Galatians 3:23-4:31 Didn’t you just love to have substitute teachers when you were in school? When you walked into the classroom and you saw another teacher, you breathed a sigh of relief and probably thought to yourself, Oh boy, this means no pop quiz, and we’ll probably have a free study period! Often some of the rascals in my class would give the substitute teacher a hard time. Substitute teachers earn every penny of their pay.
This never happened to me in school, but what if you entered your classroom and there was no teacher at all? You looked on the board, and written on the board in bold letters were these instructions: “Do whatever your heart tells you to do during this class period. I trust you.” What would your response be to such an instruction? Would you want to be as bad as you could be and misbehave, maybe throw spit balls at your classmates? I know what my reaction to such an instruction would be. I would want to live up to the trust that teacher had placed in me. I would feel that the teacher really thinks I am mature enough to behave myself in her absence, and I want to prove to her I can do this. In fact, I think I would encourage all my classmates to demonstrate their capability of being mature and responsible by behaving themselves also.
Such a day may never come in the classroom of a school, but such a day has come spiritually. Paul makes the following bold statements: “But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. For ye are all children of God by faith in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:23-26, KJV).
The fullness of time has come when Jesus Christ came and was made under the Law, but now has redeemed all those who were under the Law and has given us the spirit of adoption that makes us His children and makes God our daddy. The law now is written on our hearts, and we no longer have to have a schoolmaster. Jesus has become our life, and we now live by the faith of the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself for us. Jesus, the obedient One, has fulfilled the Law so that now we are under grace (God’s unmerited favor), which enables us to walk in the Spirit and thereby keep the law, which is to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves.
School is not out because we are ever learning in the school of life. Our teacher is now the Holy Spirit who lives within us, and He is the One who obeys through us.
READ: Isaiah 28:14-30:11; Galatians 3:23-4:31; Psalm 62:1-12; Proverbs 23:19-21
