Galatians 4:7
7 Wherefore [hoste] thou art [ei] no more [ouketi] a servant [doulos], but [alla] a son [huios]; and [de] if [ei] a son [huios], then [kai] an heir [kleronomos] of God
[theos] through [dia] Christ [Christos]. KJV-Interlinear
7 Therefore you are no longer a
slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God. NASB
In eternity past, God came up with a plan to create
creatures, living free thinking beings, who would one day share all of the
universe and heaven with him.
God sent into existence, as it were, angels.
Knowing that in creating creatures who have free
volition and free thinking, and knowing that they are not god’s themselves, and
therefore imperfect beings, sooner or later they would fail. And they did.
All of the angels failed and fell away from God.
Two thirds of them repented and came back to God while the other third remained
obstinate, rejecting God, and continue to this day following satan.
Then God sent into the world another creature
called man. Since the angels lost their inheritance as it were, now man who is
a lesser being has the opportunity to take their place in the position of heir
to the universe.
But the same pattern follows for man. Man is
imperfect, man has free will and is able to freely think for himself, and
therefore man also failed.
Then God sent into the world the mosaic law. This
was a system of instruction that clearly demonstrates man’s inability to make
himself perfect, and therefore the need for someone else.
Until that someone else came along, man was in effect
enslaved to the works of the world with no way out.
Man had a promise from God but as yet that promise
had not been fulfilled.
Then God sent into the world, Jesus, who is the
second person of the Trinity and therefore equal with God, but was also born a
man to not only be equal with man, but to fulfill the law in order to abrogate
the law and terminate its hold over humanity.
The promise God made to Adam, for a Savior, and to
Abraham, for an inheritance, and to David, for an eternal dynasty, meant that
humanity had to be free from its bondage to slavery, and made a child of God,
in the family of God, in order to become a legitimate heir of God.
This among many other things, was accomplished on
the cross.
The cross released us not only from enslavement to
sin, but also our enslavement to the mosaic law which demanded a perfect life
through works, which no man could accomplish.
Therefore being free, we are able to receive our
role as firstborn sons, and heirs of God.
This was all accomplished, not by our own works,
not by our own efforts, not by our own abilities in anyway.
This was accomplished only by the work of Jesus
Christ on the cross.
