to read Galatians 4:4–7 about being children of God and heirs together with Him without thinking of the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15. That parable depicts what it means to be an heir—having a right to what the father owns. Paul tells the Galatian believers in Jesus that because they’ve been adopted as sons, they’ve also been given the Spirit of His Son to live in their hearts. All this happens in the moment of salvation. Paul is describing how the presence of the Spirit of Jesus in our hearts is our inheritance as children of God.