Friday Night Football

Galatians 4:1-7

 

Previous to my Senior year of high school, my Dad took a job in Morehead, Kentucky. However, I stayed and lived with family friends so that I could finish high school with my friends. At one point in the fall, my Dad returned to complete some final details for the move. While there, he attended my high school football game on a Friday night. Normally, I didn’t play much, but I really wanted to get into the game and make him proud.

 

Finally, the coach called my name and I went in on offense. It was a running play to the opposite side of the field. The runner was probably thirty yards away from me, but I was desperate to do something, anything to impress my Dad. So I picked out an overweight lineman that was huffing and puffing, and put the hardest block on him that I could. He hit the ground with a great thud, and exhaled whatever air he had left in his lungs. To this day, I don’t know if my Dad saw me do that or not, but it was for him.

 

In Galatia, there were Judaizers, who were Jewish Christians. They believed that a number of the ceremonial practices of the Old Testament were still binding, and insisted that the Gentile believers abide by these, particularly circumcision. Paul responded in today’s passage with his attack on this belief.

 

“And that is the way it was with us before Christ came. We were slaves to Jewish laws and rituals, for we thought they could save us.  But when the right time came, the time God decided on, he sent his Son, born of a woman, born as a Jew,  to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law so that he could adopt us as his very own sons.”   Galatians 4:3-5 TLB

 

Paul knew well what it meant to try to live by the Law. In Philippians he referred to himself as, “a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless”. If you read this verse carefully, you will see that Paul defined himself according to his perceived ability to obey the Law. But in today’s passage, Paul suggests a better way for believers to define themselves.

 

“Because you are his children, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts. He is the Holy Spirit. By his power we call God Abba. Abba means Father. So you aren’t a slave any longer. You are God’s child. Because you are his child, God gives you the rights of those who are his children.”      Galatians 4:6-7 NIRV

 

The Law does not define who I am. My job, my family, my church, the things that I have done, even my personality, does not define who I am. But my Heavenly Father does. I am His child, and like my earthly Dad on that fall evening years ago, I want my Heavenly Dad to be proud of me, so that someday He will say to me, “You are my son. With you I am well pleased.”

 

 

(This was actually my second devotional on the same passage. The following was my first. You decide which you like better.)