SERMON XVI.  GOD’S OFFSPRING

Galatians iv. 7.  Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.

I say, writes St. Paul, in the epistle which you heard read just now, ’that the heir, as long as he is a child, differs nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all; but is under tutors and governors, until the time appointed by his father.  Even so,’ he says, we, ’when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world:  but when the fulness of time was come, God sent forth His Son made of a woman, made under a law, to redeem them that were under a law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.’

When we were children.  He is not speaking of the Jews only; for these Galatians to whom he was writing were not Jews at all, any more than we are.  He was speaking to men simply as men.  He was speaking to the Galatians as we have a right to speak to all men.

Nor does he mean merely when we were children in age.  The Greek word which he uses, means infants, people not come to years of discretion.  Indeed, the word which he uses means very often a simpleton, an ignorant or foolish person; one who does not know who and what he is, what is his duty, or how to do it.

Now this, he says, was the state of men before Christ came; this is the state of all men by nature still; the state of all poor heathens, whether in England or in foreign countries.

They are children—­that is, ignorant and unable to take care of themselves; because they do not know what they are.  St. Paul tells us what they are.  That they are all God’s offspring, though they know it not.  He likens them to young children, who, though they are their father’s heirs, have no more liberty than slaves have; but are kept under tutors and masters, till they have arrived at years of discretion, and are fit to take their places as their father’s sons, and to go out into the world, and have the management of their own affairs, and a share in their father’s property, which they may use for themselves, instead of being merely fed and clothed by, and kept in subjection to him, whether they will or not.  This is what he means by receiving the adoption of sons.  He does not mean that we are not God’s children till we find out that we are God’s children.  That is what some people say; but that is the very exact contrary to what St. Paul used to say.  He told the heathen Athenians that they were God’s children.  He put them in mind that one of their own heathen poets had told them so, and had said, ’We are also God’s offspring.’  And so in this chapter he says, You were God’s children all along, though you did not know it.  You were God’s heirs all along, although you differed nothing from slaves; for as long as you were in your heathen ignorance and foolishness, God had to treat you as His slaves, not as His children; and so you were in bondage under the elements of the world, till the fulness of time was come.