Promise Benefits
Galatians 3:26-29

Trying to keep rules will only lead to ruin, but trusting in God’s promise, as did Abraham, is another matter altogether! These verses reveal to us four wonderful benefits of being in Christ. We get new things!

1. New family (3:26)
2. New clothing (3:27)
3. New status (3:28)
4. New future (3:29) 

Galatians 3
²⁶   For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.
²⁷   For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.
²⁸   There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
²⁹   And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's descendants, heirs according to  promise.

A number of years ago I visited a large city in a distant land, Cairo, Egypt. Cairo was an eye-opener for me in that it’s a city of 18 million people. In Cairo, among those 18 million, 3 million live in what is called the City of the Dead. It’s like a suburb except you wouldn’t want to live in it. It’s a cemetery, an old complex of pathways and tombs and run down, broken down, buildings. Three million people live in the City of the Dead.

I was in a tour bus with other people from our area. Our bus was comfortable and air-conditioned and among other things, it took us from meal to meal. We were in fine shape. Separating me from all of that squalor was a pane of glass and that was about it. What a revelation! There were people with nothing, just nothing. While each one of them ought to wring a bit of sympathy out of us, particularly the children touched the hearts. I got to thinking, wouldn’t it be something if we could just take one of those kids, one of the orphan kids, one of the street kids who had nothing other than his or her ability to scavenge, to pick through things at the dump, to survive. Wouldn’t it be great to take just one and to pluck that little kid out of that setting and to bring him or her home and to give what they could never imagine having.

There are relief agencies and other organizations out there trying to facilitate that. It’s a real issue. I read these verses and I’m reminded of that scenario in my own head. There’s a verse in II Corinthians that was one of the first verses I memorized when I was a new Christian years ago.

2 Corinthians 5
¹⁷   Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.

What if we were one of those little orphan children and suddenly found ourselves with blessings we couldn’t even have imagined. Paul is coming at his audience in Galatia somewhat along those lines. He is saying if you put all your trust in Jesus only, if you lay hold of the promise that God made, and that’s all, just lay hold of it, all things become new for you, too.

The benefits of being in God’s promise are yours, ours. Or we can choose to continue to live as previously. He’s arguing the merits of clinging to the promise and he is saying that in Christ is the most wonderful place we can be because all things become new.

New Family (3:26)

I want to walk through these verses and talk about them from Galatians 3 in turn where the Bible says we first receive a whole new family. For all, he says, who have trusted Christ are sons of God now through faith in Christ Jesus. All are now sons of God. What an amazing concept to be a child of the God of the universe, to be considered His son, His daughter, His child.

There are other references in Scripture about being the children of some other one. For instance in John 8, Jesus is taking on the Pharisees.  In John 8:44 He charges them not with being sons of Abraham as they wanted to claim. He said, “You are sons of your father, the devil. He was a liar from the beginning and you have followed in your father’s footsteps. You’re sons of the devil, you actively oppose salvation by grace, you stand against it.” Not everybody does that, but the Bible would consider those who do to be children of the devil. Saying, “I am against the truth of the gospel of Jesus” is not a term to be taken lightly. I offer you something by way of alternative and I take an active posture in opposition to it.”

There also are what the Bible calls “sons of this world.” I would like to think that’s probably most folks who have not yet put their trust in Jesus only, sons of this world. The apostle describes them in the 2^nd chapter of Ephesians a little bit. If, in fact, the sons of the devil actively oppose the truth of God, we might say that the sons of this world are more indirectly influenced. The sons of the world, we might say, are not opposed to grace; they’re just indifferent to it. “Oh well. Ho Hum. We’ll all get there somehow anyway.” They’re not militant in that posture but are passive.

He talks to the Ephesian Christians in the 2^nd chapter of Ephesians and says “You were dead in trespasses and sins” and then he describes that life.

Ephesians 2:

¹   And you were dead in your trespasses and sins,
²   in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.
³   Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.
⁴   But God, being rich in mercy, because of⁾ His great love with which He loved us,
⁵   even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),

All that’s wonderful, but up to that point -- children of the world? Indifferent to grace, sold out to self.

I John 3:1

¹   See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.

What a contrast. A whole new family. Now the children of God based on what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us. It’s based upon his love. A whole new family. I think Jesus describes that somewhat in the 10th chapter of Mark. Children who were born, as John says in 1:13, not by the will of the flesh nor by will of man, but born of God into a family of God, with God now as the Father and a whole new agenda

Peter said to Jesus as one point, “We’ve left everything and followed you.” Jesus said, “Good move, wise move because there is no one who has left house, or brothers, or sisters, or mother, or father, or children, or farms, for my sake and for the gospel’s sake. Now old things have passed away, all things are become new and he shall receive a hundred times as much now in the present age.”

New family, houses and brothers and sisters and mother and children and farms, along with persecution and in the age to come, eternal life.

I remember talking to a mom and a dad, who thought they were done having children but after a few years they had another child. This particular dad, with a smile on his face, said regarding the child’s late arrival, “Well, he wasn’t planned, but he was welcome.”

That’s a great attitude, but when we are adopted into the family of God and made His children, in God’s view we are both planned and welcome -- which means everything.

We want to pursue God and put all our trust in Jesus only and claim the promise and go to heaven and all this -- these are the benefits of it. But what if not? What if I’d rather work my way? If I think I’d rather take my chances based on my performance and I’ll cast my lot with those who are doing it that way. Then I am adding to grace, in other words, preferring my own merit. I don’t get a whole new family. All I get is strife, frustration, uncertainty, wondering if I’m doing enough, am I good enough? We don’t get a new family at all. We get to be on our own, just toughing it out, engaged in strife, just like Paul described in the second verse of Ephesians 3.

New Clothing (3:27)

²⁷   For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

 He says for the ones who were baptized into Christ, you have put on Christ.

There’s a lot going on in this verse that I find fascinating. For one, every time I read the word ‘baptize,’ I’ve gotten into the habit of slowing way down because that word can be just a little bit tricky.  It’s one of the few words in the New Testament that was never translated from Greek into English. It was left alone.

The Bible was first translated from Greek and Hebrew, New and Old Testament, into Latin in about 400 A.D. That’s when the very first full, complete 66 books of the Bible found their way to one language. By then the church had organized, there were some politics involved and some pet doctrines circulating out there. When the brilliant individuals who were involved in that translation reached the word baptize, they said to themselves, “this is a hot potato.” They decided to just leave it alone.

The word baptize is a Greek word and it always means to place into or to immerse. That’s what the word means. In our minds, normally when we read the New Testament and come across the word “baptize” we immediately think of what we just did in the river. That’s our first recourse when we try to place some sort of picture to that word, but it isn’t always rendered that way in the Bible. This is one of those places where, in my opinion, we need to slow down just a little bit and see what’s going on.

Let’s read it a little bit differently. For those who were placed into Christ. That sounds just a little different, doesn’t it? You have put on Christ or clothed yourselves with Christ. I want to take us to I Corinthians 12:13 where we have the identical expression again. It helps us understand what’s going on here.

1 Corinthians 12
¹³   For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body.

This is saying the very same thing as Paul was saying in Galatians and that is: It is the work of the Holy Spirit to place an individual, spiritually speaking, into the body of Christ. Most technically, that expression “the baptism of the Holy Spirit” means the act whereby the Holy Spirit makes a person spiritually alive and thus places that person into the body of Christ. “Placed into” is the imagery.

It’s very, very natural and easy and in my opinion proper to understand water baptism as symbolizing what’s going on, being immersed or being placed into. Fundamentally Paul is saying it’s the Holy Spirit’s job, only he can do this. He makes you alive; he places you into the body of Christ, that universal Church (capital C), that body of believers of all ages of all the world. You are now in Christ’s body.

That’s what Jesus meant in Acts chapter 9, that wonderful passage where he accused Saul, after knocking him to the ground, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” “Lord, who are you?” “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.”

Who was he persecuting? The body. The church. The believers. And so this is what the Spirit has done in this verse, what Paul is saying. “You’ve been placed into Christ,” that means you have been born again and spiritually included into the body of Christ. If that’s the case, Paul is saying, Wow, you have put on, you have been clothed with, Christ.

He’s drawing on an interesting piece of culture. In the Roman world, and by the way the Christians did a form of this as well in the early days, when a young man became recognized as an adult they removed his young man’s toga and put on him the toga of an adult man. The exchange is symbolical, saying you are now considered an adult. We know that by how you are clothed.

Many early Christian groups did this too and they combined it with water baptism by saying once you’ve been baptized we’re going to give you a white robe. They literally did that to symbolize this is a new person now and the white robe obviously symbolizes new clothing, spiritually speaking, which is Christ.

What this means is wonderful. “To put on Christ” is referenced several places in the Scriptures. Put on the Lord Jesus, Paul wrote to the Romans in the 13^th chapter. To put on Christ is to be clothed with everything that is necessary for this life and the next.

Let me take you to a couple different passages of Scripture that help us. Paul is making a case through much of the book of I Corinthians that we don’t get any credit, God gets it all. That’s a pretty good case. He’s saying we have no reason to boast before the Lord (1:29) and in verse 30 says this:

1 Corinthians 1
³⁰   But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption,

If you have Jesus, if you’re clothed in Him, if all your trust is in Him alone, he says you have this, because with Jesus comes wisdom, with Jesus comes sanctification, with Jesus comes righteousness or being right with God, with Jesus comes redemption. You’re bought back from slavery. It’s in Him that we get all of this. He’s the key; He’s the One who embodies it all.

That’s not all. In John’s gospel, chapter 11, this helps us understand Jesus’ words to Martha at the death of Mary and Martha’s brother Lazarus. Martha says to Jesus in John 11:21, “Lord, if you’d been here my brother wouldn’t have died. Even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.” She’s saying how about asking Him to give me back my brother.

Jesus said to her, “Your brother shall rise again.” Martha said to Him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day. I know he will.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection.” He went beyond saying, “I provide resurrection,” which He does. What He provides is Himself.  A relationship is in view, not a rule, not even a gift in the strictest sense of the word. He’s giving himself. “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me shall live even if he dies.”  You are in Christ by faith. Believe -- they are linked. If you believe, if you put all your trust in Me alone, you get resurrection because you got Me.” Just like wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, you get it all because you get Me. That’s your clothing. That’s a pretty reasonable wardrobe, wouldn’t you say?

Don’t you like that passage in John 14 where the disciples are a little bit troubled and Jesus said He was going to go away and prepare a place for you and if I go away and prepare a place for you I’ll come again and receive you to myself that where I am, there you may be also. They said, “We’re not really sure what you mean. We’re not sure how we tap into that or really what’s going on.” Thomas said, “We don’t know where you’re going, how do we know the way?” Jesus in John 14:6 one of the most well known Bible verses of all, “I am the way.” I’m not going to show you the way; I’m going to give you Me. I’m not going to tell you truth as though it’s some sort of a classroom thing. I am the truth. I’ll give you Me. I am the life.

If we have Christ, as Paul would say in Galatians 3, clothed in Christ means we have it all, everything necessary for this life and the next. Is that not good news?

We can go that route, new clothing we call it, or we could say, “No, I would rather clothe myself. I would rather follow these people who are troubling the Galatian church and they’re saying faith is great and you need it, but you also must do something. Isaiah put his finger on this. Do you want to clothe yourself? Isaiah said all my righteousness is filthy rags. Filthy rags? Everything for time and eternity in Christ.

Lay hold of the promise and cling tightly.

New Status (3:28)

When I enlisted in the U.S. Navy 31 years ago, it was interesting how it was that so many young men were thrown together into the same situation from all walks of life, from all different parts of the United States, different economic backgrounds to be sure. Some were of privilege, rich kids from southern California, there were poor black kids from the ghettos of Detroit. Of course there’s a lot of jockeying for pecking order and position and you can’t throw individuals together without there being dynamic and some competitiveness and some bravado and all that goes with it. Then the day came when we went swimming. The idea, of course, is to make sure that since sailors belong on ships and ships belong at sea and the sea is water that sailors need to know how to swim.

I got to thinking about this. I can still see in my mind’s eye all these guys lined up with their Navy-issued swim trunks preparing to jump in the pool and swim however far it was we were supposed to swim. Everybody, wherever they came from, once they got in the water were equally wet and it was sink or swim, literally. Everybody becomes the same. Everybody had basically the same haircut and was just as wet as the next guy because the water knew no favorites.

Paul says in verse 28, there is neither Jew nor Greek in Christ. There is not slave nor free, male and female. He says all of you are one in Christ Jesus. That, particularly in its day, was profound and radical to a large extent.

We’ve lived in America for many generations where, at least the words say, all are created equal and endowed by the creator with certain inalienable rights and so on. At least it’s there and I would like to think it’s a goal toward which our society is moving, but in their world there is no such thing. We need to understand that class distinctions from different angles were a fact of life for them in the first century A.D. Roman world. It was largely a two-class society. There were built in divisions based on geography, ethnicity, religion, gender, all of these things, and everybody just knew it. It caused no end of trouble.

Naturally, that mentality found its way into the church.  Paul saw this mixed bag of Galatians, some from a Jewish background, some from a Gentile background, some from the country, some from city, some who were Roman citizens, some who were not, many who were slaves, many who were women, others who were not. How do you do this now? And then people coming from a Judaising background saying, “There really are first and second class Christians. There are those who just believe and they are fine, but there are also those who believe and do everything they can to be Jewish and they think they are even finer!”

They keep trying, under the rubric of Christianity, to make people different all over again even though the gospel has them all level at the foot of the cross. So Paul steps in and says, “No, you put on Christ and now everybody is the same.”  Interesting how that works. He puts in these three major areas of distinction for the Galatians, ethnically, economically, and gender related because they were the big ones for these folks in their world. He says there is neither Jew nor Gentile now. There is neither a local, an outsider, Roman citizen, Roman non-citizen, Phyrigian, Laodician or Lacodian. It doesn’t matter now because we’re in Christ. Isn’t Christ the last Adam? And don’t we all trace our ethnic roots to our original parents? Truly we do. In Christ then, we start over. All things become new and from the standpoint of ethnicity, the ground is now level because we stand in the last Adam -- Jesus. And that’s really good.

So Paul is saying no more Jew-Gentile distinction. That had to have been a slap in the face to those Judaisers who were reading this.

Secondly, economic distinctions just fell away. Here’s an interesting thing. At least half the population of the Roman Empire were slaves. Slavery means one person owns another person. Owns another person! Slaves were regarded not as people but as property. Paul is saying, “Well now, we don’t have slaves nor free. There’s no reason to hold that distinction any longer where one owns another.” Why? Because we are all now no longer owners or non-owners, we’re just simply stewards, managers. If God has made you a master, then you be a good manager of what God has put before you.

If God has made you in a position of slavery then you serve your master as though you’re serving the Lord because you simply are managing your area and that master is managing his area because God owns it all and we come to see that in Christ. There is no distinction in Christ between employer/employee, slaveholder and slave. By the way, these issues became huge about 150 years ago in our country prior to the Civil War. Interesting how both sides of that conflict used Bible verses to support their position. Paul would say everybody is the same. If we just look at this as stewards we’ll be looking at it God’s way, which is stewards and managers.

The gender issue, as we could well imagine, was huge. In that day the culture, particularly domestically, was heavily and oppressively patriarchal. It wasn’t just the pagans; it wasn’t just the Romans or the Greeks who were doing this because of heathendom. It was also the Jews who were treating their wives merely as property to a large degree. The prayer of the rabbis, “Lord, thank you that I was not born a dog, a Gentile, or a woman.” Those were the religious people. Paul says lose that idea, it is no more. In Christ, as we read before from Mark chapter 10, we have a new family. In Christ we now have a whole bunch of brothers and sisters and we relate on level ground in Christ as people to one another. This remark would have been revolutionary in its day.

Put on Christ, you put on new status in Him. Don’t want to? Want to stay with the rules in the old way, working the way and taking your chances? OK, stay with elitism then. Continue to enjoy the power struggles that result and all the strife that goes with it. Or enter into Christ and realize the ground is level at the foot of the cross and nobody is better than anybody else. People are simply entrusted with different arenas of responsibility, but nobody is any better than anybody else. That ought to be good news as well.

New Future (3:29)

Finally, get a whole new future. Look at Galatians 3:

If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.

What a future is awaiting you! Notice too that he indicates you are Abraham’s offspring. Not only do we get a new future, heirs according to promise, waiting to inherit, but we also get a new heritage in Abraham. I think that’s exciting. Abraham is the father of three major religions, Christianity, Islam, and Judiasm. All trace their roots to Abraham. But Abraham, the Bible makes very clear, was the first one to have faith in God’s saving economy. Abraham believed God and it was reckoned him as righteousness.

Anyone who believes God, puts all his trust only in the promise of God, is a spiritual relative of Abraham. We have a heritage that goes way back. Now that’s good. II Corinthians 5:17 says old things are passed away, all things are become new but one thing we have to make a bit of a disclaimer -- we get a new heritage, we don’t get a new past, much as we may want one. We still, even though we may be new in Christ, we still must pay our debts that we incurred prior, serve time or make amends. The heritage is there and the future awaits.

In the book of Romans, the apostle Paul starts the chapter by saying, “Therefore having been made right with God by faith, we have peace face to face with Him.” That’s a relief. In Romans 5:9, he says, “Having now been made right with God we don’t have to worry about wrath from God now. We will be saved from the coming wrath.”

Someone who has put all their trust in Jesus only doesn’t have to wake up in the middle of the night wondering, “Am I going to burn in hell?” Why? Because I’m clothed with Christ and God has saved me. That’s really good. We are saved from the wrath to come and Romans 8:1 says, “There is no condemnation now to them who are in Christ.” We look to the future and it’s one thing to be able to know, “I don’t have to worry about it if I’m trusting Jesus. He took God’s wrath that I should be getting. He took it on the cross. I don’t have to worry about that now. But there’s more to the future than just not having to worry about punishment, as wonderful as that is.

Let me read a couple verses from Ephesians:

Ephesians 1
³  Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ,

I can’t tell you what they are, item by item. But I know it’s good. Whatever the spiritual blessings in the heavenly places are with Christ, I know it’s wonderful.

The Bible says the eye hasn’t seen, the ear hasn’t heard, it hasn’t entered in the heart of man what the Lord has prepared for those who trust in him. I think it refers to this and that is wonderful.

Chapter 2 of Ephesians, verse 7 says:

Ephesians 2
⁷   so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

He is going to be benevolently inclined and abundantly, graciously good to us forever and ever and ever. And that’s a good thing, That’s a new future. And heaven too. We haven’t talked about heaven, where the streets are paved with gold, where the Bible depicts eternal beauty. Beauty beyond description to our eyes today. Right relationships. Relationships with folks we know now, relationships with folks who have gone before and who will come after, who have put all their trust in Jesus only. We will know them. We will love them; they will love us. We will interact. It will be glorious.

There are rewards mentioned. There are responsibilities awaiting God’s people in heaven beyond harps and clouds. Responsibilities. He told his disciples that some day they would be sitting on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. We don’t know exactly what that means, but it indicates there are responsibilities awaiting. That’s what the parable of the talents is all about. That’s exciting. Eternal beauty and right relationships and rewards and responsibilities and peace with God and no condemnation and no fear of wrath to come. All of this has to do with our new future if we’ve put all our trust in Jesus only.

On the other hand, we could stick with the old way. “I think I’ll take my chances. I think I’m good enough.”  Or, “I think I’ll believe, but I also think I ought to do some work so that I get some credit.” What awaits us then? Nothing, except condemnation and all that goes with it. If I read my Bible anywhere near accurately and rejoice in the good parts, which we’ve discussed, I don’t want anything to do personally with the bad parts. Because they are just as true and just as sure.

So we trust in Christ and in Christ alone. If you don’t know He is your complete trust, He’s a prayer away, a simple matter of saying, “Lord, from here on out, it’s you and your way. I trust you to get me to heaven, not me.”