Romans 8:15 “For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’”

As children of God, we don’t live as slaves to fear. That is not our status, though it once was. From time to time we find ourselves returning to that view of life. It is the product of our sinful nature. We live as slaves to fear when we view God mainly as the enforcer, an other-worldly task master who will let us feel the lash of his whip if we do not keep in line and behave ourselves.

You know what that is like. When we think that the heartache of today is God’s repayment for the sins of our past, we are living as slaves to fear. When we resist the urge to indulge ourselves because we might get caught, or we might catch some disease, or we might be shamed, we are living as slaves to fear.

Siegbert Becker tells the story of a man he knew when he was in graduate school. “Do you mean to tell me,” the man asked one day, “that if you knew that you could get by with it, there’s nobody in the world you’d want to kill?” When Becker replied he didn’t think he could do something like that, the man continued, “If I knew that the police wouldn’t catch me, there are six people on this campus that I’d kill right now.”

That’s living as a slave to fear, and it can be effective at controlling behavior. But we should not think obedience like that pleases God. Even if it gets us to obey, it reflects a bad relationship with him, not a good one. God is no more pleased with obedience like that than parents are pleased when the threat of a spanking or a grounding is the only thing that gets their whining children to do their chores.

What the Lord is seeking even more than obedience are sons. The sacred status we share as children of God is sonship. Being sons is more than being children. All of us, men or women, male or female, are sons. That means that we have a recognized, legal status in God’s family. All the rights and privileges of membership belong to each one of us.

That involves a striking change for people who once were slaves to fear. That change was possible because the one and only Son, the only begotten Son of God, Jesus Christ, was willing to trade places with us. By his death on the cross he removed the sins that disqualified us for a place in the family. By sending us his Spirit and calling us to faith, he adopted us into our place in the family.

That means we enjoy a Father’s tender affection: “And by him (that is, the Spirit of sonship) we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’ God doesn’t want some distant and formal relationship with the children he has adopted. He doesn’t keep us at arm’s length.  He wants us to know the deep affection and closeness of a loving family. The sin that once kept us apart has really and completely been removed. We don’t have to be afraid.

Think of what it means to call him Father. Most of the people I am closest to I call by their first names. My brothers and sisters are David, Debbie, and Becky. My children are Carrie, Aaron, Nathan, and Stephen. My wife is Robin.

But I don’t call my father, “John,” or my mother, “Mary Elin.” In this case there are titles that express the affection between us more intimately, terms of endearment that reflect the care they have always had for me, and the trust, and at times even dependence, that I have had in them. Whether you say “father or mother,” “mom or dad,” “mommy or daddy,” “mamma or pappa,” these terms describe people who love you unconditionally. They would give their lives to help you. They have sacrificed and denied themselves so that you could succeed. They have always been on your side, even when that meant laying down the law to keep you out of trouble.

At least, that’s the ideal. But even if human parents fail, we are God’s children who enjoy a divine Father’s love and affection. It’s one of the privileges we enjoy as sons who share a sacred status.