Paul tells us, “you are all sons of God,” in Galatians. Paul uses sons, not “sons and daughters,” simply because with sonship in ancient cultures came the right to inherit. Are all people sons of God? Find the important qualifiers in this verse: “For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.” They serve as bookends for sonship: “in Christ Jesus” and “through faith.” We have all the rights and privileges of a child of God only if we are in Christ Jesus through faith. Without that, we are still in our sins. We are still in Adam.
J.I. Packer says in his classic book, Knowing Faith, that there is a higher privilege the gospel offers, even higher than justification. The doctrine of justification made you right before God the judge, who made the declaration, “not guilty” from the bench. But what happened next is critical. The judge then got off the bench, came down to where you are and embraced you, and said, “Come home to live with me as my son.” JI Packer wrote, “To be right with God the Judge is a great thing, but to be loved and cared for by God the Father is a greater.” In answer to the question, “What is a Christian?” Packer said, “The richest answer I know is that a Christian is one who has God as Father.” Jesus taught us to pray, “Our Father, who is in heaven,” didn’t he? Sometimes I have a hard time moving past that first phrase without getting emotional. I have a perfect Father who loves me perfectly and wanted me to be in His family.
Along with that, a son of God is one who is clothed in Christ, Paul wrote. The picture of baptism points to that moment of your salvation, when you “put on Christ.” Paul writes in Romans 6, “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead…we too might walk in newness of life.” Therefore, water baptism follows spiritual baptism, and our primary identity is in Christ. We don’t have to wear a badge that says, “I belong to Christ.” We are closer to him than our clothing is to our body, and in our speech and actions we “practice His presence.” If we are clothed in Christ, we are growing in our love for Him and that changes how we think, and speak, and walk, and act. There is an intimacy with Christ that colors everything about us.
That means also that we are one with every other believer, because we are all where? In Christ! We play different roles in the body, but there is no distinction among believers as far as our position in Christ. There are ethnic, social and gender distinctions among believers, and yet, we are one in Christ. Paul said, “There is neither Jew not Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Paul mentions this threefold affirmation in Galatians because, many believe, the same was used in a morning prayer that Jewish men prayed every day: “Thank you God that you did not make me a Gentile, a slave, or a woman.” The reason for this prayer, which Paul himself would have prayed before He met Christ, was not a disparagement of Gentiles, slaves, or women as persons. FF Bruce writes that it was because of the fact “that they were disqualified from several religious privileges that were open only to free Jewish males.” Paul affirms that in Christ, these distinctions are irrelevant. The body of Christ is unity within diversity, but not sameness. All are welcome in Christ as in Him there is no difference, no distinction, no division.
Nobody can pull this off except Christ. And only in His church.
J. Mark Fox 