As Israeli tanks are advancing on Gaza and Hamas militants continue to fire rockets at Israel, both sides continue to ignore international calls to stop the conflict. Israel has even warned it would escalate its assault.
Since the present Israeli military advance on Gaza, the Palestinian death toll is at least 821, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza. Thirteen Israelis have been killed: 10 soldiers and three civilians hit in rocket fire.
Hamas wants any ceasefire deal to include the ending of Israel’s crippling economic blockade of the Gaza Strip and the withdrawal of all Israeli forces from the territory, from which Israel withdrew in 2005 after a 38-year occupation. Israel’s key demands are for a complete halt to Hamas rocket fire and for international guarantees to stop the group rearming via smuggling tunnels under the border with Egypt. (http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=1163793)
This conflict is the longest between two groups of People. It origin points to fundamental spiritual truths.
In Galatians 4:21–5:1 Paul points to the origin to this conflict to contrast grace and law, faith and works. Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit he employs an Old Testament story as an analogy, which serves not so much as an argument as an illustration.
Paul contrasts two sons, two mothers, two covenants and two Jerusalem’s. I will stick with his illustrations of this situation so we can not only better understand the present conflict in the Middle East, how it can be solved, but understand how people have standing before God, period.
As Paul develops the analogy, he first gives its 1) Historical background, then its 2) Divine interpretation, and finally its 3) Personal application.
1) THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Galatians 4:21-23
Galatians 4:21-23 [21]Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? [22]For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. [23]But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. (ESV)
Law in this verse is used in two different senses. The first refers to law as a means of attaining holiness, and the second to the OT books of the law (Genesis through Deuteronomy), particularly Genesis. Paul is saying, “Tell me, you who desire to obtain favor with God by law-keeping, do you not listen to the message of the book of the law?” (MacDonald, W., & Farstad, A. (1997, c1995). Believer’s Bible Commentary : Old and New Testaments (Ga 4:21). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.)
• As an introduction to the analogy, Paul suggests that the Judaizers, and the Jewish Christians who had been misled by them, look carefully at the very law they so highly touted.
• The point Paul makes by drawing an analogy from Moses’ writing is that the law cannot be a means of salvation but is instead the way of spiritual and moral bondage.
“Since you insist on living under law,” he was saying, “are you willing to listen to what the law really says?”
Please turn to John 8
Paul reminds his readers in Galatians 4:22 of their forefather Abraham, progenitor of the Hebrew race. It was in their racial descent from him that most Jews of Paul’s day placed their trust for salvation. But as John the Baptist had declared to the Pharisees and Sadducees (Matt. 3:9), for Jews to say, “we have Abraham for our father,” did not make them right with God, who “is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham”.
Unbelieving Jews responded to Jesus:
John 8:33-44 [33]They answered him, "We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ’You will become free’?" [34]Jesus answered them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. [35]The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. [36]So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. [37]I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you. [38]I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father." [39]They answered him, "Abraham is our father." Jesus said to them, "If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, [40]but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. [41]You are doing the works your father did." They said to him, "We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father--even God." [42]Jesus said to them, "If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. [43]Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. [44]You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. (ESV)
Paul’s first historical reminder about Abraham was that he had two sons.
Paul’s adversaries and their Jewish followers prided themselves in the fact that they were the biological descendants of Abraham as if that biological relationship were of paramount significance for salvation. If physical descent from Abraham is so all-important, then they who are Jews by birth are not any better off than are the Ishmaelites. (William Hendriksen: Galatians New Testament Commentary. Baker Publishing House. 2004. p. 180)
• The situation we have today in Jerusalem, is also a situation of pride and assumption as if being under a political flag or worshipping in a physical location, makes you a child of God.
Please turn to Genesis 21
Let’s work through the distinctions in Galatians 4. The sons were distinct in a number of ways, first of all in having different mothers, one who was a Slave/bondwoman and the other who was a free woman. The first son was Ishmael, whose mother was Hagar, an Egyptian slave of Sarah, Abraham’s wife. The second son was Isaac, whose mother was Sarah.
Genesis 21:1-10 [21:1]The LORD visited Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did to Sarah as he had promised. [2]And Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the time of which God had spoken to him. [3]Abraham called the name of his son who was born to him, whom Sarah bore him, Isaac. [4]And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him. [5]Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. [6]And Sarah said, "God has made laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh over me." [7]And she said, "Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age." [8]And the child grew and was weaned. And Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. [9]But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, laughing. [10]So she said to Abraham, "Cast out this slave woman with her son, for the son of this slave woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac." (ESV)
Isaac illustrates the believer in several particulars.
• He was born by God’s power.
• He brought joy. His name means “laughter,” and certainly he brought joy to his aged parents. Salvation is an experience of joy, not only to the believer himself, but also to those around him.
• He grew and was weaned (Gen. 21:8). Salvation is the beginning, not the ending. After we are born, we must grow (1 Peter 2:2; 2 Peter 3:18). Along with maturity comes weaning: we must lay aside “childish things” (1 Cor. 13:11).
• He was persecuted (Gen. 21:9). Ishmael (the flesh) caused problems for Isaac, just as our old nature causes problems for us. (Paul will discuss this in detail in Gal. 5:16ff.) (Wiersbe, W. W. (1996, c1989). The Bible exposition commentary. "An exposition of the New Testament comprising the entire ’BE’ series"--Jkt. (Ga 4:24). Wheaton, Ill.: Victor Books.)
o Likewise, we must cast out any sinful remnant from our unredeemed flesh, discarding old habits.
Throughout the analogy, all distinctions between the two sons are based on the fact that they had two different mothers, not on the fact that they had a common father, Abraham. The heritage of the line through Hagar is lostness and bondage, and the heritage of the line through Sarah is salvation and freedom.
Paul’s second historical reminder in Galatians 4:23 was that the son by the slave/bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and the son by the free woman through promise.
Many years after God first promised a son to Abraham, Sarah had not yet conceived. When he was 86 and she 76, Abraham feared that, according to the custom of the day, his chief servant, Eliezer of Damascus, would be his only heir. He cried out to God in despair, and the Lord reaffirmed His original promise, saying, “This man will not be your heir; but one who shall come forth from your own body, he shall be your heir” (Gen. 15:1–4). But when, after several more years, Sarah still had not conceived, she induced Abraham to father a child by her female slave, Hagar.
The birth of that son, whose name was Ishmael, was according to the flesh, not because it was physical but because the scheme for his conception, devised by Sarah and carried out by Abraham, was motivated by purely selfish desires and fulfilled by purely human means.
• Ishmael represents all those who base their hope for eternity on what they themselves are able to do on their own works
o By implication Ishmael represents those who base their security in the Middle East, on human treaties.
The birth of Isaac, however, the son by the free woman Sarah, was through promise. His conception was supernatural, not in the sense that he was conceived directly by the Holy Spirit, as Jesus was, but that the Holy Spirit miraculously enabled Abraham and Sarah to produce a child after she was far past normal childbearing age and had been barren all her life. “Sarah herself received ability to conceive, even beyond the proper time of life” (Heb. 11:11). When Isaac was born, his father was 100 and his mother was 90 (Gen. 17:17; 21:5).
Please turn to Romans 9
The conception of Ishmael represents man’s way, the way of the flesh, whereas that of Isaac represents God’s way, the way of promise, The first is analogous to the way of religious self-effort and works righteousness; the second is analogous to the way of faith and God’s imputed righteousness. The one is the way of legalism, the other the way of grace. Ishmael symbolizes those who have had only natural birth and who trust in their own works. Isaac symbolizes those who also have had spiritual birth because they have trusted in the work of Jesus Christ.
Romans 9:6-18 [6]But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, [7]and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but "Through Isaac shall your offspring be named." [8]This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring. [9]For this is what the promise said: "About this time next year I will return, and Sarah shall have a son." [10]And not only so, but also when Rebekah had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, [11]though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad--in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls-- [12]she was told, "The older will serve the younger." [13]As it is written, "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated." [14]What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! [15]For he says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." [16]So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. [17]For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth." [18]So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills. (ESV)
When Abraham got Hagar pregnant, he was operating on the false notion that “God helps those who help themselves” He was trying to take the blessing, rather than waiting to receive it.
• This ties into what we looked at last week with our efforts and plans. Motives, regardless of how good, do not justify ungodly means. We must do things God’s way and in God’s time.
The argument in Galatians 4:23 builds on what Paul has already said in Gal. 3 about Abraham being reckoned as righteous by grace through faith, and now Paul is going to establish that the chosen line in the case of the second generation was also on the basis of grace, not on the basis of heredity or ‘flesh’.
• Ishmael was after all a first-born, and one born of the flesh in a natural way. But this is not what determined who would inherit. In this fashion Paul will undermine any appeals to heredity or ‘natural’ connections with Abraham. Paul’s point will be that even Isaac came to Abraham and into his inheritance by way of promise, just as the Galatians had (Witherington III, B. (1998). Grace in Galatia : A Commentary on St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians (329). Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.)
We have seen 1) Historical background and now
2) THE DIVINE INTERPRETATION Galatians 4:24-27
Galatians 4:24-27 [24]Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. [25]Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. [26]But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. [27]For it is written, "Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear; break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor! For the children of the desolate one will be more than those of the one who has a husband."
Paul here specifically states that his present illustration is an analogy. This refers back to verses 22–23, where the analogy begins. Allegorically, the unfortunate transliteration taken from allçgoreô, is a compound of allos (other) and agoreuô (to speak in a place of assembly, that is, publicly), and means literally “to speak other than one seems to speak.” It was used of a story that conveyed meaning other than what was apparent in the literal sense of the words.
It has the idea of one thing being represented under the image of another. In this case, the spiritual truth is illustrated by the historical story, and translating “analogically” is consistent with the basic meaning of the Greek.
• Paul did not in any sense deny the literal meaning of the story of Abraham, but he declared that that story, especially the matters relating to the conception of the two sons, had an additional meaning. Thus he compared the narrative to the conflict between Judaism and Christianity (Walvoord, J. F., Zuck, R. B., & Dallas Theological Seminary. (1983-c1985). The Bible knowledge commentary : An exposition of the scriptures (2:603). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.)
The allegory here is complex, featuring three layers of meaning. Sarah and Hagar not only represent the two covenants, but correspond to the two Jerusalem’s, which cites also have adherents or children. The two Jerusalem’s, in turn, represent the church and corporate Judaism
Perhaps the use of this allegory is Paul responding to the Judaizers in kind. His opponents may have been the first to introduce this allegory into the argument. The Judaizers may have accused the Gentile converts of being like Ishmael, excluded from the inheritance, while the Judaizers were true sons, like Isaac. To receive the promise, they may have argued, the Gentiles must become Jews through circumcision and law-keeping.
In reply, Paul may be trying to reverse the allegory, showing that the distinction is not racial, between Jew and Gentile but spiritual, between those born of the flesh (Ishmael) and those born of the Spirit (Isaac). (Edgar H. Andrews. Free in Christ: The Message of Galatians. Welwyn Commentary Series. Evangelical Press. 1996. p. 248).
Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the apostle explains that these women, the bondwoman Hagar and the free woman Sarah, are illustrations of two covenants. The two mothers and two sons plainly and graphically represent two covenants. Hagar and Ishmael represent the covenant of law and works, anti Sarah and Isaac represent the covenant of grace and faith.
As we have seen previously, the Old Covenant of law was given through Moses at Mount Sinai and required God’s chosen people, the Jews, to keep all the commands God gave in conjunction with that covenant. Because the terms of the covenant were humanly impossible to keep, it produced a type of religious slavery, as it were, bound to a master from whom they could never escape.
Anyone, including a Jew, who attempted to satisfy God and gain freedom from condemnation by trying to live up to that covenant in his own self-righteousness was spiritually like a child of Hagar, the bondwoman. Someone trying this would be a slave, struggling for a freedom he could not obtain by his own efforts.
The descendants of Hagar through Ishmael eventually moved into the desert areas to the east and south of the Promised Land. They came to be known broadly as Arabs and their territory as Arabia, and it is significant that Mount Sinai is located in what is still known today as the Arabian Peninsula.
It was between the sons of Hagar and Sarah that the modern Arab-Israeli animosity began some 4,000 years ago, producing a continual conflict between two peoples who both trace their lineage from Abraham.
Galatians 4:25 tells us that Mount Sinai in Arabia corresponds to the present Jerusalem.
Paul states that Hagar/Sinai corresponds to “the present Jerusalem.” The word translated “corresponds” is sustoicheô, a term found nowhere else in the New Testament. It means literally to “stand in the same line” or “place in the same column.” Throughout this passage Paul was establishing two columns of implied correspondences and complementary antitheses:
HAGAR SARAH
Ishmael, the son of slavery Isaac, the son of freedom
Birth “according to the flesh” Birth “through the promise”
Old Covenant New Covenant
Mount Sinai [Mount Zion]
Present Jerusalem Heavenly Jerusalem
(George, T. (2001, c1994). Vol. 30: Galatians (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (342). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.)
Both Mount Sinai and Jerusalem are commonly associated with Jews, not Arabs, but a major emphasis throughout the Galatian epistle is that historical, geographical, racial, social, and all other superficial distinctions among men have no spiritual significance (see 3:28).
• In fact, on the spiritual level, one’s identity as Jew, Gentile, Arab, or whatever makes no difference. What unbelieving members of those groups have in common is infinitely more important, and damning, than any of their differences. Spiritually, they are all lost, because they are all spiritual descendants of Hagar and Ishmael, religious slaves who live by the futile power and for the sake of their struggling and never-attaining flesh.
Paul refers to the first Jerusalem as present, showing he has in mind the earthly, historical city by that name. Just as God chose Mount Sinai as the geographical location to give the Old Covenant to Moses, He chose Jerusalem as the geographical location where the Old Covenant would be upheld, propagated, and exemplified. In this illustration both locations represent the Old Covenant of law and works and the bondage they produce.
It is obvious that the holy city was also the location for the consummation of the New Covenant in the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, but because the people rejected that New Testament in blood, the present Jerusalem, like Mount Sinai in Arabia, is where Hagar still figuratively lives in slavery with her unbelieving children-self-righteous, Christ-rejecting, grace-ignoring Jews.
Except for a relatively few believers, the Jewish inhabitants of geographical Jerusalem in Paul’s day were truly in deep bondage to damning legalism. And the Judaizers in Galatia were trying to subvert believing Jews back into that bondage-to the ritual, ceremony, self-effort, and all other works of the flesh that constitute the hopeless slavery of the spiritual children of Hagar.
Galatians 4:26 specifies that the spiritual descendants of Sarah through Isaac, on the other hand, live in the Jerusalem above and are free, because she is our mother, if we are among those who live by faith in God’s gracious promise, given to Abraham and fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
Please turn to Hebrews 12
The Christian’s “citizenship is in heaven,” the Jerusalem above, “from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Phil. 3:20).
Referring to Mount Sinai, the writer of Hebrews says to believers:
Hebrews 12:18-23 [18]For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest [19]and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them. [20]For they could not endure the order that was given, "If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned." [21]Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, "I tremble with fear." [22]But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, [23]and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, (ESV)
This heavenly city, which one day will come to earth (cf. Rev. 21:2), is now the “city of the living God” (cf. Heb. 12:22), the home of departed believers of all ages.
• Our citizenship in this city is now and this speaks to the reality of Law and grace.
The inhabitants of the heavenly Jerusalem are free from law, from works, from bondage, and from the flesh. They are also free, as inhabitants of the present Jerusalem are not, to genuinely do good and to please God.
• Before coming to Christ, a person is free to do virtually whatever he wants that is wrong, but he is not free to do anything that is right in God’s sight.
• The Holy Spirit not only delivers the believer from the bondage to sin but enables him, for the first time, to do what is right. “If therefore the Son shall make you free,” Jesus said, “you shall be free indeed” (John 8:36).
One day the heavenly Jerusalem will descend to earth (Rev. 21–22); but it already exists, even more surely and eternally than the present, earthly Jerusalem. “Born again” (John 3:3) can also be translated “born from above,” and it is only those who are born from above who have spiritually ascended to the heavenlies to live in the Jerusalem above.
• This is all reflective of genuine faith: As the writer of Hebrews said of faithful Abraham (Heb 11:10)., “For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God”
The “Jerusalem above” is “our mother,” Paul said, drawing perhaps on the statement of Ezra 10:7, where Zion is called “the mother of us all.” The Jerusalem above is the counterpart of Sarah, the freeborn wife of Abraham, just as the earthly, temporal Jerusalem corresponds to Hagar the bond woman.
• When Paul wrote these words to the churches of Galatia, the “present … Jerusalem” was indeed a city of servitude, held in bondage by the Roman occupation forces. In A.D. 70, just a few years after Paul’s own death, the city of Jerusalem and its temple would be completely destroyed and the Jewish people deprived of a national identity for nearly two thousand years. Paul, however, looked beyond the transience of this present age toward the eschatological renewal God had promised for his people.
Let’s tie this all together in light of the present Middle East conflict:
The heavenly Jerusalem is still above; it has not yet descended to earth. Only as we look forward in prayerful expectancy to the consummation of God’s plan for the ages are we enabled to take our places on the front lines of the cosmic battle raging all around us in this “present evil age” (1:3). Paul reminded the Galatians that their true spiritual identity was to be found above, not below, forward, not behind, precisely because he knew that believers who find their spiritual (focus on the present) world are “like a company of soldiers who are armed with the wrong weapons, and who are fighting on the wrong front.” (George, T. (2001, c1994). Vol. 30: Galatians (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (343). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.)
• On focus in this present age should not be to blindly support an earthy Jerusalem but do our part in living and promoting the principles of the Jerusalem above in justice and real peace, that only comes though faith in Christ.
In Galatians 4:27, Paul quotes Isaiah 54:1,
Galatians 4:27 [27]For it is written, "Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear; break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor! For the children of the desolate one will be more than those of the one who has a husband." (ESV)
Those words were originally written to cheer the Jewish exiles in Babylon but are here applied to Sarah, the barren woman whose barrenness seemingly stood as an impenetrable barrier to the fulfillment of God’s promise to her husband, Abraham.
• As freedom and greater fruitfulness came again to the nation in Babylonian captivity, so it would come to the people in captivity to the law and its death penalty.
• Sarah’s barrenness/inability to bear children pictures the inability of human beings to bring themselves to life spiritually.
On a broader scale, as Zion was a mother of children by grace after captivity, so believers will multiply in grace in the heavenly Jerusalem, which was also figuratively barren for a long time. “The assembly of the first-born” (Heb. 12:23) was not occupied until Jesus was crucified and resurrected, taking captivity captive and removing the spiritual barrenness that no human effort under the Old Covenant could remove. Heaven, the Jerusalem above, will continue to be populated with the born-from-above saints of God until every predestined believer has entered.
In one sweep Paul sets forth the common factor of divine power in behalf of Sarah, the captive Jews, and the church. The common element of all three is divine power granting freedom and fruitfulness. Everything in this trilogy is the result of regenerating grace, not human effort.
Poem: Hagar, Horeb, earthly Salem,
Works of Flesh will not avail them.
Sarah, Zion, heavenly Salem,
Christ, their Lord, will never fail them.
(William Hendriksen: Galatians New Testament Commentary. Baker Publishing House. 2004. p. 183)
We have seen 1) Historical background, 2) THE DIVINE INTERPRETATION and finally:
3) THE PERSONAL APPLICATION Galatians 4:28-5:1
Galatians 4:28-5:1[28]Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. [29]But just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now. [30]But what does the Scripture say? "Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman." [31]So, brothers, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman. [5:1]For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. (ESV)
Again addressing the Galatian believers as brothers (cf. 1:11; 4:12), Paul tells them that, like Isaac, they are children of promise. Every believer, like Isaac, is supernaturally conceived, miraculously born, and the offspring of God’s promise to Abraham fulfilled in Christ. Those who have begun to sink back into the trap of legalistic Judaism must remember that they are children of promise, who owe their life not to their own effort but to the miraculous power of God, just as Isaac did in the physical realm. God’s sovereign power of grace gave them life, and to fall back under law was to deny that divine work and to dishonor God.
• The connection from Abraham’s actions to what Paul was directing the Galatians to is that the Galatians needed to cast out the Judaizers and their legalism right out of the church.
o There is no room for the effort trying to earn favor with God. It must be cast out of our minds and totally rejected in all that we do.
In Galatians 4:29–5:1 Paul mentions three results of being a spiritual Isaac, a redeemed child of promise through Sarah.
1) First of all, just as in that time, when there was resentment of Isaac by Ishmael, the spiritual descendants of Isaac, who was born according to the Spirit, can still expect persecution by the spiritual descendants of Ishmael, who was born according to the flesh.
When Abraham held a feast to celebrate Isaac’s weaning, Ishmael mocked the occasion (Gen. 21:9). He hated Isaac just as his mother hated Sarah (16:4–5). So it is now also, Paul told the Galatians. Throughout history, and still today, the physical and spiritual descendants of Hagar and Ishmael have, respectively, opposed and persecuted the physical and spiritual descendants of Sarah and Isaac.
• Those who hold to salvation by works, trusting in their own performance of the law hate those who proclaim salvation by grace without works.
Please turn to Romans 2
In their own minds, the Judaizers thought of themselves as the legitimate, God-honored descendants of Abraham through Isaac. But Paul was saying something that would infuriate them more than anything else, namely, that they, and all other unbelievers, are as much the spiritual descendants of lshmael as the Arabs are his physical descendants. “If you are Abraham’s children,” Jesus told the protesting Jews in Jerusalem, “do the deeds of Abraham. But as it is, you are seeking to kill Me, a man who has told you the truth, which I heard from God; this Abraham did not do” (John 8:39–40).
Paul wrote the Romans:
Romans 2:28-29 [28]For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. [29]But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God. (ESV)
Whether within Judaism or Christianity, legalists have always been persecutors. Those who trust in God have always been persecuted by those who trust in themselves. True believers have always been more mistreated and oppressed by religionists than by atheists. It is the false religious system of Revelation 17:6 that is “drunk with the blood of the saints.”
Being a spiritual Isaac, a redeemed child of promise through Sarah. 1) Will bring resentment and 2) The spiritual children of Sarah and Isaac will receive an inheritance that the spiritual children of Hagar and Ishmael will not. Paul specifies in Galatians 4:30,
Galatians 4:30 [30]But what does the Scripture say? "Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman." (ESV)
Paul here cites the words of Sarah in Gen. 21:10 to illustrate that those who are attempting to be justified on the basis of keeping the law will be cast out of God’s presence forever (Matt. 8:12; 22:12, 13; 25:30; Luke 13:28; 2 Thess. 1:9).
Please turn to Matthew 7
As Sarah had Hagar and Ishmael cast out of Abraham’s household (Gen. 21:10–14). so will their unbelieving descendants, those who live by works of the flesh, be cast out of God’s household
Matthew 7:22-23 [22]On that day many will say to me, ’Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ [23]And then will I declare to them, ’I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’ (ESV) (cf. Matt. 25:41).
• No one outside the covenant of grace will receive anything but judgment from God.
Being a spiritual Isaac, a redeemed child of promise through Sarah. 1) Will bring resentment and 2) They will receive an inheritance and 3) Third, Galatians 4:31 specifies: although believers are brothers in Jesus Christ and therefore not children of a slave, but of the free woman, they are nevertheless under obligation to live faithfully for their Lord.
On the human and personal level, Galatians 4:21–31 continues to contrast the way of the Judaizers and the way of Paul. But on the immeasurably more important level of doctrine it is an extended series of contrasts between the way of law and the way of grace, the way of works and the way of faith, the way of man and the way of God. Following that same pattern, we also explicitly or implicitly see the contrasts of Hagar/Sarah, lshmael/Isaac, children of Satan/children of God, commandments/ promise, wrath/mercy, bondage/freedom, Old Covenant/New Covenant, Sinai/Zion, present Jerusalem/Jerusalem above, fleshly/spiritual, rejection/inheritance, and lostness/salvation.
• Throughout this letter, and indeed throughout all of Scripture, such contrasts reflect and demonstrate the contrast of the ages: the way of Satan and the way of God. But in God’s ultimate and unchangeable plan, Satan and his way will be destroyed, and only the way of God will remain, forever and ever. Vacillating between the two is unacceptable.
(Format Note: Outline & some base commentary from MacArthur, J. (1996, c1987). Galatians. Includes indexes. (121). Chicago: Moody Press.)
