God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. – Galatians 4:6

Where the Holy Ghost enters there is a cry. “God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son, crying, ‘Abba, Father.'” Now, notice, it is the Spirit of God that cries-a most remarkable fact. Some are inclined to view the expression as a Hebraism, and read it, He “makes us to cry;” but, beloved, the text saith not so, and we are not at liberty to alter it upon such a pretence. We are always right in keeping to what God says, and here we plainly read of the Spirit in our hearts that He is crying “Abba, Father.” The apostle in Romans 8:15 says, “Ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father,” but here he describes the Spirit Himself as crying “Abba, Father.” We are certain that when he ascribed the cry of “Abba, Father” to us, he did not wish to exclude the Spirit’s cry, because in the twenty-sixth verse of the famous eighth of Romans he says, “Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” Thus he represents the Spirit Himself as groaning with unutterable groanings within the child of God, so that when he wrote to the Romans he had on his mind the same thought which he here expressed to the Galatians,-that it is the Spirit Himself which cries and groans in us “Abba, Father.” How is this? Is it not ourselves that cry? Yes, assuredly; and yet the Spirit cries also. The expressions are both correct. The Holy Spirit prompts and inspires the cry. He puts the cry into the heart and mouth of the believer. It is His cry because He suggests it, approves of it, and educates us to it. We should never have cried thus if He had not first taught us the way. As a mother teaches her child to speak, so He puts this cry of “Abba, Father” into our mouths; yea, it is He who forms in our hearts the desire after our Father God and keeps it there. He is the Spirit of adoption, and the author of adoption’s special and significant cry. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1435.cfm

“God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts.” – Galatians 4:6

Note, that it does not say into your heads or your brains. The Spirit of God doubtless illuminates the intellect and guides the judgement, but this is not the commencement nor the main part of His work. He comes chiefly to the affections, He dwells with the heart, for with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and “God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts.” Now, the heart is the centre of our being, and therefore doth the Holy Ghost occupy this place of vantage. He comes into the central fortress and universal citadel of our nature, and thus takes possession of the whole. The heart is the vital part; we speak of it as the chief residence of life, and therefore the Holy Ghost enters it, and as the living God dwells in the living heart, taking possession of the very core and marrow of our being. It is from the heart and through the heart that life is diffused. The blood is sent even to the extremities of the body by the pulsings of the heart, and when the Spirit of God takes possession of the affections, He operates upon every power, and faculty, and member of our entire manhood. Out of the heart are the issues of life, and from the affections sanctified by the Holy Ghost all other faculties and powers receive renewal, illumination, sanctification, strengthening, and ultimate perfection.

This wonderful blessing is ours “because we are sons;” and it is fraught with marvellous results. Sonship sealed by the indwelling Spirit brings us peace and joy; it leads to nearness to God and fellowship with Him; it excites trust, love, and vehement desire, and creates in us reverence, obedience, and actual likeness to God. All this, and much more, because the Holy Ghost has come to dwell in us. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1435.cfm

God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts… – Galatians 4:6

“God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts.” Here is a divine act of the Father. The Holy Ghost proceedeth from the Father and the Son: and God hath sent Him forth into your hearts. If He had only come knocking at your hearts and asked your leave to enter, He had never entered, but when Jehovah sent Him He made His way, without violating your will, but yet with irresistible power. Where Jehovah sent Him there He will abide and go no more out for ever. Beloved, I have no time to dwell upon the words, but I want you to turn them over in your thoughts, for they contain a great depth. As surely as God sent His Son into the world to dwell among men, so that His saints beheld His glory, the “glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth,” so surely hath God sent forth the Spirit to enter into men’s hearts, there to take up His residence that in Him also the glory of God may be revealed. Bless and adore the Lord who hath sent you such a visitor as this.

There are many professors who know nothing of this; they listen to us with bewilderment as if we told them an idle tale, for the carnal mind knoweth not the things that be of God; they are spiritual and can only be spiritually discerned. Those who are not sons, or who only come in as sons under the law of nature, like Ishmael, know nothing of this indwelling Spirit, and are up in arms at us for daring to claim so great a blessing: yet it is ours, and none can deprive us of it. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1435.cfm

But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise. – Galatians 4:23

You shall find, dear brother, that if you enjoy fellowship with God, if you live in the spirit of adoption, if you are brought near to the Most High, so as to be a member of the divine family, straightway all those who are under bondage to the law will quarrel with you. Thus saith the apostle, “As then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now.” The child of Hagar was found by Sarah mocking Isaac, the child of promise. Ishmael would have been glad to have shown his enmity to the hated heir by blows and personal assault, but there was a superior power to check him, so that he could get no further than “mocking.” So it is just now. There have been periods in which the enemies of the gospel have gone a great deal further than mocking, for they have been able to imprison and burn alive the lovers of the gospel; but now, thank God, we are under His special protection as to life and limb and liberty, and are as safe as Isaac was in Abraham’s house. They can mock us, but they cannot go any further, or else some of us would be publicly gibbeted. But trials of cruel mockings are still to be endured, our words are twisted, our sentiments are misrepresented, and all sorts of horrible things are imputed to us, things which we know not, to all which we would reply with Paul, “Am I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth?” This is the old way of the Hagarenes, the child after the flesh is still doing his best to mock him that is born after the Spirit. Do not be astonished, neither be grieved in the least degree when this happens to any of you, but let this also turn to the establishment of your confidence and to the confirmation of your faith in Christ Jesus, for he told you of old, “If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1435.cfm

Now I say, That the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all…Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ. – Galatians 4:1,7

Beloved, now are ye the sons of God, and ye have come to your majority: now are ye free to enjoy the honours and blessings of the Father’s house. Rejoice that the Holy Spirit dwells within you and prompts you to holiness; this is a far superior power to the merely external command and the whip of threatening. Now no more are you in bondage to outward forms, and rites, and ceremonies; but the Spirit of God teacheth you all things and leads you into the inner meaning and substance of the truth.

Believers are at this moment heirs, but what is the estate? It is God Himself! We are heirs of God! Not only of the promises, of the covenant engagements, and of all the blessings which belong to the chosen seed, but heirs of God Himself. “The Lord is my portion, saith my soul.” “This God is our God for ever and ever.” We are not only, heirs to God, to all that He gives to His firstborn, but heirs of God Himself… “I will be to them a God, and they shall be to Me a people.” Why, then, 0 believer, are you poor? All riches are yours. Why then are you sorrowful? The ever-blessed God is yours. Why do you tremble? Omnipotence waits to help you. Why do you distrust? His immutability will abide with you even to the end and make His promise steadfast. All things are yours, for Christ is yours, and Christ is God’s. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1435.cfm

And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. – Galatians 4:6

“Because ye are sons,” means, -because the time appointed of the Father is come, and you are of age, and no longer under tutors and governors. In our minority we are under the schoolmaster, under the regimen of ceremonies, under types, figures, shadows, learning our ABCs by being convinced of sin; but when faith is come we are no longer under the schoolmaster, but come to a more free condition. Till faith comes we are under tutors and governors, like mere boys, but after faith we take our rights as sons of God. The Jewish church of old was under the yoke of the law; its sacrifices were continual and its ceremonies endless; new moons and feasts must be kept; jubilees must be observed and pilgrimages made: in fact, the yoke was too heavy for feeble flesh to bear. The law followed the Israelite into every corner, and dealt with him upon every point: it had to do with his garments, his meat, his drink, his bed, his board, and everything about him: it treated him like a boy at school who has a rule for everything. Now that faith has come we are full grown sons, and therefore we are free from the rules which govern the school of the child. We are under law to Christ, even as the full-grown son is still under the discipline of his father’s house; but this is a law of love and not of fear, of grace and not of bondage. “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.” Return not to the beggarly elements of a merely outward religion but keep close to the worship of God in spirit and in truth, for this is the liberty of the children of God. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1435.cfm

But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. -Galatians 4:4,5

Beloved, prize redemption, and never listen to teaching which would destroy its meaning or lower its importance. Remember that ye were not redeemed with silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish. You were under the law, and subject to its curse, for you had broken it most grievously, and you were subject to its penalty, for it is written, “the soul that sinneth, it shall die”; and yet again, “cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them.” You were also under the terror of the law, for you feared its wrath; and you were under its irritating power, for often when the commandment came, sin within you revived and you died. But now you are redeemed from all; as the Holy Ghost saith, “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.” Now ye are not under the law, but under grace, and this because Christ came under the law and kept it both by His active and His passive obedience, fulfilling all its commands and bearing all its penalty on your behalf and in your room and stead. Henceforth you are the redeemed of the Lord and enjoy a liberty which comes by no other way but that of the eternal ransom. Remember this; and whenever you feel most assured that you are a child of God, praise the redeeming blood; whenever your heart beats highest with love to your great Father, bless the “firstborn among many brethren,” who for your sakes came under the law, was circumcised, kept the law in His life, and bowed His head to it in His death, honouring, and magnifying the law, and making the justice and righteousness of God to be more conspicuous by His life than it would have been by the holiness of all mankind, and His justice to be more fully vindicated by His death that it would have been if all the world of sinners had been cast into hell. Glory be to our redeeming Lord, by whom we have received the adoption! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1435.cfm