Connect360: Redemption

• Lesson 7 in the Connect360 unit “A Cry for Freedom: Grace That Is Still Amazing” focuses on Galatians 4:1-11.

Exiting foster care does not always mean being adopted into a loving, caring family. No human systems are perfect and thus do not make perfect analogies. But, for purposes of illustrating Paul’s point, let’s say—and hope it’s true—that most are responsibly and lovingly adopted. Foster homes serve as guardians to protect, guide, provide for and love their children until they are adopted. Paul described the spiritual counterpart to physical adoption.

When that set time comes, adoption day, the child takes on the name of his or her new forever family and has all the rights of a biologically born child. “But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship” (4:4–5). When God adopted us, we became God’s sons and daughters. Jesus came into our world, our circumstances, our laws, and redeemed us. He adopted us.

When a child is adopted, he or she has a new mother and father. She can call her mother “Mom.” He can call his father “Dad.” What’s more, adopted children become heirs to everything the parents have. Paul told the Galatians, “Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba, Father.’ So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also heir” (4:6– 7).

Jews and Gentiles alike became heirs to the kingdom of God and all its inheritance when they accepted that Christ came, died and rose again for their sake. Whatever their circumstances at the time—Jewish law or Gentile paganism—they were reborn into God’s family and became the children of God.

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