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Galatians 4:7 7<\/span><\/sup>Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ. Truth to Learn Because we have been adopted as a child of God we now have all the rights of inheritance, permanently.<\/p>\n Review Before the Son of God came as the Messiah (born in a manger and crucified on a cross), mankind was spiritually under bondage to religious practices that could not provide the righteousness needed to stand in the presence of a Holy God. The law, which was given to the Jews through Moses, served as a guardian to watch over the Jews and as a steward to make important decisions for them, but it could not free them. Under the law, man is no better than a slave with no rights to inherit the things that our Heavenly Father has prepared for us.<\/p>\n But then Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came to live His perfect life and offer Himself on the cross as payment for our sins. Now, through faith in His blood, we are adopted into God\u2019s family as His children with all the rights of inheritance. And, as a result of us being declared the children of God we have the Spirit of God living in us, allowing us to cry out to God with the most endearing terms possible: \u201cAbba, Father.\u201d<\/p>\n Behind the Words<\/span><\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cTherefore<\/span><\/em>\u201d is translated from the Greek word \u201ch\u014dste<\/span><\/em>\u201d meaning so too<\/em>, accordingly<\/em>, or therefore<\/em>. It serves to closely connect the following clause with what has just been said.<\/p>\n The word translated \u201cslave<\/span><\/em>\u201d is \u201cdoulos<\/span><\/em>\u201d meaning one who is in a permanent relation of servitude to another.<\/em> There are other words in the Greek language for servants: \u201coiket\u0113s<\/span><\/em>\u201d meaning a household servant<\/em> and \u201cmisth\u014dtos<\/span><\/em>\u201d meaning a hired servant.<\/em> A doulos<\/span><\/em> slave, having no legal rights, was of the lowest order in Roman society.<\/p>\n Meaning Explained Because of our faith in Jesus Christ we are adopted children of God. Now Paul gets very personal and changes from the second person plural to the second person singular, talking individually to each one of us. He tells us that because of our adoption each of us is no longer a slave of the lowest order but a son (child). And not just any old child but one who is declared to be an heir of God the Father.<\/p>\n Under Jewish law only the male children could inherit property from the father, and the oldest male child inherited a double portion, but under Roman law all children inherited with equal rights. Paul here tells us that as adopted children of God we now all have the same rights of inheritance as the \u201cOnly Begotten Son\u201d because we have become an heir through Him.<\/p>\n Application Since we are no longer a slave but an adopted child of God, we are in line to inherit what God has for us. And, by both Jewish and Roman law, an adopted child could not be disinherited as a natural born child could. So, in essence, Paul is showing us that by being adopted as children by God we can never become un-adopted. Hence, we are saved for eternity, and we cannot lose that salvation!<\/p>\n Copyright \u00a9 2007 <\/span>Will <\/span>Krause. All rights reserved.<\/span><\/p>\n – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –<\/p>\n <\/span>If this message or this link was forwarded to you by a friend and you wish to receive future verses directly to your inbox, you can call the church phone (618) 614-3070 and leave a message telling us your name and e-mail address or you can send an e-mail to: Galatians 4:7 7Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ. Truth to Learn Because we have been adopted as a child of God we now have all the rights of inheritance, permanently. Review Before the Son of God came as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-galatians-4"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd5geA-A","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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