¹⁴ For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. ¹⁵ For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!”

Justification once again is at the core of Christian living. We have been declared just before God; we are no longer in slavery, fearing that we will come up short in this respect. We have already arrived, and it had nothing to do with our keeping the Law! The Law has been neutralized as our final judge, because the sentence has already been meted out, and that not on us, but on our substitute, the Lord Jesus Christ. He fulfilled the Law in our place and sustained the punishment on our behalf. When the Bible speaks of believers having received a spirit, it is not one of slavery that binds us to keep the law of rules and regulations. Rather we have received a spirit of adoption as sons.

The implications of this are huge and cannot be overstated. Unbelievers have been so immersed in the slavery of sin and law that it seems absolutely normal, if not grievous, to them. Like fish that are so familiar with water that they no longer feel wet, sinners are quite at home in their sin and life of struggling with the spiritual “rules.” They are enslaved and don’t even realize it. Going to church as a tip of the hat to God is one evidence of this. They ratify this with their children at an early age: “If you do that, God won’t like you.” This escalates to “If you do that, God will send you to hell.” To compensate for such guilt-saturated living, people either deny God in their lives or try to appease Him by attending church, giving to charities and refraining from the more heinous and obvious sins like murder, adultery, etc. Any way you cut it, this comes from the spirit of slavery—even those who turn away from God, do so because they think of God on those terms, requiring obedience to the Law or else He will reject them. They lead their lives by this thought.

Believers, genuine and justified, are led by different thoughts. We have already confessed that we fall short. While non-believers recognize their sins and may even confess them to a priest or an offended party, they are reluctant to admit that their sin is more than just the individual sins they commit, that they have a sin nature at the core. That is what believers have confessed, and now they have no fear of judgment. They are part of God’s family as adopted children (“son” used here is generic for being a child of God). The evidence is that we are led by the Spirit to see God as our intimate Father who loves us. He is for us, not against us. He is our “Papa” (which the term “Abba” denotes in today’s terminology), and we can trust Him.

Abba, Father, thank You for adopting me into Your forever family.