Wednesday 24 May 2023

Psalm 130

Background

If you have been promised an inheritance, you can’t access it while you are still a child. While you are a child you are subject to all the rules and restrictions that the law imposes.

Those laws are not of themselves wrong; they areto guide you in a particular path, to keep you safe, and to allow you time to learn how to live in the promised inheritance.

In the spiritual world, God’s people are heirs to a promised blessing (through Abraham, Galatians chapter 3), but have not yet reached maturity, so are kept safe by the law. But there is a real danger in believing that the law is an end in itself, rather than a means to fullness of life. It’s like choosing to park up in the funnel of traffic cones on the motorway (which give direction and keep us safe), rather than heading out through them and into the open road ahead!

When Christ came, he brought us through the traffic cones and on to the promised highway. We moved through the law (important though it remained as a means for guidance) and into the blessing of abundant life. In other words, through Christ, we grew up into God’s plans and were able to take our place in the family of God: "so that we might receive adoption as children". (v. 5)

But what does this say to the question of inheritance with which the passage opened? Well, perhaps there is something significant obscured in our NRSV translation because of worthy attempts at inclusivity. The phrase  ‘adopted as children’ translates a legal Greek term which indicates full maturity, not minority. (‘adoption to sonship’ says the NIV).

In Christ, God’s people are not adopted as minors (children) but are adopted into God’s family as ‘adult children’ already attaining maturity and so having full access to the inheritance that has been promised in Christ. "Life – and life in all its fullness."(John 10.10)

To Ponder:

• An adoptive parent makes a conscious choice to include someone into their family. What does it mean to you to know that God chooses you?
• On this day in 1738, John Wesley described a spiritual experience as leaving his heart ‘strangely warmed’. Describe a close encounter with God’s Spirit, in your life or someone you know.

Prayer

On this Aldersgate Day when the Methodist Church remembers the experience of new life that came to John and Charles Wesley through the Spirit of God, we ask God to renew in us the gospel hope declared by Charles:

He owns me for his child,
His pardoning voice I hear;
In Jesus reconciled
I can no longer fear.
With confidence I now draw nigh,
And 'Father, Abba, Father!' cry.             Charles Wesley (1707-1788)