Sons and Heirs

Tom Shrader walks through Galatians 4:1-7, explaining how the analogy of a child awaiting his inheritance under Roman and Jewish law illuminates the believer's transition from bondage under the law to full sonship in Christ. He presents six central teachings about the incarnation—including the timing, origin, manner, condition, purpose, and goal of Christ's coming—showing how Jesus fulfilled the law perfectly to redeem and adopt those who believe. The lesson closes with six privileges belonging to heirs of God: participation in Abraham's promise, freedom from condemnation, the leading of the Spirit, co-heirship with Christ, glorified resurrection bodies, and the intimate right to call God Father.

“Peace is not the absence of turmoil, it's the presence of God in the midst of that.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: Galatians: Fighting for Grace

Recorded: 2012 at East Valley Bible Church

Duration: 53 min

Themes: adoption, sonship, freedom, inheritance, identity, grace, redemption, belonging, feeling like an outsider, new believer, struggling with guilt, doubting salvation, young adult, searching for identity, feeling unworthy, anyone questioning their place in god's family

Scripture: Galatians 4:1-7, Galatians 1:4, Galatians 3:24, Galatians 3:29, John 1:1, John 1:12, John 1:14, John 15, John 17, Romans 8:1, Romans 8:14, Romans 8:15, Romans 8:16-17, Romans 8:23, Ephesians 1, Ephesians 2, Philippians 2:6-7, Philippians 3, 1 Corinthians 13:11, 2 Corinthians 4, Colossians 2:8, Isaiah 6, 1 John 3:1

Theological Themes: adoption, justification, incarnation, soteriology, law and grace, co-heirs with christ, pneumatology, abrahamic covenant

Full Transcript

Introduction

Open your Bibles, if you would, to the book of Galatians. We are going to be looking at chapter four, verses one through seven. This is one of those lessons that has a tremendous amount of information in it. If you need a Bible, raise your hand. If you get a Bible from us, it's page 631.

I want to convey the information to you and then give you some application along the way. If you are a note taker or a list lover, this is paradise for you today. I have two lists to give you: one is the six teachings we get in this passage about the reason Christ came and what we can learn from it, and the other is the six privileges we have as heirs.

Picking Up Where We Left Off

This passage picks up where we left off last week at the end of chapter three, verse twenty-nine. It has been talking about the fact that if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's descendants — and in the phrase we introduced last week and will unpack this week — heirs according to the promise. The idea here is that we are adopted into the family of God and that we are now His children.

I want to give you a Tim Keller quote, and I will probably use it four times in this lesson, so we will come back to it. The privilege of adoption presupposes pardon, acceptance, and permanence. What we discovered at the very beginning of this whole study in chapter one, verse four, is that Jesus gave Himself for our sins, that He might rescue us — or deliver us — from the bondage we had to sin and restore us. We become new creatures. There is also the idea of redemption: that He bought us back. Think of something you have pawned — you come back with your ticket, you redeem it, you free it. He has rescued us and redeemed us, and that is a permanent relationship.

Questions About Permanence

I am doing this study over eight weeks, working through a seven-week series, with the eighth week reserved for a Q&A. For that session I collect written questions, and I do it that way for a few reasons. It prevents someone from making a very long speech while asking a question. It prevents a flood of questions all in one area. And it allows me to pull out the five or six most representative ones. Written questions also tend to surface things people would never ask in person.

Last week was the first week, and I said to bring questions up afterward and we would address them in week eight. This week alone, three of them went along the lines of: if I am a Christian today, do I know I will remain in that state? That is precisely Keller's idea of permanence.

The Gospel Foundation

What the Bible teaches is that we are separated from God because of our sin, and the wage of that sin is death. I am one day going to die physically, but apart from Christ I am already dead spiritually. The Bible teaches there is nothing I can truly do about that on my own, though I will try — that is the work of the law, the work of the flesh, trying to be good enough by whatever means. But the Bible teaches that Jesus came, lived, and died, and whoever believes in Him will have eternal life. As John writes in chapter one, verse twelve: "As many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name."

The Challenge of Teaching

I was talking to someone this week and they asked what the hardest part of teaching on Sunday is. They were expecting me to say something about the length of the day. Last Saturday night was one of those nights where sleep simply was not going to happen, and that is partly because of the way I work. I write the lesson on Sunday morning — not because I have not thought about it or prepared, but because I find that bringing it all together that morning works best for me. That means getting up a little before four, coming in, and getting it done. People have heard that and said, you start at four and leave at seven-thirty or eight — is that the hardest part? No. Is it physically hard? It really is, even though all I do is talk. I used to do seven services — seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, four, five, six — and now I only do four. But that is not the hardest part either.

Here is the hardest part, honestly, about any lesson, even in the preparation: the problem is you. I assume you expected me to say it would be me, but here is what I mean. Some of you have Bibles that are all marked up and you are looking for the deepest nuances of the Greek, wanting to parse every word — and that is great, I am not minimizing that. But you have other people here today for whom this may be their very first time in a church. When I took Susan to church in 1980, other than her sister's wedding, it was the first time she had ever been inside one. So maybe that is you — coming in with minimal experience, or none at all. Maybe you come from a Catholic tradition and you are wondering if the building is going to cave in when you walk through the door. Maybe you come from a denominational background and arrive with all sorts of questions. When you take a lesson like the one we have today, which is genuinely complex, I can lose you very quickly. So when I have someone on one end who says, give it to me in the original language, and someone on the other end who is just beginning, I have to find a way to reach both.

The Challenge of Teaching Old and New Together

As long as the heir is a child, he does not differ at all from a slave, although he is the owner of everything. That is the tension Paul sets up at the beginning of Galatians chapter four, and it is one of those passages that rewards careful study. A little understanding of Greek law at that moment is genuinely helpful. So let me read the passage, make a couple of observations, and then we will tear it apart together.

Reading the Passage: Galatians 4:1–7

Chapter four, Galatians, verse one: "Now I say, as long as the heir is a child, he does not differ at all from the slave, although he is the owner of everything. But he is under the guardians and the managers until the date set by the father. So also, while we were children, we were held in bondage under the elemental things of the world." That phrase — elemental things of the world — carries a whole range of disagreement among scholars about exactly what it means, but we can reach some general agreement as we work through it.

Verse four: "But when the fullness of time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, so that He, Jesus, might redeem those who are under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons." Verse six continues: "Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts," and we have already seen in these six verses the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit — the triune God at work. Verse seven then closes the section: "Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son. And if a son, then an heir through God." Notice how verse one and verse seven bookend this whole passage — slave, son, heir — the same progression we have been tracing.

The Heir Who Lives Like a Slave

In Greek culture, until a son reached the age of eighteen, he was not considered a man. The inheritance, though legally his, was not yet his in practice. So Paul's point is that as long as the child remains in that position, he does not differ much from a slave, even though he is the owner of everything.

A father would typically appoint a trusted slave, a tutor or guardian, who was responsible for the child — determining when the child got up, when he went to bed, when he went to school, what he ate, and what he wore. If the father had died, this guardian would serve as a trustee over the estate. The child might be called "young master," yet in daily experience he would feel far more like a slave than an owner. Then the moment came when the son reached manhood, and the inheritance that had always been legally his became his in fact.

Coming of Age Across Cultures

The Jews held the same idea. A boy was bar mitzvahed at age twelve, and the weight of that occasion was captured in the prayers spoken that day. The father would pray: "Blessed be Thou, O God, who hath taken from me the responsibility of this boy." The boy himself would pray: "O my God and God of my fathers, on this solemn, sacred day, which marks my passage from boyhood to manhood, I humbly raise my eyes unto Thee and declare with sincerity and truth that henceforth I will keep the commandments and undertake to bear the responsibility of my actions toward Thee." You can feel the gravity of that transition.

The Romans observed the same idea through ceremony. When a boy reached the appointed age, his toys would be taken and sacrificed to the gods as a symbol of leaving childhood behind and entering adulthood. For a girl, it was her dolls. That ceremony may well have been what Paul had in mind when he wrote in 1 Corinthians 13:11: "When I became a man, I did away with childish things." The cultural picture across both Jewish and Roman worlds is the same — there is a moment of transition, a date set by the father, after which everything changes.

The Law as Tutor

What Paul is now saying about us is that we, as children of God, are heirs, and that coming into right relationship with God is the moment that inheritance is passed on to us. In verse three, he refers to a date set by the father at which the child is freed from the guardians and managers. This connects directly to what we examined last week from chapter three, verse twenty-four, where we spoke of the law as a tutor.

When we speak of the law, we mean God's moral law, and when we speak practically, we mean our efforts to somehow win God's favor. The Ten Commandments were never designed to save anyone. They were designed to show us how hopeless we really are. The idea was never that God would give the commandments and someone would keep them and thereby be redeemed, because no person could do that. The law's purpose was to expose the depth of our need — and that is a crucial distinction we will look at more closely in a moment. We are sinners, and therefore we sin.

Why "Sons" — and What It Means for Daughters

Before moving on, it is worth pausing on a word that stops some readers. Paul writes "that we might receive the adoption as sons," and at that point the women in the room are rightly asking why he says sons and not daughters. There is a very significant reason for that language, and when we get to it, it will make sense in a way you will appreciate. The word carries a weight of meaning rooted in the inheritance customs of that culture, and Paul is making a deliberate and ultimately inclusive point — one worth holding in mind as we continue through the passage.

We Are Not Naturally Children of God

We do not sin and therefore become sinners. We are by nature children of wrath and children of disobedience, and that nature makes itself evident. It will naturally come about. The only exception to that, as we will see in a moment, is Christ.

These elemental things kept us in bondage. There is all sorts of disagreement about what exactly Paul is referring to there — some say the world's laws, others say Satan's domination. In Colossians 2:8, Paul writes: "See to it that no one takes you captive through the philosophy and empty deception according to the traditions of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ." Whatever these elemental things are, they are counter to Christ and counter to the things of God — whether for the Greek it is enslavement to pagan idols, or for the Jew it is the keeping of the law. Whatever form it takes, it is contrary to what God has for us in grace.

Paul says there is a point at which we grow up and become sons of God. Let's pause here, because when we hear the term "son of God," it can be confusing for some people. The common thinking — though it is a myth — is that we are all children of God.

That idea is dominant in the world in which we live. The popular notion is that religion is like a wheel, with each spoke representing a different religion, God as the hub, and it doesn't matter which spoke you take — they are all connected to God. There was a man who spoke at a Christian prayer breakfast and said, "There are a lot of ways to God. If I'm in New York and want to go to Atlanta, I can fly United, Delta, Continental, American, or JetBlue — and that's the way it is with God." We need to stop and think carefully about this, because it comes up all the time.

What God's Word Actually Says About Our Natural State

We are not all God's children — not in the sense of worship and relationship. God is the creator of all, but that is different from being in a saving relationship with Him. As Paul writes in Ephesians 2, God identifies us through His Word in our natural state: prior to knowing Christ, we were by nature children of wrath and children of disobedience. That is who we are apart from Him.

Jesus looked at the Jewish religious leaders and said, "You are of your father, the devil." In John 1:12, it says: "As many as received Him, He gave them the right to become children of God." And in 1 John 3:1: "See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God, and as such, we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it does not know Him." Beloved, we are now children of God — but we were not naturally born that way.

That is a big truth to get our arms around, and it is not very popular in our culture. After 9/11, a prayer service was held at Yankee Stadium. They had a little bit of everybody from everything represented on that platform. Here is what we know: we could all be wrong, but we cannot all be right, because we are saying contrary things.

You are not a child of God if you do not believe in Jesus. Period. That is not my declaration — God says it. Is it narrow? It really is, and there is no problem acknowledging that. If it were up to me, I might not have made it that narrow. But it was not up to me.

God Does Not Negotiate

Here is the thing about God: He never ceases to be God, so He does not let you define the rules — He defines the rules. We are so accustomed to negotiating. If you want to buy a house and the seller is asking $100,000, you offer $60,000 and work through a process of negotiation until you reach what we call a meeting of the minds. We come to God the same way — God states His standard, and we say, "I get it, but come on, nobody pays retail. Let's work something out." And God says no. He does not move. He does not negotiate. The standard does not move.

That is exactly why Jesus had to come — because all of us had sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

The Fullness of Time

Look at verse four: "When the fullness of time came." In other places, that idea is expressed as "at just the right time." When the completion of that whole period of preparation — God's sovereign timetable of redemption — was finished, God acted. This was a moment God had known before the foundations of the earth, though it remained a mystery to us. It was a moment that had been spoken of for hundreds and hundreds of years.

At that moment, Paul tells us, God sent forth His Son, Jesus, who was born of a woman and born under the law, so that He might redeem those who were under the law — that we might receive the adoption as sons.

Removing the Pressure on "Sons"

Let me try to take a little pressure off the ladies who are wondering why the text doesn't say "sons and daughters." The greatest women's liberator ever to walk this earth was Jesus, and a true understanding of Christianity reveals it as the great liberator. In that culture, and in almost all cultures until recent times, women were seen as chattel and nothing more.

To emphasize the point, remember last week? Paul is talking about Jew and Gentile, no male or female. Rather than say "sons and daughters" — which would have carried its own baggage — he says we are all sons. In Greek culture, it was impossible for a woman to have any inheritance. You could not pass on a fortune to a woman. So what Paul does is say, "No, we are all sons," and in doing so he emphasizes the point that male or female, Jew or Gentile, it doesn't matter — you are going to receive this inheritance too.

Jesus is the One who breaks down barriers, not One who puts them up. There are barriers, and we experience them as a result of the fallen world — as Jesus said, "They persecuted Me, they'll persecute you." But in terms of relational barriers, the design was not to build them up but to break them down. It started from the moment Jesus rose from the dead, when the curtain in the temple was torn — not from the bottom up, but from the top down — to demonstrate that God had eliminated these barriers.

So for us to put up barriers between one another based on race, economic status, or education — though we do it instinctively, don't we? — is something God condemns. We by nature look down on other people, and God says, "I don't do that, and you shouldn't either."

Six Things We Learn About the Coming of Christ

What we have in verses four and five is Jesus coming to this earth — that moment we mark at Christmas. Here at Redemption, we never, never separate Christmas from Easter. We talk about Christmas, but always with an eye toward what we celebrate six or eight weeks later. Christ came, and I want to give you six things that are central teachings we can learn from the fact that He came.

First: The Timing

The first is the timing — it was the fullness of time. Under ancient law, the father would determine when the inheritance would be passed on to a son, and it is in that fullness of time that Christ came. Religiously, the Jews had grown weary. Even the Greeks had grown tired of trying to appease their gods. There was religious fatigue across the world.

Culturally, Alexander the Great had taken the world and made Greek culture and language known throughout it, and that Greek influence continued to dominate even as Rome took over politically. So you have the Pax Romana, with economic and political stability, allowing a person to travel around the world relatively freely and with relative safety. When Jesus came and lived and died, the world was ready for the gospel to begin to spread. The religious, cultural, and political conditions were in place.

God's timing is perfect. I have something going on in my life right now and I don't like the timing of it. Everything in me is trying to find some way to move the timeline up. But I am convinced that the timetable is set according to God's timing. Here is a picture of the window into my soul: in my deepest heart, I want Tom's timing, not God's timing — but if you go a little bit deeper, I know God's timing is better, and so I will submit to that.

Think about the sovereignty of God in your life. You were born in this day, this age, with that ethnic background. You weren't born in Calcutta — you were born in Bemidji. God's sovereignty is all around us, and what we learn first about the coming of Christ is that the timing was exactly right.

Second: The Origin — Testifying to His Deity

The second thing is the origin of His coming, which testifies to His deity. God sent forth His Son — He already existed. Philippians chapter two, verses six and seven says, "Although He existed in the form of God, He did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but He emptied Himself, taking the form of a bondservant and being made in the likeness of man."

Here is how John describes it in his Gospel, speaking of Jesus as the Word: "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We saw His glory as the glory of the only begotten of the Father." And John begins his Gospel with these words: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

When Paul says He emptied Himself, what he is saying is that Jesus eternally existed — He is God, with no beginning and no end. He emptied Himself not of His deity, but of His glory. Some of you are familiar with the picture in Isaiah six, where Isaiah sees the Lord high and lifted up. That is a pre-incarnate Christ. He empties Himself of that glory, but not of His deity.

Third: The Manner — He Becomes a Man

That leads to the third point: the manner of His coming. He becomes a man. He is born of a woman. His humanity is woven all through this. The incarnation is the mystery that God became man — that He retains His deity and yet takes on flesh like you and me in every way except sin.

When we look at Jesus' life, we see hurt and pain and sorrow. We see tears. We see Him thirst and hunger. We see the love He has as He looks at the city of Jerusalem and weeps over it. He is fully God and fully man. That is what we learn about His coming — He is born of a woman.

Fourth: The Condition — Perfect Obedience

The fourth thing is the condition of His coming: perfect obedience. He was born under the Law.

The Perfect Sacrifice

God requires a perfect sacrifice be made for sin. The wage of sin is death. When I sin, I have offended a holy God, and God will judge that. Every sin ever committed in the history of mankind has to be paid for, and will be paid for in only one of two ways: either paid in full by Christ on the cross for those for whom He died, or by the person who committed the sin, never paid in full for all eternity.

Jesus is born under the law that He might fulfill the law. This is the fifth thing — that He came for this purpose, to redeem His people. He lives the perfect life. We saw it in week one, Galatians 1:4: He gave Himself to deliver us from the sin of this present age. He paid the price for our freedom. He died on the cross. He redeemed us.

The obvious point must be stated: Christ had to be born before He could die, and there was no Easter without Christmas. He is born of a virgin. As one author writes, Christianity is not a religion of stable and straw — it is a religion of thorns, nails, wood, and blood.

Christ dies after living a perfect, sinless life, and so He becomes the sacrifice. Not a picture of it, as we saw in the Old Testament, where the sacrifice of lambs was a picture of the Lamb that would come. That is why John the Baptist looks at Jesus and says, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away sin." This is the perfect sacrifice.

John Stott writes, "The divinity of Christ, the humanity of Christ, the righteousness of Christ uniquely qualify him to be man's redeemer. If he hadn't been a man, he could not have redeemed man. If he hadn't been righteous, he could not have redeemed unrighteous man. If he hadn't been God's Son, he could not have redeemed men for God or made them sons of God." Christ died, and when He died on the cross, He actually saved people from their sin. That is why He came. Jesus said, "I didn't come to be served, but to serve, to give my life a ransom for many."

Adopted as Sons

Here is the sixth thing — the second specific purpose of His coming: that we might be adopted as sons. Jesus came so that we who were children of wrath could now become children of the King. As individuals, we have to understand that our righteousness was nothing but filthy rags presented to God. Anything we bring to God — saying we will fulfill the law, or live the best we can, or whatever version of that we have — anything other than biblical Christianity is simply bringing our sin to God and asking Him to accept it. Every sacrifice we offer is imperfect.

John Wesley was a man who understood this, very much like Martin Luther. When Wesley was at Oxford, he helped establish a group called the Holy Club. They went to church, they studied their Bibles, they fasted and prayed, they went into prisons, and they gave food, clothes, and education to the poor. But as he looked back on that period of his life, Wesley understood, "I had even the faith of a servant, though I was not a son." He was saying he did not yet understand what it meant to be a follower of Christ in the truest sense of the word.

So never confuse your effort with being a son of the King. We are there by adoption, and that adoption is through Christ.

The Spirit of Adoption

In verse 6, Paul makes clear that God wants us to know we are His — loved and accepted, and guarded by our Father. Because we are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, so that we can cry, "Abba, Father." We are told in Ephesians 1 that we have been adopted and that the Holy Spirit has sealed us for the day of redemption. There is that moment in time when God's Spirit comes into our heart and our relationship with Christ is unified in an unbreakable way. Romans 8:16 says, "The Spirit testifies with our spirit that we are children of God."

We can cry out, "Abba, Father." To the Jews, this was revolutionary. They would not even say the name of God — they would write it only partially — and yet now we can come and cry out, "Abba, Father." It is literally the idea of daddy. It is a picture of intimacy. It is the absolute contrast of almost every other religion, which sees God as distant and angry — a God clearly to be worshipped, a God to be feared, a God who had nothing to do with us and was not interested in anything to do with us. But now we can call Him daddy. We are in right relationship with Him. At just the right time, Christ came, lived, and died so that we could enter into this relationship.

Sons and Heirs

Verse 7 draws the conclusion: because all of that is true, because you know Christ as Lord and Savior, because you have come into that relationship, because Jesus came and lived and died at just the right time — therefore, you are no longer a slave, but a son. And if you are a son, then you are an heir through God. All of a sudden, you have not just sonship, but with that sonship comes an inheritance. Romans 8:17 says, "We are heirs, also heirs of God and fellow heirs of Christ."

To borrow from Keller again: the privilege of adoption presupposes pardon, acceptance, and permanence. Because Christ died, because Christ freed His people from the bondage of their sin, because at a point in time you stepped into a right relationship with God through Christ — because of all of that, you now have this inheritance and are a fellow heir of Christ.

Six Privileges of an Heir

Let me give you six privileges of an heir. Number one: we participate in Abraham's promise. The promise to Abraham included the Spirit that would come and the protection that would be provided. That promise is literally what we now read about in Ephesians 1 — that God gives to His children every spiritual blessing. God wants what is absolutely best for His kids, and all those blessings God has for us —

The Joy of Pleasing the Father

When Sarah was in third and fourth grade, I coached her girls' basketball team. It was a whole new experience for me. These were third and fourth grade girls, and I was working some intricate offenses and defenses. We practiced on Friday night, and the first game was Saturday morning. I got all the girls around and said, "Here's what we're going to do." When I asked if anyone had questions, one girl said, "Mr. Schrader, tomorrow, are we going to wear red ribbons or blue ribbons in our hair?"

I had one girl on the team who had absolutely no promise at all. Every kid played at least a half, and this girl never made a basket, never did anything of any consequence in the entire two years I had her. We were in one of our last games, and the ball came to her — totally accidental. She looked at the ball, she looked at me, and I was signaling her to shoot. She just let it go, and it went right through. Nobody could believe it.

In the midst of all the action — go, go, defense, defense — this girl was so excited that she ran all the way over to her parents and said, "Did you see that?" She wanted that affirmation. And that captures something important: as the Father gives us every spiritual blessing, our desire as His children is to please the Father.

No Condemnation

The second thing the Father gives us is this: there is no condemnation for you. We talked about this at length in verses four and five — you have been redeemed. Romans chapter 8, verse 1: "Therefore there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the Spirit of life in Christ has set you free from the law of sin and death." You are in bondage now, not to the law, but to Christ. That deep, deep burden of sin has been relieved.

There is still guilt in our life when we sin — I made that point last week, and I don't think we can make it enough. There will be times in your life when you sin, and that will be an indicator of where you are spiritually. If you can just go on sinning without any response, something is wrong. But now there is no condemnation, and rather than freeing us to sin more, the reality is that when we are overwhelmed by the deep love God has for us, all we want to do is respond to that love.

There is something about love that is so compelling — that is why we are even afraid to say it. When you are dating and you both want to say it but neither one will, it is because nothing would be worse than saying "I love you" and getting "Wow, I have to go" in return. But when you see someone who loves you, protects you, guides you, and nurtures you, your heart is not to break that relationship but to respond with that same kind of love. So there is no condemnation.

Led by the Spirit

The third thing is that we are led by the Spirit — the Spirit who indwells us. Romans chapter 8, verse 14: "For all who are led by the Spirit, those are called sons of God." Those are the fundamentals of our faith.

That is an interesting word — fundamental, or fundamentalist. In its broadest definition, it means strict adherence to any set of basic ideas or principles. Kathy Keller, Tim's wife, writes that most people are fundamentalists. It just depends on what your fundamental is. It could be recycling, nutrition, pleasure, politics, or money. For those of us who are Christians, our fundamental is grace, forgiveness, and justice, and that is the result of the living God in us.

One author writes: legalists are led by the law, hedonists are led by desires, materialists are led by their possessions, but Christians are led by the Spirit. Another author puts it this way: we need to be less cause-driven and more cross-driven, more Spirit-led.

Fellow Heirs with Jesus

The fourth thing is that we are fellow heirs with Jesus. We saw this idea in chapter 4, verse 7 — we are heirs through Christ. Romans chapter 8, verses 16 and 17: "The Spirit testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, also heirs — heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ."

As fellow heirs of Jesus, we are fellow heirs in three specific areas. The first is that we are kingdom builders. John 17: "Just as You sent Me into the world, I send them into the world." God is building His kingdom and you are part of it. We are the church — and the church is not just Redemption Church or Scottsdale Bible Church or Central Christian Church. It is the body of believers that God is using to proclaim this message to the world, to be salt and light in the midst of it.

That is a great privilege. That is why the way you live matters. That is why the book *When Bad Christians Happen to Good People* is so important — because in many cases our failure to be salt and light in the world has consequences far beyond what we realize.

Fellow Heirs in Suffering

We are fellow heirs with Christ in His suffering. John 15 tells us, "If they persecuted Me, they will persecute you." Philippians 3 makes it personal: because of what Jesus did for me, I now have the privilege of knowing Him, of living in the power of His resurrection, sharing in His suffering, and becoming like Him in His death. We too will suffer. We will suffer for Christ's sake, and because of our identification with Him, there will be times when we will be slighted.

We have to acknowledge it is nothing like what we might see in some places around the world. Statistically — and I don't know how they arrive at these estimates — approximately 250,000 Christians are killed every year for their faith, still today, more than in the era we are looking at in the life of Paul. Some of you have experienced that kind of persecution and suffering, perhaps in the work you are in, or in the general industry or company you are in, when your morals, ethics, and Christ-likeness get in the way.

And by the way, if you are running a company, the people you should want working for you would be loyal, hardworking, service-oriented people — servant-leaders, followers of Christ. Having said that, I have yet to meet a boss who hasn't shared with me the experience of this complexity. I was just talking to a man and his wife two weeks ago; they had a little tech startup and hired all Christians when they started, and they had to fire every one of them. He said, "That Bible, in a lot of ways, gets in the way." So you understand the complexity there.

Fellow Heirs in Favor with the Father

The third way we are fellow heirs is that we have favor with the Father. When Jesus was baptized, the voice from heaven said, "You are My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." We are fellow heirs of His — fellow heirs in building the kingdom, fellow heirs in suffering, and fellow heirs in favor with the Father. So here is the practical application: you have work to do, suffering to endure, and favor to live by. Now go and do it as a fellow heir.

Brand New Bodies

Number five: we get brand new bodies. This is good news. Romans 8:23 says, "And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body." Second Corinthians 4 reminds us that we do not lose heart, though the outer man is decaying, the inner man is being renewed day by day.

There is this idea that not just a new Jerusalem, but we will receive new bodies — glorified bodies. We know a little bit about them. We know they are functional. We know they do not disintegrate. And apparently — this is good news — they will be pleasant to look at, though that won't be important to us anymore. That means no more gym, no more curls, no more squats, no more lunges, no more reps, no more cardio, no more diet, no more CrossFit, no more power pump, no more Zumba, no more Brazilian gluteus maximus exercise.

I received a text from Haley three months after Susan had died. She said, "Think about this — for ninety days, Mom has had no pills, no chemo, no hurt, no pain, no sorrow." That is what you inherit. You inherit this new body in heaven.

The Right to Say Daddy

Here is the big one — we have talked about it, but we will close with it. It is the right to say "Daddy." It is intimacy with God. Romans 8:15 says, "For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons, by which we cry out, 'Abba, Father.'"

A couple of years ago, Haley had a kidney stone — a really large one. The nurse said there was no way she could pass it. In fact, the nurse mentioned she had seen Cardinal football players come in with kidney stones a fraction of that size and it crippled them. We were in the emergency room, Tyler was gone, Susan was gone, and Haley was just there with me. You know how helpless that feels.

My girls call me Tom — they have done that since they were little, and I have always loved it. But every once in a while, they will say "Daddy," and when they do, we are entering a new level of conversation. Whenever I get a card that says "Daddy," it means something different. She was laying there in so much pain, and they could not give her anything for it yet because they were not sure what it was. She just looked up at me and said, "Daddy, it hurts so much. Help me."

That is the intimacy you can cry out to the Father with. You can tell Him right now — because life right now may be very, very hard for you. It may be a relationship, it may be something economic, whatever it is — you can cry out and tell Him, "Daddy, it hurts so much." And here is the remarkable thing: He encourages you to tell Him, for two reasons. Number one, because He cares. Number two, because He can do something about it. He will not always relieve that pressure, but He will join you in that pressure. Peace is not the absence of turmoil; it is the presence of God in the midst of it.

The Practical Result of These Six Privileges

Because we have those six privileges, we have a taste of security in Him, sealed with the Holy Spirit. We have a new identity. Our identity is no longer our stuff, our status, or anything in this world — our identity is in Christ. "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me."

The Ability to Live with Contentment

We have the ability to live with disappointment. Paul says he learned to live with a lot, and he learned to live with a little. That doesn't mean we don't work and strive, and it doesn't mean there isn't struggle. It simply means that we understand God is in control, and our call is to be obedient.

A True and Perfect Father

We have been given a true, perfect Father. We are about fourteen weeks away from summer camp, and Justin sent out the topics for this year. Tim and I are planning to co-teach it, and I had picked the sessions I wanted before the topics were assigned. I was hoping to teach on Sunday morning in the outdoor amphitheater — a beautiful setting that some of you have experienced. When I received the schedule from Justin, I discovered the topic that morning is "God is Father."

That will be a significant conversation with those junior high and high school kids. Some of them have an okay dad, some have no dad at all, and some have a bad dad. That idea of God as Father was a big deal for Susan. I'll be honest — I never fully understood this, but I've heard it enough to know it's real: Susan had a serious struggle with God as Father because her own father was so harmful. You may have an earthly father who is good or even great, but God is the true, perfect Father.

The Desire to Share the Inheritance

Here is the last practical result of all of this. Frank Switzer writes that we are indwelt with a ruthlessly unstoppable desire to see others share the inheritance — that there should be within us a desire to share this amazing good news.

I hurt my shoulder some weeks ago, and every time I mention it, someone has a cure. They have this doctor, that doctor, this exercise, that cortisone shot — everyone shares their remedy freely. It's remarkable how readily people offer this, even people I barely know, who feel compelled to come up and give me their cure.

I couldn't help but wonder: you have people all around you who aren't necessarily hurting in their shoulder or their neck or their back, but are hurting in their soul. You are willing to tell them to go see a particular doctor, yet not willing to tell them to come to Christ.

Accepted, Adopted, and Unbreakable

The privilege of adoption presupposes that we have been pardoned and redeemed. This is amazing. Those of you who are followers of Christ are accepted by the one true holy God because of the work of His Son, Jesus. That is an unbreakable union.

We are not done — we have work to do. The Spirit fills us for that work. There will be suffering to endure, but we have enormous favor in God's eyes as His children.

Closing Prayer

Father, thank You for this amazing truth. We love You, and we love You because You first loved us. Thank You for the power You have given us through the resurrection — that we are forgiven and have the ability to forgive. God, thank You that You have adopted us, that we are heirs, and that we can call You Father because of Your work in our lives. You are an awesome God. Thank You that we can be Your children for one reason: because of Jesus. We pray to You in His name, amen.