Sons of God, not slaves of fear

For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. For you did not receive the Spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship, by whom we cry out Abba, Father! The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God.

I like the very elaborate phrasing of the first sentence, which isn’t it all translations (some say “as many,” but some say “all”). Anyhow, the point is clear; it is referring to every single person, to every individual who is led by the Spirit of God. And what does it mean to be led by the Spirit? I’m assuming it refers to all his readers, all who are referred to when he says, “but you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit,” and again at the beginning with “there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.” This seems like kind of an obvious point; why does Paul go to the trouble to say, no more, no less, but as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God?

I’m extrapolating a little here, but I think it’s justified by the next sentence… because it’s rather a staggering thing to be called “sons of God,” and probably most of Paul’s readers, like us, don’t feel like we resemble him much. We know that we fail every day to be like Him, we know our flesh is really strong. It doesn’t seem very likely that we are children of God, and unless Paul made sure it was clear that the passage really did apply to all believers I don’t think we would apply it to ourselves. But if we’ve followed him so far, we know that if we are in Christ and if the Spirit of God dwells in us, yes, this does really mean US. Some implications…each person, myself included, who has the Spirit also doesn’t owe anything to the flesh, is empowered by the Spirit to put to death the deeds of the body, and is being brought to complete and perfect life by the Spirit of Him who raised Christ from the dead giving life to our mortal bodies.

At first, I was thinking that the whole “sons of God” thing is actually just a natural progression from the previous couple verses; “father” referring to your source of life, and so naturally, since the Spirit is now our source of life because our flesh has been displaced and is being put to death, we are children of God because our source of life proceeds from Him, we resemble Him because our, uh, spiritual genetic makeup is His… similar to saying branches on the plum tree are sort of like children of the plum tree, not that you would. But I think the next sentence deepens it a lot beyond that.

Paul says that you didn’t receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the spirit of sonship, by whom we cry out, Abba! Father! This goes way beyond describing physical relationship, which would be incredible enough, into describing interpersonal relationship. I love that he mentions fear. It seems such a random thing—where does fear come into things? Who was even talking about fear? Why does Paul suddenly need to mention that we’re not in bondage to fear anymore? I think for the exact same reason that he also said “as many as are led ….are sons”; because we know we fail all the time. The new life could be a horrible thing, way worse than the old law. With the old law there was a book of rules to follow, but at least it was a book and you knew what the rules were. But with the new life… the rules aren’t clear, somehow you should just know them, and when you fail now, you betray God, defy his Spirit who is working in you and Christ who died to bring you into the new life, and also yourself, if you are indeed some sort of new creation. The law of the Spirit of Life, as a law to be followed, is a really terrifying thing when I think about it. Which is why Paul has to explicitly define the nature of our new relationship to God. Fine, we aren’t living according to the flesh anymore. But, if we are living in a certain way because we have to; because if we don’t God will beat us up and our main business in life is to not step off the path so as not to incur wrath, then fear is our guiding force, not the Spirit, and we are its slaves. But our guiding force is a relationship, and its nature is perfectly expressed by the first word of a baby for its father.

Much more about this later.