Galatians 3:23-4:7<\/p>\n\n\n\n
June 20, 2004<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When seminarians visit our church and learned about how we receive new members, they have remarked to me on how difficult it is to join FCBC. We expect candidates to attend classes, they are interviewed by the Deacons, we expect total immersion and before we extend to them the right hand of Christian fellowship, they share a 3-minute testimony in front of you. It seems like we make it difficult for people to join our church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It may seem that way but it is in fact relatively easy for a person to stroll into our church and after fulfilling these minimum requirements, we put them on the church roll. It may first appear difficult, but some have said that it\u2019s not hard at all to join a church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But if you look more carefully, one of the most difficult things in the world is to join a church. We have seen people show up and declare their intention to affiliate with our congregation. They go through the process. We baptize them, have a reception with a cake and pose for pictures. Everyone smiles and seems pleased to have them in the church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then weeks later, one of the new members has not really become a member at all. No group was found to adopt her. She made no real friends, despite repeated attempts. A few months later, someone asks, \u201cWhatever happened to that nice woman who joined the church in April?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Getting your name on the membership list is easy. But belonging to the church is something else. Some people have said, \u201cThey do fine coming in the front door, but in a few months, they quietly exit the back door.\u201d They joined, but they never belonged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maybe nobody ever joins a church. Perhaps the only way to get into a church, to belong to a church is to be adopted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Paul and the Galatians<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In our text in Galatians this morning, we find ourselves in the middle of a conversation that Paul was having with the Galatians. Evidently some missionaries were preaching a message that was contrary to Paul\u2019s. They were saying that Gentile men had to be circumcised and Gentile men and women had to obey the Torah as a requirement before becoming a Christian. Paul got angry with the Galatians for their lack of understanding of how people join the church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Paul told them that the law did have its place at one time according to verse 3:24, but now that the disciplinarian is not the law anymore but rather that Christ has come, we don\u2019t need the law any longer. \u201cBut now that faith (in Christ) has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s an interesting example to highlight here. The Greek word for disciplinarian is pai-da-go-gas. It refers to a specific kind of slave in a household, one charged with looking after a male child. This slave protected the boy from harm and made sure that he behaved properly, even punishing him if necessary to be sure he was raised correctly. But the role of this slave was temporary, and once the boy reached maturity, the slave was no longer needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The point that Paul was making is that now that Christ had come, the law wasn\u2019t needed anymore. To keep the law now that Christ had come would be like hiring a baby-sitter for a grown man\u2014the disciplinarian\u2019s job was over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The law simply was no longer relevant to the situation. It is now faith that makes us children of God, not whether we had the proper training, the proper religion, or that we dotted the right I s and crossed the right T s. Simply following the proper rules at the proper times, which often is what the law had become, was not the way to God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Under the Law<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n As human beings, we find it very difficult to accept this truth that now in Christ; we are no longer subject to the law. The law is our human effort to get into God\u2019s good graces, to get right with God, to belong in God\u2019s family. How on earth could sinners like us expect to do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we decide we or others must do certain things to be a good Christian\u2014read certain amount of Scripture each day, pray a certain length of time, attend church every single week, or any spiritual discipline\u2014then we run the danger of becoming captives of laws and rituals. While we certainly will grow if we read Scripture, pray daily, and attend church regularly, it has to be a discipline and not one more thing to check off on our \u201cto do\u201d list. These things are only empty rituals and not a way to connect with Christ.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The one time that I was really bad\u2014the time I told you that I played hooky from Chinese school and my father found out from one of his friends, he disciplined me by taking one of his Chinese leather slippers and gave me a spanking. He was basically trying to tell me that under the law, you can\u2019t devoid yourself from me. You are not just \u201cDonald Ng\u201d but you are the \u201cSon of Joseph Ng.\u201d For me to be a member of the Ng family, I need to comply with the rules of the family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In our human families, the law of being good children still applies. But sometimes, we try to use our human laws to get into God\u2019s good graces, to get right with God. But we can\u2019t do with God what we do in our human families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No Longer Jew or Greek<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Before faith came, we were all imprisoned and guarded under the law\u2026but now that faith has come\u2026in Jesus Christ you are all children of God through faith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham\u2019s offspring; heirs according to the promise (Gal. 3:23-29).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Galatian church was full of Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians. To the Jews, Paul was telling them that their old life was \u201cimprisoned and guarded under the law.\u201d They had the law, with its list of requirements and demands. That was the way they related to God, through the law. \u201cBut now that faith has come,\u201d the Jews like Paul have discovered that they are in a very different relationship with God. No longer are they subject to the judgment and discipline of the law. They are \u201cchildren of God\u201d through faith. Those who once obeyed as if they were hired hands, servants, are now children of God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What\u2019s more surprising is that Paul says that Gentile Christians are now Abraham\u2019s offspring.\u201d Abraham was the father of the Jewish people, the head of the household of the whole family of Israel. Through faith in Christ, even outsiders, these Gentiles have become children of God, members of the family, inheritors of all that God has so graciously promised Israel. They have been adopted into the family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Paul does not say that these distinctions no longer exist. Of course, even after Christ, there are men and there are women. What he says is that these distinctions as a means of distinguishing ourselves, as the primary mode of saying who we are and what we\u2019re worth, that these distinctions no longer matter in the way they did. The main distinction we have now that faith in Christ has come is that we are all adopted. By an amazing act of God\u2019s grace, we\u2014Jews and Greeks, slaves and free, male and female\u2014have been brought into one family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Up for Adoption<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n You can\u2019t work hard enough to become someone\u2019s child. Imagine someone showing up on your front door saying, \u201cI\u2019ve observed your family at work and play and think that you are a nice group of people. I want to know what I need to do to work hard enough to get into your family.\u201d You can\u2019t do that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When it comes to the family of God, the only way to join is by being adopted. The only way to be beloved children in the family of God is through the adoptive expansive love of God in Christ.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When visitors come to our church, one of the strengths that they observed is our love for one another and how willing we are to share that love them. The source of this love that we have is the oneness that we have in Christ. Surely, we can learn as human beings to be more caring or listen more attentively or be more compassionate. But at the foundation of our great love for one another is based on the reality of what happened to us in Christ. We have been adopted and therefore we are able and committed to welcome and adopt others into the church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Faith is not some new program for making ourselves right with God. Rather, faith is the recognition that, in Christ, we have been made \u201cheirs\u201d of the \u201cpromises of God.\u201d We didn\u2019t do anything to deserve this special status we have as heirs of God\u2019s promises. Out of God\u2019s love, God adopted us to be his beloved children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s like baptism. Paul in Galatians 3:27, says that we all have been \u201cbaptized in Christ.\u201d You can\u2019t baptize yourself. Even if you are baptized as a grown up rather than as a young junior high kid, you can\u2019t baptize yourself. It is something done to you and for you rather than something done by you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve been a Christian for as long as I can remember. I was brought into the church as a baby in the arms of Joseph and Lee Ng. Yet, if you just joined this church and became a Christian last Sunday, I have nothing over you. Both of us are adopted. Neither of us have any claim, on our own, through our natural endowments or whether I was born in Boston and you were born in San Francisco or whether I went to seminary and you went to dental school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We are all adopted. We belong, not on the basis of who we think we are or what we have done, but on the basis of God\u2019s embrace and love for us. As Jesus said to his disciples on one occasion, \u201cYou did not choose me, but I chose you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n When parents adopt a child, we nurture that child from the very beginning that he is a very special person because in some families, children are just born into a family, but in this family, you are special because we chose you to be a member of our family. You are adopted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since today is Father\u2019s Day, I would like all the fathers in this congregation to not take for granted that your children are just there. Don\u2019t take them for granted. Instead, consider how you might say to them, \u201cI want you to be in this family. I choose to adopt you as my own.\u201d Just as we can feel God\u2019s love when he adopted us as his children and heir to God\u2019s promise, imagine how your children might feel when you let them know that they are special too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s what happened on that Friday afternoon on top of Calvary. We who were nobodies became somebodies. We were adopted. Jesus stretched out his arms and embraced us, all of us. I\u2019m special only for that reason. I was adopted, made part of the family. And you are special too. For that very reason, I treat you as special as well. You have been adopted. None of us has any special distinction, when it comes to God or to one another, other than that we\u2019ve been adopted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But there are still people who are \u201cup for adoption.\u201d They are the ones who come through the front doors of the church and quietly exit through the back door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We have some people who are unhappy and impossible to live. Maybe they are in our congregation. It\u2019s not that they are difficult people, but rather they are just homesick. That person has no where to live, has been cast out of some comfortable place and now longs for home. They are \u201cup for adoption\u201d and what we need to do is to say to them,<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cGod sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to<\/p>\n\n\n\n redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as<\/p>\n\n\n\n children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son in our<\/p>\n\n\n\n hearts, crying, \u201cAbba! Father!\u201d So you are no longer a slave but a child and if<\/p>\n\n\n\n a child then also an heir, through God.\u201d (Gal. 4:4-7)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Welcome home all of you who are adopted sons and daughters, heirs to God\u2019s promise!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let us pray.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dear God, our Father, teach us that a person is justified not by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. Help us to accept your love and grace as adopted sons and daughters in your family and heirs to your promise. And we pray that we may learn how to welcome and adopt others who have not found a home to belong so that this church community might be that for them. Assure us once again that we are one in Christ, one family created in love, re-created by grace. Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Galatians 3:23-4:7 June 20, 2004 Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco. When seminarians visit our church and learned about how we