Children, Not Slaves

It's been a while! Thank you for your patience.  I went out of town and then celebrated Thanksgiving. I hope yours was a restful time with family and friends.  God is so good, and I love having a holiday that focuses on just that: being thankful for the bounty in our lives that He has provided.   

You can take the people out of Egypt, but it's hard to take Egypt out of the people. 

These former slaves were now God's new creation, and He was making sure that His people understood that. God doesn't just take your life and make it better--He gives you a new life with new values, and new ways of seeing the world with a new heart.  

The old heart, sent to you directly from Adam and Eve, is broken, corrupt and hostile to the things of God.  

But God is in the business of allowing us to start over.  We are not given a second chance in our old selves,  but we are transformed by choosing to follow Jesus and not continuing to follow our flesh. With His Spirit in us, we are born anew. If you think about it, He is allowing us to return to the Garden, metaphorically, where we walk and talk with Him in the cool of the day.  He has brought us into a new relationship through Christ by His death on the cross.

Sometimes we watch the people wandering in the desert, and wonder, Why didn't they get it? 

It takes God time to recraft slaves into His sons and daughters.  We may ask Jesus into our heart and that is our moment of freedom, just like the Red Sea drowning Pharoah and his army, and the people no longer in danger of being captured and sent back to Egypt as slaves.

But that moment of new birth begins a period of recrafting, transforming and teaching us what our new status is and how we are to operate. 

Look what Paul says:

• "Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? When we were baptized into his death, we were placed into the tomb with him. As Christ was brought back from death to life by the glorious power of the Father, so we, too, should live a new kind of life. If we’ve become united with him in a death like his, certainly we will also be united with him when we come back to life as he did. We know that the person we used to be was crucified with him to put an end to sin in our bodies. Because of this we are no longer slaves to sin. The person who has died has been freed from sin." (Rom. 6:1-7)

• "So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir." (Gal. 4:7)

• "The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” (Rom. 8:15)

The note in Bible Gateway says for Romans 8:15: "The Greek word for adoption to sonship is a term referring to the full legal standing of an adopted male heir in Roman culture..."  

Talk about a change, a transformation into an entirely new status, with all of the rights and privileges thereof!   

You notice that, just like the children in the desert, we are in our own desert of slavery to sin.  Oh, we know who the Pharaoh is--Satan--for he never ceases to remind us that we are his, for we are enslaved to our sin nature, to our flesh, with no redemption possible. 

Wrong. 
 

God redeems us and makes us His children and as His children, we are His heirs.  To what?  All He has for us without interference from our previous status.

Yes, our sin natures asserts itself.  Yes, Satan is constantly trying to tear down our new status with his accusations of, "You are not good enough for that!" or "You are such a poser--if everyone knew the true you, they would see just how much of a hypocrite you really are!" 

If our status was dependent on what we did, we'd be back to works:  Trying to do, do, do to keep earning God's favor.

Wrong. 

Works--the doing--is not what God bestowed on us. He didn't say, "Here's some new things you can do for Me."  A slave is still a slave, no matter what he or she does.  But God gave us a new status, a new  position that is not dependent on what we do, but who we are in Christ:

 
"But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace." (Rom. 11:6)

Boom. 

Slaves has no choice.  They can be good slaves, a recalcitrant ones, a rebellious ones or obedient ones, but their status does not change.

But in Christ, we have a choice:  We can love Him, serve Him, seek forgiveness from Him, remember Him as our Father, our Savior, our God, and walk with a heart set free.

Satan's time is running out, but he still tries to frighten us with his army chasing after us, and sometimes our back will be to the sea.

But we are children of God, so why wouldn't He part it?

Jesus reminded people just how good the Father is:

“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?  If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!" (Matt. 7:9-11)

God expects and empowers us to act as His children, for He is rich in kindness and mercy to those whom He loves.  

That is one of the reasons, I sincerely believe, why the Israelites' behavior infuriated God:  They still were acting as slaves, and not as His children.

Hence, the Law.  The Law was one gigantic corral that keep evil out and protected His children from within.  It didn't save them but guided them into acting like God's children, and not as slaves anymore.  When they reverted back, by grumbling, creating an idol and engaging in immoral behavior, God could point to the Law and say, 

I told you how I want you to act.  You are not to act like this--only slaves act that way!  You are no longer slaves but My chosen people!

Do we exasperate God with our failure to see, act and model our status as His children? 

I wonder, Why don't we get it?