“I spit out like a sewer hole
Yet still receive your kiss
How can I measure up to anyone now
After such a love as this?”

If you’re anything like me, maybe you haven’t really, really paid attention to the words of the song by The Who, appropriately named “Who Are You?”. I have heard the song as long as I can remember, and it seems to be forever ingrained in my mind thanks to “CSI:Miami”. I just wish I could get the creepy over-the-sunglasses-gaze from the character Horatio Caine out of my mind too. Anyway, as I was reading my Bible this morning, I was reading a certain scripture and God said to me, “Who are you?” He showed me that this little piece I had just read summed up the whole of who I was made to be. It’s a scripture that many of us are probably familiar with, but I think it often gets swept under the rug in our brains. I think this because I know that this is the main area that the enemy tries to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10) in the lives of those of us who follow Christ. So…I guess you are probably wondering what scripture it was that I was reading? I guess it would help if I shared that with you…

Galatians 4:4-7

“But when the time arrived that was set by God the Father, God sent his Son, born among us of a woman, born under the conditions of the law so that He might redeem those of us who have been kidnapped by the law. Thus we have been set free to experience our rightful heritage. You can tell for sure that you are now fully adopted as His own children because God sent the Spirit of His Son into our lives crying out, “Papa! Father!” Doesn’t that privilege of intimate conversation with God make it plain that you are not a slave, but a child? And if you are a child, you’re also an heir, with complete access to the inheritance.”

You can see where I italicized the words “kidnapped by the law”. In the Old Testament, God gave list and list and list of laws that His children had to follow. Because of the whole thing with Eve, the forbidden fruit, and the snake at the Garden of Eden, sin was introduced in to the lives of man. That sin separated us from the presence of God, just like it did in the Garden when God kicked Adam and Eve out (thanks to their disobedience) and removed Himself from them. Just because His direct presence was removed didn’t mean that He would stay gone. He established ways for them to come in to His presence in the form of rules that had to be followed. When I think of someone putting forth rules, I can’t help but have a part of me think, “Rules were made to be broken”. Well, to keep these rules from being broken by the people they were made law. A rule is just there. A law has consequences. So…the people of the Old Testament followed the laws to not only obtain forgiveness and to be made right (because those are just a few benefits of being in the presence of God) but also to avoid certain consequences for disobedience

. To be kidnapped means to “take someone away (illegally) by force, typically to obtain a ransom”. As Children of God, our heritage and right of living, walking, breathing, and being in freedom and life was taken from us by the enemy because of disobedience (thanks a lot, Eve). God had made man-kind in His image for His purpose and He did so because He wanted us not because He needed us. He created us in His image to be intimate friends with him, to dwell with Him as He did with Adam and Eve but He also made us with the ability to make the choice for ourselves of living as God lives or living as the enemy lives. Man-kind chose the latter and sin was introduced to separate us from God. Who we as a collective people were made to be was kidnapped by the enemy of our souls. Satan demanded a ransom be paid because he had illegally taken our ability to live as God intended us to live when He made us.Our ability to dwell in the presence of God so freely was taken from us and the ransom demanded so that ability could be restored. Since God is God, He met this demand for ransom and gave His people the laws to follow to by-pass their uncleanliness from sin and to be whole again so we could be with Him. From several scriptures in the Bible, it appears that Satan really thought that this was all that was going to happen. It’s like He thought that God was just going to do this restoration thing half-way. I mean, it’s great that there were laws given to restore some of our intimacy with God, but it doesn’t seem like there is much freedom in jumping through all those hoops to get there, does it?

Moving on in the above scripture…the next sentence says “Thus we have been set free to experience our rightful heritage”! So the fact that we were kidnapped and living under the law no longer has any bearing on us today because we have been set free and we are made complete to have our rightful heritage! These are all the things the enemy took from us in the Old Testament. We have been restored to the original place that God wanted us to be in from the beginning. Man-kind was once kidnapped and put in to the slavery of religion and jumping through hoops and having our inheritance of spiritual authority taken away..but not anymore! You can tell a relationship someone has with another person by the way they address them in greeting. When my husband comes home from work, our kids don’t sit on the couch and ignore him. They don’t say, “Hello, Brent” or “Hello, Mr. Hammer”. They get up out of their seats, they go to the front door, they take turns putting their arms around his neck and they say, “DAD! I’m so glad you’re home! You’ll never believe what happened today!” and usually inundate him in conversation. They wouldn’t do that if they didn’t love him and they wouldn’t do that if they didn’t know that he loved them. So, if we love our God as Father and we know He loves us big and crazy-like, then we now have the right to go to Him the same way. “Papa! Father!” The fact that the blood of Jesus that covered the cross of Calvary was THE final ransom that was paid to get back ALL the enemy had kidnapped and stolen from us means that we are NOT SLAVES but we are restored back to our rightful inheritance to be ALL that God created us to be!

You would think that Satan would play fair, huh? Ok, so…he kidnapped (illegally stole) our inheritance and right standing with our Creator and he demanded a ransom be paid for us to get that back. God put a plan in place for us to somewhat get that access to our inheritance back, but it wasn’t really an easy plan for people to go through and there was not really any freedom in it because it was law, so it was done to avoid consequences more than it was done out of love for God. Well, that’s not a great reason to do what God tells you to do, but I think Satan was happy enough with that plan because even though access to God could still be gained, it didn’t get a lot of His children close to Him (remember all the disobedience and rebellion in the Old Testament? If you aren’t close enough to God that you aren’t listening to His voice of direction then you aren’t just real close in relationship to him). Then suddenly, a wild Jesus appears (only people who know about Rage Memes will understand that reference)  and BAM! He completes the restoration and gives the highest price of ransom God could give. If the devil played fair, he would have just admitted defeat and stopped there because after all…he lost that game. He demanded a ransom that was paid but kept playing after his prisoners were set free. Duh. His only strategy in playing this game is to continually hound us and convince you and I and everyone else that the ransom wasn’t enough, or to get us to forget about it being paid at all. He wants us to not understand the meaning of the ransom being paid so that we will continue playing the game too. He does’t want us to know who we are or that our inheritance has been restored.Sin and the law no longer separates us from God our Father, but the lies of the enemy still do and it isn’t because Jesus hasn’t already taken care of that. It’s because we LET HIM DO IT. We let him do it when we think we still have to jump through hoops to get God’s attention, when we let situations, circumstances, disobedience and the world pile up on us and talk us out of being who we were intended to be. The next time your enemy tries to snark in your ear, “Who do you think you are?” you take on the heart of David when he was facing the giant Goliath and you TELL him who you are (a rightful heir to all your Father has and a Child of God Most High, the one with authority over the devil and the gates of hell!) and you SHOW him by cutting off his head (don’t let him kidnap you again when the ransom has been paid!). THAT IS WHO YOU ARE!