1 Now I say that the heir, as long as he is a child, does not differ at all from a slave, though he is master of all, 2 but is under guardians and stewards until the time appointed by the father.
It must be apparent to all that the chapter division makes no difference in the subject. The third chapter closes with a statement as to who are the heirs, and the fourth chapter proceeds with a study of how we become heirs.
In Paul's time, although a child might have been heir to a vast estate, he had no more to do with it until he should come of age than did a servant (or slave). If he should never reach that age, then he would never actually enter upon his inheritance. So far as any share in the inheritance is concerned, he would have lived all his life as a servant.
3 Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world. 4 But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.
If we look at the fifth verse we see that "children" refers to the condition in which we find ourselves before we receive "the adoption as sons." It represents our condition before we were redeemed from the curse of the law, that is, before we were converted. It does not mean children of God as distinguished from worldlings, but the "children" of whom the apostle speaks in Ephesians 4:14 as "tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men, by their craftiness in deceitful wiles." In short, it refers to us in our unconverted state, when we "were by nature the children of wrath, like the rest of mankind." Ephesians 2:3