Held In Custody Under The Law

“Now before faith came we were held in custody under the law, being kept as prisoners until the coming faith would be revealed. Thus the law had become our guardian until Christ, so that we could be declared righteous by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian. For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith.” Galatians 3:23-26 NET

So, in this way, we were prisoners of both the Aaronic law and the law of sin and death, which is, in essence, the Aaronic law, for it declared sin and its penalty for disobedience. We were kept prisoners of this law of sin and death until the faithfulness of Jesus Christ was revealed. His faithfulness became the faith that we adopt as His children. If it were our faith alone, then it could be said that we somehow contributed to salvation due to our faith in Jesus, but that is not the case; we depend upon the faith of Jesus Christ to become our atonement for our sins and the penalty for that atonement which was His death to free us from God's requirement of our own penalty of death. We adopt His sacrifice as our substitution; we were dead in sin, and now we become alive as Christ becomes the life within us because of His resurrection.

I find it interesting that Paul describes the law as our guardian until Christ came;  it was much deeper than that because we were prisoners of that law without even knowing it. I believe that each of us inherently knew something was wrong with the arrangement because we could never break free from the guilt and shame and experience true freedom in God’s presence apart from Jesus. This 'true freedom' in Christ refers to the liberation from the fear of failing God and the assurance of His grace upon us. Jesus provided the means through his body, which became the substitution, our scapegoat, which was the sacrifice given in place of ours, which would have been our death. The glorious end to the means of Jesus becoming the scapegoat was the fact that his perfect body bore death on our behalf and took our penalty for sin once and for all so that His sacrifice was, in total, the requirement to satisfy God’s requirements for sin for all mankind.

Faith has now come in the man Jesus Christ, and we are empowered to believe in the Holy Spirit, who reveals Jesus to us in very personal and intimate ways. In fact, the Holy Spirit’s purpose is to reveal Jesus Christ to us and guide us: “But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. For he will not speak on his own authority, but will speak whatever he hears, and will tell you what is to come. He will glorify me, because he will receive from me what is mine and will tell it to you.” John 16:13-14 NET

Paul takes the obvious track here, we are sons of God by faith. Who are the sons of God that Paul is speaking of? Jesus is the ‘unique – one and only’ Son of God as declared in John 3:16, but there are other sons of God, some of which were placed on earth as placeholders for the 70 nations disinherited at the tower of Babel. These sons of God were not part of the rebellion that started on Mount Hermon where divine beings mingled with human women to produce hybrids on the earth (Genesis 6:1-4); the sons of God I am referring to are recorded in Deuteronomy 32:7-9 ESV “Remember the days of old; consider the years of many generations; ask your father, and he will show you, your elders, and they will tell you.  When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. But the Lord’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage.” These sons of God were appointed as caretakers over the nations, but in their embodiment, they mishandled their position and allowed pride and the temptations of the flesh to corrupt them; it became unbearable. They rebelled against the God of heaven and sought recognition as gods over the nations for themselves rather than just shepherding the people until Christ came. They became evil, a grave sin, in their rule and stewardship of the nations. These sons of God are what Paul calls the principalities and powers over the nations.

My point in bringing this up is that we, too, are sons of God, but by faith. We will eventually displace these rebellious sons of God as rulers over the nations when the heavenly kingdom is finally brought to earth by Jesus, and we will rule and reign with Him for eternity. Until this happens we must understand that the battle for these nations is the Lord’s, not ours. Our role in this cosmic battle is to love and serve our heavenly King as priests, and love and honor each other as we would Christ for that is how Christ is made manifest in our brothers and sisters by our love. 

The Lord has already declared victory and has the battle well in hand with His heavenly warriors who fight in His service. We do not have it within us as natural men and women to fight spiritual forces with our bodies; it’s impossible. But we have a far greater weapon than we know: intercession.

Being a son of God by faith means recognizing that Jesus resides within us. As such, we can pray in the ways that Jesus prays, not out of selfish gain but out of compassion and tenderness, so that others might grow into the full knowledge of Christ and begin to be powerful for God’s Kingdom purposes.  I have often heard it proclaimed that a person is saved in Jesus Christ, but I am always left with the question, "Do they know what they are saved into?" When we are saved, we are not just granted freedom and mercy for no purpose; we are also given a new position of a son of God by faith, a position of authority and responsibility in God's Kingdom. Too often, this is not considered when sharing Jesus with others; a deep well of wisdom and understanding comes if a believer allows their life to become deeply formed in Christ Jesus and is made aware of the cosmic implications of their salvation and their position in Christ and His Kingdom.

My goal here is not to be controversial but to dive deep into our understanding of who we are and whos' we are. We must keep a firm perspective on our role as sons of God, not like the rebellious sons of God who came before us and failed because of their pride and avarice, but as those who keep their eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. We trust that He will transform us into the men and women we were designed to be. With Christ firmly implanted within us, we will draw all people unto Jesus so that they may become as we are (as the scripture calls us) manifested sons of God, a part of the divine family of God.

Stephen Barnett