Before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed. So the law was our guardian… Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian. Galatians 3:23-25
We’re talking about loving God and its relationship to Christian maturity. A child is little more than a slave until he or she comes of age. A guardian directs their lives (Gal 4: 1-7). The rules Paul scatters through his writings are like that. They take care of us and show us the way when we are immature. But with maturity comes the freedom of loving God more exclusively and passionately, so that “Love God and do as you please” becomes no longer a phrase, flippantly thrown around to get what we want, but a truth that is manifested in our lives.
For example, when we love our children, we take care of their needs, protect them, even do things to bring them pleasure… Now, at the same time there are some government laws to protect children, but they are totally unnecessary if we love our children. We don’t need those laws.
Because we’re taking care of our kids, we won’t cause them injury; we won’t let them go without food, etc. But if we don’t love our children this way, then having some laws may instruct us in our responsibility to care for our kids, or at least protect those children at some level from our failure to love them.
This is one of the reasons I’m glad when someone tells me a new believer is “so mature” in the faith—but doubtful. Relationships like the one God wants to have with each one of us take time. Trust is built on the road of experience. We taste and we see what the Lord can do, does do, longs to do. We know Him better…And amazingly enough, God—who knows everything factually, still wants to get to know us better and better personally and experientially.
You can see Paul, no neophyte Christian, writer of most of the New Testament, pleading near the end of his life, “I want to know him (Jesus)…so I press on, if it is so that I may take hold of that for which also I was taken hold of by Christ Jesus” (Phil 3:21)