Lesson 17: Serving the Right God
Read Galatians 4:1-31 - www.bible.com/bible/59/gal.4
8 Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods.
9 But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more?
10 You observe days and months and seasons and years!
11 I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain.

Paul reminds us again of who we were before we believed and accepted Jesus as our Savior. We were slaves to sin. It could have been that we were slaves to drugs or sex or money or power or pride, or anything else of this world. It could even be that we were slaves to following the Ten Commandments and trying through following them by our own good works to become acceptable to God.

But the point was, no good works can ever erase even one sin from our life.


The warning through Paul from Jesus in our verses today is that our greatest slavery as a believer may very well come from our continued desire to please God by our own religious rites and works.

The question then comes, are we to do good works? The answer is an absolute YES, because (as we read in Ephesians 2:8-10) we were created as new creations in Jesus Christ for the purpose of good works. So the right question to ask is, what kinds of good works were we created for as new people in Jesus Christ?

We find the simplest and most complete answer to our question from Jesus Himself in Matthew 22:34-40 as He answered the question about obeying the Law, from a teacher of the Law in this case. Jesus said there was only one thing He asked of any of us – to love God and our neighbors. We can only serve God through loving Him and others. Anything else is serving ourselves and therefore not worthy of God.

Loving God with all our heart means all our passion is focused on Him. Loving Him with all our soul means we love Him with everything we are and have. Loving Him with all our mind means we spend time reading, studying, and memorizing His word, and thinking about Him every day.

Out of our love for God will naturally arise a love for all He loves – people. It is not we who can love those who are not lovable by human standards, it is only God loving through us who can do that. We give ourselves to them as He gave Himself for us. We listen when someone is sad and needs to talk. We spend time with someone who is lonely. We rejoice with someone who is rejoicing in something God has done for them. We cry with someone who is grieving a loss. We help those who need help. And above all, we share with others this Jesus whom we love more than anyone else in the whole world. These are the good works for which we were created.

 *What in your life tells you whom or what you love most?