No More a Servant but a Son Is a Change of Status, Not a Promotion

A man told me he has been a Christian for twenty two years and that he still cannot rest on a Sunday afternoon.

He is not talking about the sabbath. He is talking about a specific feeling that arrives at about four o'clock, which is that he has not yet done enough this week to have earned the evening.

He is not new at this. He knows the verses. He can quote the ones about grace better than most people I know, and he has explained them to other people and meant it and been useful.

And at four o'clock on a Sunday he is a man working out whether he has done enough.

He said the thing that finally made him ask for help was noticing that he had been doing it about a job as well, and about his marriage, and that the four o'clock feeling was not a religious problem, it was simply showing up in a religious place because that is where he spends his Sundays.

There is a sentence in Galatians that is written in a tense he cannot argue with, and the tense is doing the work.

The tense is the argument

Here it is.

Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ. (Galatians 4:7, King James Version)

Thou art no more a servant. Present tense, stated as a fact about a person's current position rather than as a target.

But a son. And then the consequence: if a son, then an heir.

Notice there is no instruction in that verse. It is not: therefore become a son. It is not: therefore work like a son. It is a report on a status that has been changed, addressed to somebody who apparently needed telling.

And that is the answer to four o'clock on a Sunday, because a man working out whether he has done enough is running a servant's arithmetic. A servant is paid by output. A son is not, and the position is not improvable by effort, which is precisely why it does not settle a person who is good at effort.

You are not a servant, and Paul states that as a fact about your current position. Galatians 4:7 says thou art no more a servant, but a son, with no instruction attached, and it is the Spirit of God, named one verse earlier as sent forth into our hearts, who is the mechanism the passage gives.

The verse before it names the mechanism

The sentence does not float. Paul says how the status is delivered, and it is not through anybody's improvement.

And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. (Galatians 4:6)

Read the order. Because ye are sons comes first. Then: God hath sent forth the Spirit.

The Spirit is sent because of the status, not in order to achieve it. And the evidence produced is a word coming out of a person's own mouth, in a language Paul does not translate, which is what a child says at home.

So the whole mechanism is: status changed, Spirit sent, word produced. Nowhere in it is there a step involving how the week went.

You have a Spirit sent because of the position rather than to earn it. Galatians 4:6 puts because ye are sons before God hath sent forth the Spirit. It is His Spirit named in that verse as the one crying Abba, Father, from inside a person.

John says what it was not based on

There is a line at the beginning of John's gospel that rules out three different systems in one clause.

But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. (John 1:12-13)

Not of blood. Not by family line, which was the assumed system in that culture.

Nor of the will of the flesh. Not by human effort or determination.

Nor of the will of man. Not by another person's decision about you.

Three systems, named and ruled out, and then: but of God. John is closing every door a person might use to explain their own standing, including the one marked hard work.

And Paul says the same thing with an emphasis on what did not qualify anybody:

Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost. (Titus 3:5)

You are in this position by a route that specifically excludes effort. John 1:13 rules out blood, the will of the flesh and the will of man in one verse. It is the Holy Spirit, named in Titus 3:5 in the renewing itself, who is credited with the making.

The one thing sons are actually told they will share

And there is one line in Romans that is worth reading because of what it puts on the other side of the status.

And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together. (Romans 8:17)

Joint-heirs. It is a legal term about holding an inheritance together rather than in portions.

And then Paul does not pretend the road is easy. He puts suffering in the same verse as the inheritance and does not separate them, which is why this is not a soft passage.

But notice what is still absent, even here. There is no productivity requirement. The road is described as hard, and the standing is described as fixed, and those two facts are allowed to sit together without one being used to threaten the other.

You have an inheritance held jointly rather than a portion sized to your output. Romans 8:17 says heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ, and it is the same Spirit, named in the verse before it as bearing witness with our spirit that we are the children of God, who does the confirming.