They wanted to be under the law. They had been hooked by the lie that what had begun in the Spirit now needed to be perfected in the flesh. They had bought into the “old math” that Jesus’ work on the cross plus our efforts in the flesh equals salvation. The law had been intended as a “guardian until Christ came” . . . a restraining force until the way of faith and freedom was revealed. Never capable of justifying people before God, the law, instead, was to point the way to need for a justification accomplished by Another and appropriated by faith alone. But they wanted to be under the law . . . relying on their best efforts, they worked so that they might live like sons of slavery . . . rather than rest in being children of promise.

Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. . . . Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise.   (Galatians 4:21-23, 28 ESV)

Like Isaac, I am a child of promise. Born against all the odds . . . humanly speaking, without a chance of being brought into the family . . . unable to work my way “to the top” . . . with no heavenly capital of my own to buy my way in. The only entrance . . . the only means of becoming a member of the family . . . was through the determined purposes of God . . . through His Sovereign intention to call to Himself a people . . . to make them a holy people suited for His holy presence . . . to fit them for His family through the righteousness of His Son . . . and thus, to adopt them as sons and daughters . . . making them heirs according to promise.

Sometimes I just need to sit back and take in that I am a child of promise . . . born again not for slavery and obligation but made a new creation in Christ Jesus for freedom and gratitude-fueled obedience. Mine is not to be a law-driven labor to validate or secure the place prepared for me in heaven, instead mine is to be a rest in the finished work of the cross of Christ. My sacrifices and efforts come not from a desperate need to do the right thing so that God might be justified in showing me favor . . . instead, by His grace, I place myself on the altar as a living sacrifice as a response to His abundant grace and the justification that comes by faith through His Son.

I don’t think it’s natural to live as a children of promise. The flesh, the ego, the sense that you pay-your-own-way, all conspire to want some sort of law that I can check off to satisfy a need to earn my way. “Uh, uh,” says Paul, “That’s what children of flesh do . . . that’s how kids of the slave woman are driven. But you have been born through promise . . . born according to the Spirit . . . not children of the slave but of the free woman . . . like Isaac, children of promise.”

For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if justification were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.   (Galatians 2:19-21 ESV)

A child of promise . . . by the grace of God alone . . . for the glory of God alone . . .