Not Children, but Grown Sons

Paul continues to destroy the legalists' false gospel of works righteousness as he begins, in chapter 4, to belittle and ridicule their claims.

He has already shown how Christ frees us from the law - by being made a curse in our place to satisfy the broken law, and by our being joined with Christ as His own, and being made sons of God and of Abraham in that union.

The law is pictured like a schoolmaster that is placed over unruly and immature little boys to govern their misbehavior. But when the Father decides it's time, the son graduates from school and is free from the discipline of schoolmasters.

We are freed from the law by our union with Christ, and by His Spirit resting upon us. We have obeyed the law perfectly in Christ, and all our delinquencies have been atoned for by Christ's substitution for us at Calvary. Then when Christ died, He was freed from the law, under which He was born in condescension to save His people.

Now the law has no hold over Christ's people, because we are dead to the law in Christ's death to the law!

To legalists who would still be under that law, Paul says they are infantile! They are like sons who refuse to leave school and grow up and enter into the liberty and duties granted by their father!

But in Christ, we are all emancipated sons of God, not immature children under a schoolmaster. We are adopted as grown-up sons in Jesus, free from the law as He is now free in the Resurrection!

Not only so, but Christ kept the requirement of circumcision for us to which Abraham's seed was bound in Genesis 17. He was circumcised the eighth day, and we all in Him.

His life began and ended in pain and sorrow to save His people.