Our text is Galatians chapter 4, beginning at verse 1, and at least by talking to a few of you beforehand, I have you intrigued with the title, if not the substance of the sermon itself, at least the title has intrigued you, Grace Over Karma. I'll show you, I hope, why I think that that is a fitting title for at least part of Paul's exposition here in this really remarkable chapter of Galatians. Paul begins by saying, I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything, but he's under guardianship and managers until the date set by his father. In the same way, we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. So you are no longer a slave, but a son. And if a son, then an heir through God. Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those things that by nature are not God's. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world whose slaves you want to be once more? You observe days and months and seasons and years. I am afraid that I may have labored over you in vain. Not that long ago, I had a conversation with a brother, a young man, who I learned later in the story had been adopted. He was adopted when he was only 12 years old and had been moved from foster home to foster home. He'd been in jail several times and had despaired of any hope of ever being part of a family. He really understood the gospel. He understood being chosen. They didn't have to love me, he said, of his adoptive parents, since I wasn't their natural son, but they set their gaze on me and showered the blessings of their family on me, even as they looked at me with a smirk and with cynicism. Being made a legal heir was a big thing for this young man, who had no sense of security, no sense of hope, no sense of belonging. He had the security that a natural child would have in any other family. Knowing that he would be disciplined with love, he knew that he would nevertheless never be thrown out on the street. You don't take that sort of thing for granted, he said. But the Pharisees had taken that very thing for granted. They had taken for granted their relationship to God, at least their relationship to Abraham. We read in John the Baptist's statements in John 3, he is excoriating the religious leaders for imagining that they were children of Abraham simply because of their ethnic descent. Produce fruit in keeping with repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, We have Abraham as our father, for I tell you that out of these stones, God can raise up children for Abraham. And the same message could be found in Jesus' teaching. You think of the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man called and said, Father Abraham, have pity on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue because I am in agony in this fire. Speaking of fire, that was probably fairly incendiary. What is this child of Abraham doing in hell asking Lazarus to be Abraham's servant for Father Abraham to send water to relieve him in hell. In John 8, the religious leaders answered Jesus, We are Abraham's descendants, and we have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free? They had taken that relationship for granted. And again, in verse 37, Jesus says, I know that you are Abraham's descendants, Yet you are looking for a way to kill me because you have no room for my word. And finally, in verse 39, they answer, Abraham is our father. To which Jesus replies, if you were Abraham's children, then you would do what Abraham did. Namely, believe in him. And so I want to look at this passage in the light of the challenge that Jesus was facing, very analogous to that of the Pharisees, here with the Judaizers, who had crept into the church of Galatia, stealing away from the people there the hope that they had from the initial preaching of the gospel that Paul had brought to them. I want to look at it under three headings. The promise and the law, heirs and slaves, and grace and karma. First of all, the promise and the law, because this is really the structure that grounds Paul's argument. The promise, of course, begins in the Garden of Eden, right after the fall. The first surprise announcement is that even after the disobedience of our first parents, God promised a deliverer. That was a surprise. They had no right to expect that. In the day that you eat from it, you shall surely die. And yet, God announces His surprise plan. And then in Genesis 14 through 17, we have the Abrahamic covenant. And in that covenant, there are two promises that are given. First, the promise of seeds, plural, many descendants, as many as the stars of heaven. And a seed, one descendant, through whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed. And so Paul says, now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring, singular. It does not say, and to offsprings, referring to many, but referring to one, and to your offspring, who is Christ. The greatest, the ultimate promise that God made to Abraham in that covenant was of one seed, through whom all of the families of the earth would be blessed. Another part of the promise was two lands, an earthly land in Canaan, a type of the heavenly rest. And that was fulfilled at the end of the book of Joshua, where we read, after God accomplished everything, including cleansing the land of all of his and their enemies, we read, not one of God's promises that he made to Abraham failed to be fulfilled. And so there is an earthly land, but that is only typological, as the earthly seed is, of the heavenly land. And that's why in chapter 4, Paul contrasts an earthly Jerusalem that is in bondage with her children as the daughter of Hagar, in contrast to the heavenly Jerusalem that has Sarah for its mother. And so, although God gave Israel the land by grace, fulfilling His promise to Abraham, remaining in the land depended on Israel's oath that they swore at Mount Sinai, saying, all this we will do with Moses splashing the blood on the people in accordance with their oath. With exile being threatened for disobedience. You see, by design, and this is at the heart of Paul's argument, By design, the law was intended to be temporary, impermanent, conditional, with the mediator Moses. It's not the main event. It's the trailer for the movie. And it's preparing the people for the coming of Christ. And so when Paul talks about the promise, he's speaking specifically of the Abrahamic promise. That was the oath that God made. God didn't have a human mediator in that covenant. He directly promised and swore to Abraham that he would be his gracious provider. God, not Moses, is the mediator of that covenant, as Paul is at labors to explain in chapter 3, verses 19 and 20. By the law, Paul intends the Sinai, or Old Covenant. This is what I mean, he says. The law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God so as to make the promise void. In other words, the Sinai covenant never replaced the Abrahamic covenant. It was never the purpose of the law to give life. For if a law had been given that could give life, Paul says, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. But that is completely cut off. That was never the purpose of the law in the first place. The purpose of the law was to guide Israel by the hand to Jesus Christ. And now that Christ has come, the old covenant is obsolete. The training wheels are off. It has done its job. The trailer had to end before the main feature. So then Paul says the law was our guardian until Christ came in order that we might be justified through faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, errs according to promise. That's exactly what John the Baptist and Jesus had said. There is no contrast here between Jesus and Paul. They're saying exactly the same thing. Paul adds, the law imprisoned everything under sin so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. So there's a real sense in which the law imprisoned everyone under the Sinai covenant. Then he turns, secondly, to the contrast between heirs and slaves. The promise gives birth to heirs, whereas the law gives birth to slaves. The relationship established at Mount Sinai could only create slaves, not sons. Employees, not heirs. In fact, in Leviticus 25, verse 23, God says, that the Israelites are tenants in my land. For the land is mine, and you are strangers and aliens with me. And like bad tenants, Israel could be kicked out of the land. As you sow, so shall you also reap. In the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. But like the Pharisees, the Judaizers had confused the law with the promise. Of course, they weren't adopted descendants of Abraham. They were physical heirs. They had Abraham's DNA, but you can't be justified by DNA. Their attachment to Moses doesn't grant them adoption as sons. Even as sons, through faith in the coming Savior, the Old Testament saints, couldn't inherit that estate, Paul says, until the date set by their father. And this is the way it was in the ancient Near East. In their minority, a child, even a natural son, wouldn't inherit until he reached his maturity. He could do whatever he wanted with the estate, but it was the firstborn sons to do with as he chose. But until he reached that age of inheritance, he was like a slave. He was like a servant in the father's household, like a servant with a really big trust fund. And so they were put under a temporary guardianship, and that temporary guardianship is called the law. Code for the whole Sinai covenant. Couldn't they see, couldn't the Judaizers see as they looked around them, as they read the newspaper in the morning, as they talked to each other about what was happening in Jerusalem? Couldn't they see that the Jerusalem that is below, the Jerusalem they had known, the Jerusalem that the Jews in the Galatian church were very close to, was under the heavy hand of Roman oppression, that as far as they were concerned, Israel was still in exile, even though they were living in the physical land, they were still in exile. But now they are adopted sons who have arrived at the appropriate age for the inheritance. That's what has happened now that Christ has come. Israel has attained its majority. The church has come of age. Finally, the seed, singular, in whom all the families of the earth are blessed. He is the natural son of the Father. He is the eternal son. But in addition to that, he's also the one who became like us in all ways to win back our right to become sons. Even those of us who are Gentiles who never had that right in the first place. And the relationship that he enjoys with the Father by nature, we now are able to enjoy by adoption. There is neither Jew nor Greek, for you are all one in Christ. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise. And by the way, son here includes women and men. Sons here isn't just males, and that's what's so remarkable about the gospel. In this adoption, men and women have the title that in the ancient world, only the firstborn son had. So we not only have the rights, the full legal adopted rights of a son, we have the full adoptive rights of the firstborn son who has decided to share his inheritance with us equally. And so Paul can say, when the 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. 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 an heir. Finally, and this is where grace versus karma comes in, Paul turns to an argument that at first doesn't seem to fit with his statements about the law and the promise, slaves and sons. but as we look at it more closely, it is a remarkable third part of his argument in this passage. You're all familiar with the law of reciprocity. You do good, good comes back to you. Didn't your folks tell you that? Don't you tell your children that? You know, you expect people to treat you well, treat them well. And when you do bad things to other people, you can expect bad things to come back to you. It's the principle of reciprocity. Paul talks about this in Romans 1 and 2, where even the Gentiles do by nature the things contained in the law because they have it written on their conscience. This is something that we're all wired for in creation. As created in the image of God, we know right from wrong. We know the principle of reciprocity. we read the book of Proverbs and it makes sense it clarifies takes out the cobwebs of what we might know otherwise but it's a wisdom that fits very much with how we know the world works God is telling telling us look this is the way the world works this is the way I set things up and you don't really break my laws, you break yourself against them. It was also something that pagan Gentiles understood to some extent, although they mixed it up with their paganism, as Paul refers to here. The Stoics, the ancient Greek Stoics, for example, believed that you have to live with the grain of nature. Don't go against the grain of nature, which is something our culture could learn. We've gone far beyond the Greek Stoics. We have so suppressed the truth and unrighteousness that even that general law that the pagans knew long ago doesn't seem to hold any sway in the conscience of many people today. They believe the world is just set up a certain way. Live with the grain of nature. Don't try to cut against the grain of nature. You'll just hurt yourself and others in the process. In the East, it's called karma and samsara, this wheel of destiny that you really control because you can decide today whether you're going to put out into the cosmos good vibes or bad vibes. Whether you're going to send out good deeds that come back to you, maybe in another life, or bad deeds that will come back to you in another life. And so you kind of hope you can move up from a beetle to a little bit of a higher being each time around. In Islam, it's called istalah, the principle of reciprocity. You get back what you give out. And it's a law of morality that's known by everybody, even those who haven't read the Koran. Paul doesn't deny any of this. The criticism that he has is that it's so bound up with superstition and idolatry. But in terms of the rule of reciprocity itself, he doesn't deny this. In fact, he says this is exactly how Sinai works. You can just imagine how incendiary that would have been. especially for the Judaizers receiving and hearing this letter. Well, what does it say? Do this and you shall live. Follow these laws. This is very basic. Follow these laws and you'll live long in the land that I'm giving. You'll have a long life. You'll have fruitful wombs. You'll have fruitful fig trees. Transgress and you shall die. It's that simple. What's so striking here is that Paul now equates the natural law with bondage. Not because the natural law is wrong. God set everything up that way, far be it from us, to find fault with the Creator. But it issues commands without power. It tells us what we must do, but it doesn't give us the power to perform it. It tells us what is right, but it doesn't make us right. But what's even more striking in this passage is that he now identifies this natural law with the law God delivered at Mount Sinai. It's not that the law is wrong, but because of our sinfulness, it can only arrest us, arraign us, and put us in jail. But Paul says that was exactly the purpose all along. The purpose was to identify those foibles that the pagans talked about, those transgressions of the elementary principles of the world, those basic lessons that our parents taught us. To identify the transgression of those norms as sins that deserve eternal death. and to place us in jail, to put us all in one prison. As Paul says in Romans 11.32, God has imprisoned the whole world with Israel under sin, so that he might have mercy on all, not just Israel, but the nations. Even the sacrifices underscored the impermanence of those sacrifices finally to take away sin, the need for a permanent sacrifice that was required. Now, though, with Christ's advent, even Israel's Torah is placed in the same category as the basic moral philosophies of the nations. To continue to cling to the ceremonies of the law, to cling to the sacrifices, to throw your arms around the shadows when the reality has come is, in effect, to be no different from a Hindu, a Buddhist, or a Muslim. And Paul argues similarly in Colossians 2, really an identical phrase, the elementary principles of the world, he calls it. And he equates it with demonic captivity. We don't usually think about slavery to basic principles of morality as demonic captivity. But that's how Paul describes it in Colossians 2. Well, what do we do with this today? The elementary principles of the world is really what most people think religion is. I was last week speaking at the University of San Diego on a panel with an atheist, an episcopal canon of the cathedral in San Diego and a Roman Catholic professor of philosophy. And the Roman Catholic was saying it's not about doctrine at all, explicitly said. It's not about an empty tomb, it's about ritual and big buildings. Very frank about that. And the Episcopal canon, she said that it was not about that at all, nor was it about the resurrection of Jesus. That's all metaphorical. It's really about what would Jesus do and following Jesus into patterns of justice and trying to heal the social divisions in our society. But it's not about grace. It's not about God entering into the world in the fullness of time. The eternal Son born under the law to redeem those under the law. You know, you ask the average person on the street what religion is about and what do they tell you? The elementary principles of the world. Karma. It's remarkable when you talk to non-Christians, even those who identify themselves as Catholics, Baptists, Presbyterians, what they say. It all comes down to karma, which is why Newsweek magazine, not that long ago, had that great article, We're All Hindus Now, identifying that most who identify even as Christians in America today have beliefs about salvation that approximate karma. Your good works hopefully will outweigh your bad. You try to follow the principles of being good so that good comes back to you. It's the message of Oprah. It's the message of the Dalai Lama. It's the message of Joel Osteen. Think of his book, Become a Better You. That's the gospel. Become a Better You, Seven Keys to Improving Your Life Every Day. That is exactly the stoicheia tukasmu, the elementary basic principles of the world. which Paul has identified with slavery rather than sonship. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. We're beginning to get the point here. Adoption is not like the elementary principles of the world. It's not natural. It's not something that you expect. Do this and this comes out. I love going to a candy machine, which I frequent all too often, and pressing A7 and knowing exactly what I'm going to get. And we like that in our lives. We like the predictability. But adoption isn't predictable. We are chosen before we choose. It's a surprise. It's nothing that we had a right to expect. And we were chosen, brothers and sisters, not from a hospital. We were not chosen from an orphanage. We were chosen from death row after we had been charged with treason against the high king. Paul says the most precious treasure in this estate is the Holy Spirit. God himself who indwells us so that even tonight we can cry out, Abba, Father. It's such a surprise we would not do this normally. We do it so frequently, sometimes we just take it for granted. But without the indwelling Holy Spirit, we would not have the confidence tonight to claim as our adoption right that we can call this God our Father rather than our employer. You think of how Jesus taught us to pray, those intimate words. When you pray, pray like this. our sovereign king. Well, no, he is that. And it's entirely appropriate to pray with the psalmist, addressing God as our sovereign king. But how does he tell us? Now I'm here. Now I have come. Here is how you are to address God, our Father. Not only our Father in the sense that all of us Christians have him as our Father, but your Father and mine. You can call him what I call him now. After his resurrection, he told the women, go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my father and your father. What a privilege. So why would Gentiles then, Paul asks, go back? After he has brought them the gospel, they have left pagan elementary principles with its idolatry and its superstition. Why would they go back now to the ceremonies of the law which Paul now places, after Christ has come, in the category of idolatry and superstitions? Why would they do that? He calls them the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world. Why would you want to go back to the weak and worthless when you have the strong and precious? Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods, but now that you have come to know God, or rather, to be known by God. It's not even so much that you know God, but that He knows you. How then can you turn back to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world whose slaves you want to be once more? You observe days and months and seasons and years, I'm afraid that I may have labored over you in vain. A clear parallel to this, we have to say, is the Church of Rome, still to this day, where Gentiles return to the Old Covenant, repeating its sacrifices, reconstituting its priesthood, which is obsolete, and ceremonies to try to appease God. But we have perfectly Protestant ways of doing it. One of them I've already referred to. After embracing the gospel, it's so easy for us to turn back to our natural paganism, to try to appease God with our ceremonies, with our superstitions, with our works, and with our idolatry. It's our default setting. Pastor Gordon quoted Bob Dylan this morning. So as we wind this up, I'm going to quote from one of my favorite Reformed theologians, Bono, from U2. In an interview, and I do this not to cite authority, mind you. I do this simply because he says it all better than I have. Mishka Zaias interviews him, not a Christian, of course, saying, I think I'm beginning to understand religion because I've started acting and thinking like a father. What do you make of that? Bono says, yes, I think that's normal. It's a mind-blowing concept that the God who created the universe is looking for a real relationship with people, but the thing that keeps me on my knees is the difference between grace and karma. I haven't heard you talk about that. Well, I really believe we've moved out of the realm of karma into one of grace. That doesn't exactly make it clearer for me. Well, you see, at the center of all religions is this idea of karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics, in physical laws, every action is met by an equal or opposite one. It's clear to me that karma is at the heart of the universe. I'm absolutely sure of it. And yet, along comes this idea called grace to upend all that as you reap, so you will sow stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I've done a lot of stupid stuff. I'd be in big trouble if karma was going to finally be my judge. It doesn't excuse my mistakes, but I'm holding out for grace. I'm holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the cross because I know who I am. God says, look, you cretins, there are certain results to the way you're living, to your selfishness. And there's a mortality as part of your very sinful nature. And let's face it, you're not living a very good life, are you? There are consequences to actions. The point of the death of Christ is that Christ took on the sins of the world so that what we put out did not come back to us and that our sinful nature does not reap the obvious death. That's the point to which Isaiah replies, that's a great idea, no denying it. Such great hope is wonderful, but I think it's close to lunacy in my view. It's close to lunacy. It's a surprise. Adoption. nothing natural about it it's astonishing and the world is still set up the way God made it and in temporal affairs you still reap what you sow if you're an employee who doesn't show up on time if you don't fulfill the contract be fired you can't violate these laws without blowback but because God has fulfilled his promise in the fullness of time that blowback is not everlasting doesn't have the final say over your destiny you're no longer a slave but a son determined no longer by law but by promise no longer relating to God by nature but by grace not so much that you know God but that he knows you and so what will you say when the pastor comes to visit you on your deathbed I hope I've done enough God be your employer I hope my good will outweigh my bad I pray that you'll reply through faith alone in Christ alone I'm not a slave I'm not an employee but I'm a child of God an heir to everything that Jesus Christ is heir to not even so much that I know the Lord but that he knows me and brothers and sisters if that's what you're going to say on your deathbed start practicing now our gracious heavenly father we thank you that we have entered into a new phase of history we thank you that you kept our brothers and sisters in the old testament holding on to that promise by types and shadows so that even though they are heirs with us during that phase of your history of redemption they were imprisoned directed to a savior so that only with us could they inherit the whole estate help us father to not only believe in our heads but to embrace in our hearts and to show in our lives that we are not slaves but sons of you, our everlasting Father. For we pray in Christ's name. Amen.