Words of Truth
Galatians 4GAL 4
In Genesis we have the Father. It is the book of the patriarchs, and the affections of the Father are displayed and exercised there very beautifully.
Abraham (as well as others in this book) desires a child. Though his house might have been established in a servant, a loved and trusted servant called Eliezer of Damascus, this will not do for him. As long as he went childless, his heart was not satisfied.
He makes a feast when his son Isaac is weaned. This was his joy, to hear himself addressed as a father. Sarah will then also have the house cleared of the bondwoman and her child.
Jacob adopts his grandchildren, the sons of Joseph. He gives them the place and inheritance of the firstborn, and welcomes them with full affection.
These are among the instances which we find in these early patriarchal days of the counsel and affections of our heavenly Father shadowed or expressed in His representatives in the book of Genesis. There is no law, no Moses, no schoolmaster in this book. God has the elect immediately under His own hand and eye, dealing with them by home method, so to express it, and not by the intervention of tutors and governors.
The law came afterward, and then the elect were carried to school and put under rules and ordinances foreign to the home of the family, and treated rather as servants than as children. The head of a school is a schoolmaster.
Dispensation or the Spirit
The dispensation of the Spirit has now come. The Son Himself has been manifested. He was "made of a woman, made under the law... that we might receive the adoption of sons." Gal. 4:4, 5. The elect are now put on the ground of His accomplished redemption, and in the acceptableness of His loved Person.
This condition of things is the Father's delight. There was a need of the schoolmaster for a season, but that need has been answered, and the Father has His child home again. This is not the age of the infant, the child that cannot speak, but the age or dispensation of the son, the elect who have the Spirit, the Spirit of adoption that cries Abba, Father, filling the house with that music. It is the time of the weaned Isaac, and all that appertains to the bondwoman must leave the house.
This again I say is the Father's delight. The affection of the Father finds occasion to indulge itself to the full.
Returning to Ordinances
The Galatians were disappointing His affection. They were returning to ordinances. This is contrary to the Spirit of adoption, taking the elect from the Father's house again to put them under tutors and governors as before, and destroying the free, gracious, confiding communion of children with their Father. They were bringing back Hagar to the house.
It is this which the Spirit so earnestly resents in this part of Galatians. It is the grieved and wounded heart of the Father that speaks in this fervent epistle. Sarah had expressed this resentment in Genesis, when she said, "Cast out this bondwoman and her son." Those words are quoted here, for here in like manner the Spirit, in the behalf, so to speak, of the Father, expresses the same resentment. Paul would act the part of a parent in this epistle (Gal. 4:19).
By faith we are justified (Ch. 3:24); by faith we are made children (Ch. 3:26). A return to ordinances or works of law, therefore, reproaches Christ as though He had not accomplished our justification. It also silences in our hearts the cry of adoption, and thus disappoints the love of the Father. It is this which this chapter, with some indignation, resents.
I do feel that it gives this part of the epistle a very affecting and beautiful character. It is the resentment, or uttered disappointment of Him who, as long ago as the days of Abraham and Sarah, let His elect know this-that no other condition of things between Him and them would satisfy His heart. Only the relationship of a father to those who not only are, but also know themselves to be, children would satisfy His heart. Those who are weaned, like Isaac, from the milk of ordinances and brought home to the good of the Father's table give Him satisfaction. When our relationship to God becomes the subject with our souls, how commanding it is—at least, if it is a real thing with us. We may be anxious or merely calmly inquiring, or, having found, be joyful, but however such affections may vary, they are commanding.
Happy in God
Look at David, happy in God when conveying the ark home. What an "object" in the thoughts of others this made him! Look at him again when, under conviction in the day of Oman's threshing-floor, how full of humiliation and yet of self-sacrifice he was.
The congregation of Israel was happy in God in the day of the coronation of David; how large-hearted they were. And the princes of Israel, how happy they were in the day of dedicating the house of God with David (1 Chron. 29).
Peter, in the hour of his conviction, was without care as to whether the boat sank or not.
We see Zacchæus interested in inquiring after Jesus; how heedless of the crowd and of the tree he was. Then, when happy in Jesus, he was heedless of the injurious speeches of the people.
So it was with the eunuch when, as an inquirer, he was not moved by the strange and sudden appearance of a stranger. Then, when he was satisfied, he was not moved by the still more strange and sudden disappearance of his companion.
When the Galatians apprehended Jesus at the first, see what manner of "blessedness" was among them (Ch. 4). When the Hebrews were "illuminated," what unstinted joy leading to self-sacrifice was in them (Heb. 10)!
Those instances illustrate what I have suggested: when the Lord really becomes the object, how commanding a relation to our hearts He fills and maintains. Others become secondary.