Verse of the Week - Galatians 4:6-7 - December 14, 2015

Christmas 2015 started before Thanksgiving this year. I have to admit, I did buy a few Christmas items in October. However, I was on a Christmas party committee that kept me focused on the true spirit of Christmas, Jesus Christ.

Jesus' sacrifice and ascension into heaven occurred so that you and I could become heirs of God through Christ. In return, Christians were given a holy spirit that dwells inside of us. 
Happily, we have the Spirit of Jesus with us all year - not just in December at Christmas. 

Pastor and bible commentator Matthew Henry wrote about the advantages of being heirs through Christ and having the Spirit of Jesus with us in his bible commentary:

The great and invaluable advantages which Christians enjoy under the gospel
1. We receive the adoption of sons

•  It is the great privilege which believers have through Christ that they are adopted children of the God of heaven. 
• We who by nature are children of wrath and disobedience have become by grace children of love. 

2. We receive the Spirit of adoption. 

• All who have the privilege of adoption have the Spirit of adoption-all who are received into the number partake of the nature of the children of God; for he will have all his children to resemble him. 
• The Spirit of adoption is always the Spirit of prayer, and it is our duty in prayer to God as a Father. Christ has taught us to pray to God as our Father in heaven. 
• If we are his sons, then his heirs. It is not so among men, with whom the eldest son is heir; but all God’s children are heirs. Those who have the nature of sons shall have the inheritance of sons.

Knowing that I am an adopted heir of God through Jesus Christ fills me with joy - capital J-O-Y. The Spirit of Jesus helps me to resemble him more and more as a child of love, not wrath. How marvelous is that?