Two thousand years after the desire of God’s heart was unveiled to Abraham, Christ came. When Christ came, grace came. Grace is the Triune God processed to become our enjoyment. Such a grace is the fulfillment of God’s promise, the fulfillment of God’s desire.
Before the coming of Christ, we are not told in the Scriptures that God was happy or pleased. But when Christ was baptized, the Father declared, “This is My beloved Son, in Whom I delight” (Matt. 3:17). When the Lord was with three of the disciples on the mount of transfiguration, the Father spoke the same words (Matt. 17:5). God was happy to see the fulfillment of His desire by grace, which is actually a living Person, Christ, the Son of God, the embodiment of the Triune God. This living Person is the fulfillment of the desire of God’s heart. It is correct to say that the fulfillment of God’s promise is both by grace and by the living Person of Christ, for this living Person is Himself the grace.
Today we are enjoying this grace, this living Person, who is now the life-giving Spirit within us. If Christ were not the life-giving Spirit dwelling in us, we could not be one with Him, and it would not be possible for Him to work all the riches of the Godhead into our being. How could Christ live in us and be formed in us if He were only an objective One sitting in the heavens at the right hand of the Father, as One separate from the Father and the Spirit? It would be impossible! Such a Christ could not be revealed into us, live in us, or be formed in us. In order for all this to become our experience, Christ must be the life-giving Spirit. Praise the Lord that the grace we enjoy is Christ, and Christ is the life-giving Spirit!
Because we have grace, Christ, and the life-giving Spirit, we are children according to Spirit. How blessed we are to have the hearing of faith and by it to receive grace! We have seen that the desire of God’s heart, the promise given to Abraham, is fulfilled by grace and that grace is Christ as the life-giving Spirit. This Spirit is now in our spirit and makes us children according to Spirit. This is the revelation in Galatians 3 and 4.
As those who are children according to Spirit, we should lay aside the law, the flesh, slavery, and the children according to flesh. We need to bid farewell to these things and refuse from now on to be entangled by them. Instead, we should remain in the fulfillment of God’s desire, enjoying grace, Christ, and the all-inclusive Spirit as the blessing of the gospel.
In 4:21-31 we see two women, two covenants, and two Jerusalems. We can choose between Hagar and Sarah, between the earthly Jerusalem and the Jerusalem above, and between the covenant of law and the covenant of promise, which is the testament of grace. Furthermore, we may choose to be children according to flesh or children according to Spirit. Praise the Lord for showing us the two covenants and the two kinds of children! Chapters three and four of Galatians are crystal clear to us, fully transparent. We praise the Lord that we are of the Jerusalem above, children of the free woman! Praise Him that we are children according to the Spirit enjoying the all-inclusive Spirit as the blessing of the gospel!