From Slave to Son: Galatians 4:1-7

What I am saying is that as long as an heir is underage, he is no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate. The heir is subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his father.

Marcus was born into the household as a slave.

His mother had been a slave. He knew no other life. He swept the floors of the villa, carried water from the well, slept in the servants' quarters. The master's son, about his same age, ate at the table while Marcus waited on him.

So also, when we were underage, we were in slavery under the elemental spiritual forces of the world.

He understood slavery. The rules, the restrictions, the never-ending work. Do this, don't do that. Wake before dawn, sleep after the master sleeps. No holidays. No choices. No freedom.

Religion felt the same way, he would later realize. Rules to follow. Rituals to perform. Deities to appease. The elemental spiritual forces—the basic principles that governed pagan religion—were just another form of slavery.

But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law.

Then everything changed.

The master died. The will was read. And against all expectation, against all law and custom, Marcus heard his own name.

The master had adopted him. Years ago, secretly, legally. The paperwork had been filed. The son the master had raised wasn't the only heir—Marcus was too.

Born under the law. The Son of God entered the system of rules and requirements. He didn't bypass the law; he was born under it. He lived the constraints, faced the demands, experienced the slavery that was our existence.

To redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.

Redemption. The slave-market word. The price paid to set a slave free. Christ came to buy us out of slavery—slavery to law, to rules, to elemental forces that could never satisfy.

That we might receive adoption. The purpose wasn't just freedom from—it was freedom to. Adopted as sons. Brought into the family. Given the status of heirs.

Marcus stood in the atrium, the will still echoing in his ears. He was no longer a slave. He was a son. Everything was different now.

The servants' quarters? No longer his home. The master's table? His seat now. The family name? His to carry. The estate? His to inherit.

Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, "Abba, Father."

The Spirit came like a rushing certainty. Not just information about adoption but experience of it. The Spirit of the Son—Jesus' own Spirit—now living in Marcus's heart.

And with the Spirit came a word. A name. A cry.

Abba.

He had never called anyone Father. His father had been a slave—unnamed, unknown, sold before Marcus could remember. He had masters but never a father.

Now he had a Father. And the word came unbidden, rising from somewhere deeper than thought.

Abba. Father. Papa.

The Spirit who calls out, "Abba, Father." The Spirit was doing the calling—teaching his heart a word he had never known, awakening a relationship he had never experienced.

So you are no longer a slave, but God's child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.

Marcus walked through the villa that night. The same halls he had swept. The same courtyard he had scrubbed. Everything was the same, and nothing was the same.

He was no longer a slave. The identity that had defined every moment of his existence—gone. He was a child. God's child.

And an heir. The estate he had served now belonged to him. The master—the Father—had made him an heir. Not through his work, his performance, his merit. Through adoption. Through grace. Through the Son who came to redeem him.

He stood at the window, looking at stars he had seen a thousand times from the slaves' quarters.

Abba, Father, he whispered. The words still felt strange on his lips. But they were true. He was a son now.

Everything was different.