Scripture Daily

Context No. 904 of 4322 · Galatians

Context · Reflection

Galatians 4:21-31: in context

21Tell me, you that desire to be under the law, don’t you listen to the law? 22For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the servant, and one by the free woman. 23However, the son by the servant was born according to the flesh, but the son by the free woman was born through promise. 24These things contain an allegory, for these are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children to bondage, which is Hagar. 25For this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and answers to the Jerusalem that exists now, for she is in bondage with her children. 26But the Jerusalem that is above is free, which is the mother of us all. 27For it is written, “Rejoice, you barren who don’t bear. Break out and shout, you who don’t travail. For the desolate women have more children than her who has a husband.” 28Now we, brothers, as Isaac was, are children of promise. 29But as then, he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now. 30However, what does the Scripture say? “Throw out the servant and her son, for the son of the servant will not inherit with the son of the free woman.” 31So then, brothers, we are not children of a servant, but of the free woman.

Paul is fighting for the freedom of the Galatian believers, who are being pressured to put themselves back under the law. Here he reaches into Genesis for an image. Abraham had two sons: Ishmael, born to the slave woman Hagar in the ordinary way, and Isaac, born to the free woman Sarah through God's promise. Paul reads these two as two covenants, two Jerusalems: one from Mount Sinai that bears children into slavery, and the Jerusalem above that is free, the mother of all who believe. And you, brothers, he says, like Isaac, are children of promise.

The point Paul draws is about how you become a child of God, and there are only two ways on offer. One is the way of the flesh, of human effort and law-keeping, of trying to produce your standing with God the way Abraham tried to produce an heir through Hagar rather than waiting for the promise. That road, Paul says bluntly, leads to slavery; it makes you a servant working for an acceptance you never quite reach. The other is the way of promise, of receiving as a gift what you could never engineer, the way Isaac came, impossibly, because God had said so. To go back under the law after being freed is to walk out of Sarah's tent and back into Hagar's, trading the freedom of a son for the anxiety of a slave. Paul even notes the old pattern repeating: the child of the flesh persecutes the child of promise, as the legalists now harass the free. Cast out the slavery, he says; you belong to the free woman.

Am I living as a child of promise, receiving my standing with God as a gift, or have I slipped back into working like a slave to earn what was already given?

Sources