Through faith in Christ Jesus, this passage tells us, we are all children of God. When we are baptized, when we “confirm” our baptism and take full responsibility for the vows made on our behalf when we were infants, we “clothe ourselves” with Christ, and we become new people. As a result of that decision, that act of will, we are taken up into a new life, a life with God, life as adopted children in God’s household, part of God’s family.

            That membership in the family of God becomes the only distinction that we need. If we have been baptized into Christ, we need not worry, in the first place, with the distinctions between “faith” and “law” — that has all been quite handily taken care of by Paul in the previous verses. We are no longer under law, we are part of the family, and we are to function as part of a family, taking on our assigned and chosen roles out of love for the Parent and love for the brothers and sisters, and doing more than what is strictly required out of love, and not simply doing what we are “required by law” to do because we “have to.”

            Once we have made that leap of faith into baptism or confirmation, according to this passage, we need not worry about any of the usual distinctions — “Jew” or “Greek,” or “slave or free,” or “male and female.” We are all one.

Children of God

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