Tell me, ye who are desirous of being under law, do ye not listen to the law?
Paul has just spoken of his anguish over believers slipping back toward the law. Now he changes his approach. Instead of arguing against the law, he asks the people who want it one question: have they listened to it? The question turns on a small detail — the word "law" does not mean the same thing twice in one sentence.
The verse only makes sense once you notice that Paul is using "law" in two different ways.
He uses the word "law" in two different senses in this verse. You who desire to be under the principle of law, do you not hear what the books of the law say? That is, the early writings of the Bible. Sometimes "law" means the word of God in general as it was revealed at that time. Psalm 19 is an example: "The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul." But when it is called something the Christian is not under, it means this principle: the conscience is put under certain obligations to gain a standing with God. This is the fallacy Paul is laying bare.
Paul does not brush the law aside. He takes it up and turns it back on them. His charge is inconsistency.
The Judaizing teachers would put the Galatians under the law of Sinai. They had placed themselves under the law, and they were in the process of bringing others there. Now Paul is going to show how inconsistent they were. He asks, "Do you not listen to the law?" His argument was this: "If you are under the law, you had better listen to the law. But you are not listening to the law at all. You are totally inconsistent!"
Paul's case is already made. Now he calls one more witness — the law itself.
He has another witness in reserve. He now brings this witness forward. His aim is to complete their confusion and put a final stop to all further legal questions or leanings on their part. By the law's own mouth he will convince them of their folly in wanting to take up its yoke. He now turns to Moses's inspired account of how Abraham's double family began. The apostle's reasoning rests on a principle of Jewish law: the child followed the social condition of its mother. Abraham had one son by a slave woman, and the other by his free wife.
Each mother stands for a different basis on which blessing could come.
These two women set forth the two covenants. One is the covenant of law, which makes the blessing depend upon man carrying out his part. The other is the covenant of promise, in which the blessing for man depends entirely upon the sovereign grace of God. The two sons set forth the two conditions that come out of these covenants: one a condition of bondage, the other of liberty. These two covenants, and the conditions that come from them, are connected with Mount Sinai, where God gave the law, and with the Jerusalem above, from which sovereign grace flows out to the world.
Some say they do not want the law to save them, only to guide their daily living. The law itself does not recognise that distinction.
In vain he says he is born again; the law knows no such distinction. It asks, "Are you what I require?" "No, I am not," says the born-again man, who indeed is the only one who truly says so. "Then," says the law, "I curse you." But you say, "I am not under you for justification, only as a rule." "But I curse you," says the law, "because you have not kept the rule." The law will not and cannot do anything else.
The damage showed in how these believers treated one another.
The Galatian believers were truly converted and had the Spirit. Yet they were turning back to the law as a rule of life. In practice they were making their blessing depend on their own efforts. In the language of the allegory, they became the children of Sinai. Their character took on the traits of the flesh. Jerusalem above sets forth sovereign grace. Had they been connected with its liberty, they would have shown the character of Christ. Instead, putting themselves under law made them proud and boastful, and that spirit led to envy. They were biting and devouring one another, and the world was drawing them in.
- Listen first. "Law" means two things in one verse. It is the principle of earning a standing with God. It is also the books Paul tells them to hear.
- Listen honestly. Paul's charge is inconsistency. They claim the law but have not heard what it says.
- Listen to the story. The law tells a family story: two women, two covenants. Blessing rests on man's performance or on God's grace.
- Listen to the verdict. Taken as a rule of life, the law still asks the one question it always asked, and still answers with a curse.
- Listen to the fruit. Children of Sinai grow proud and quarrelsome; children of grace grow like Christ.
For it is written that Abraham had two sons; one of the maid servant, and one of the free woman.
Paul has pleaded with the Galatians. Now he points them to a family story from Genesis that they all knew. Two sons, two mothers, two ways of coming into the world: one produced by human arrangement, the other by God's word.
Paul asks those drifting back to the law to listen to what the law itself says about Abraham's household.
The Apostle now appeals to the law itself, to show how unreasonable it is to turn back to it. If they would not hear the gospel, nor listen to the Apostle, let them listen to the law they were turning to. He recalls the times of Abraham. He uses some facts in his history as an allegory. It teaches us the contrast between the bondage of a believer under law and the liberty of a believer under grace. Abraham had two sons by different women, one a slave and the other a free woman. The son by the slave "was born according to the flesh," entirely according to the will of man. The other, by the free woman, was born by God's sovereign intervention.
Two verses later Paul calls this story an allegory. That word does not turn it into fiction.
The word allegoreo occurs only in Galatians 4:24. The passage does not mean that Abraham having two sons was an allegory. It was history. But that history had an allegorical application, and Paul, by the Holy Spirit, explains it fully. The Greek word means 'to speak otherwise,' and an allegory is a description of one thing under the image of another.
The two sons differ in how each came to be born. One birth needed only ordinary human strength. The other was impossible without God.
One son, the elder, Ishmael, was born in the natural way. But his mother was a slave, and he was born to be a slave too. The other child, Isaac, was not born in the natural way. That was because his father was a hundred years old and his mother was ninety. She had long ago lost the power to have children. But God had promised that Sarah should have a son... By her own natural power Sarah could not have borne a son. But God Himself gave her that power, because He had promised to do so.
Two mothers, two sons — and each pair pictures something different.
These two women stand for the two covenants. One is the covenant of law. It makes the blessing depend on man carrying out his part of the covenant. The other is the covenant of promise. In it, man's blessing depends entirely on the sovereign grace of God. The two sons also stand for the two conditions that come out of these covenants. One is a condition of bondage, the other of liberty.
Ishmael came from man's own planning, aimed at something God had already promised.
When God makes a promise, there is no "if" attached to it. He makes it with no conditions, and He is determined to keep it. Faith rests in Him, in perfect liberty of heart. A divine promise needs no effort of nature to bring it to pass. This is the very point where Abraham and Sarah failed. They made an effort of nature to reach a certain end. God's promise had already made that end completely sure. This is the great mistake of unbelief.
The Galatians pointed to Abraham as their proof. Paul starts there too.
Look at Abraham and his house. Look at Hagar the servant, and at Isaac and Ishmael. There you have in a figure the two parties still found on the earth: the law party pictured by Ishmael, the child of flesh; and those who cling to the grace of God, who have their pattern in Isaac, the child of promise... Abraham, their main support as they thought, had two sons. But according to Scripture the two sons stood on completely different principles... Which son represented them? Under which type did they fall — Ishmael or Isaac?
The same choice faces us today.
Here is the application. The moment we want to get blessing based on our own initiatives, actions, strength, goodness, power, whatever, we are using 'works of law.' That puts us on the ground of bondage, not the liberty God calls us to as sons — as Isaac had the place of son and heir.
- History — The two sons are fact, not fable. The record is true, and God shaped that true record to picture something more.
- Two births — One son needed only nature's strength. The other could not exist unless God kept His word.
- Two covenants — One makes blessing depend on what man does. The other rests it all on God's grace.
- Two conditions — What each covenant produces is a person: one in bondage, one in liberty.
- One question — Which son do we resemble? Seek blessing by our own initiative, and we repeat Hagar's arrangement. That road ends in slavery, never in inheritance.
But he [that was] of the maid servant was born according to flesh, and he [that was] of the free woman through the promise.
Paul takes the Galatians back to Abraham's household, where one father had two sons. Human effort arranged the first birth; God's word secured the second, and that gap is the gap between bondage and freedom.
Paul answers people who wanted to be under the law by making the law itself speak.
The apostle now appeals to the law itself, to show how unreasonable it is to turn back to it. If they would not hear the gospel, and would not listen to the apostle, let them listen to the law they were turning to. At once the apostle recalls the times of Abraham. He uses some facts from his history as an allegory. It teaches us the contrast between a believer's bondage under law and a believer's liberty under grace. Abraham had two sons by different women, one a slave and the other a free woman. The son by the slave "was born after the flesh," entirely according to the will of man. The other, by the free woman, was born by the sovereign intervention of God.
The first son came from a plan, not from a promise.
At 85, Abraham still had no son. In Genesis 16, the anxiety of both Sarai and Abram prompted them to devise a plan to try to fulfil God's promise. They could not wait for God to fulfil it in His own way and His own time. Using their own cleverness, Abram had a son by the slave woman, Hagar. What a striking picture of Israel trying to get the promise of God by their own righteousness, by their law-keeping! They set out to establish their own righteousness, and so they have not submitted to the righteousness of God (Rom. 10:3). Abraham did the same. He tried to establish God's promise in his own way, and showed no real faith that the promise was altogether God's promise. So the son of the slave woman was born after the flesh. The whole affair was human devising and no fulfilment at all of the promise of God. The son of the slave woman cannot enjoy the full liberty of a son's place. He is really himself in bondage, a servant.
Older translations read "after the flesh" where the ESV reads "according to the flesh." That little word is chosen with care. Scripture never says a believer is under the flesh, nor after the law.
"Under" is applied to sin and law; "after" to flesh, as in Romans 8:4-5, 12, 13. These are nowhere swapped round. "Under" expresses domination; "after" expresses inclination or disposition. So it is always "under the law," "under sin," but "after" the flesh. The same distinction can be seen in Galatians 3:25 and 4:4, 23, 29.
Isaac arrived only when every natural possibility had run out.
Isaac is this child of promise, born to Sarah when she was 90 years old and Abraham 100, when their bodies were as good as "already dead" (Rom. 4:19), and any natural hope of childbearing was long gone. But it was God who stepped in, in sovereign grace, to fulfil His own word... Isaac then is a beautiful picture of Christ, the promised Seed (Gal. 3:16). He came to earth not because of man's successful law-keeping or anything of the sort. He came because of the unbreakable promise of God, fulfilled by grace alone.
Paul sets "flesh" opposite "promise," so this verse defines both words. One rests on what man can manage. The other rests on God alone, and carries no conditions.
In this important passage, "the flesh" stands opposite "promise." So we get God's own idea of what the term "flesh" means. We also get His idea of Abraham's effort to get the seed through Hagar instead of resting in God's "promise."... But the Sarah-covenant reveals God as the God of promise. That promise is completely independent of man. It rests on God's willingness and ability to fulfil it. When God makes a promise, there is no "if" attached to it. He makes it unconditionally, and He is resolved to fulfil it; and faith rests in Him, in perfect liberty of heart.
Paul does not leave the two sons side by side. He follows the story to its end in Abraham's house.
The sentence of Scripture is: 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. Grace refuses partnership with law or flesh. The child of promise alone inherits.
- Two births. One father, two sons, two different origins. Man's will arranged one. God stepped in and produced the other.
- Flesh. "After the flesh" describes what Abraham devised when he could not wait. It pictures Israel trying to get God's promise by their own law-keeping.
- Promise. Isaac came only when nature was as good as dead, so that the blessing rested wholly on God's word, which carries no "if."
- Word choice. Scripture says "under" law and sin, but "after" the flesh — domination in one case, inclination in the other.
- Inheritance. Grace accepts no partnership with law or flesh. Only the child of promise inherits.
Which things have an allegorical sense; for these are two covenants one from mount Sinai, gendering to bondage, which is Hagar.
Paul is writing to believers who were slipping back under law, so he turns to the law's own pages: Abraham's household, with two women and two sons. He says the story carries a meaning beyond itself — one woman stands for the covenant made at Sinai, and that covenant bears children for slavery.
Paul's move is deliberate. They would not listen to the gospel, so he points them to the book they were so eager to live under.
The Apostle now appeals to the law itself, to show how unreasonable it is to turn back to it. If they would not hear the gospel, nor listen to the Apostle, let them listen to the law they were turning to. At once he recalls the days of Abraham. He uses some facts from Abraham's life as an allegory. They teach us the contrast between the bondage of a believer under law and the liberty of a believer under grace.
Calling the account an allegory raises an obvious worry: is Paul turning history into a fable? Commentators answer that the events stand as events, and are used for a further purpose.
Real historical facts can sometimes carry an allegorical sense, as the apostle used the story of Hagar and Ishmael in Galatians 4:21-31. But they are still facts.
How far may we copy this method with other passages? One writer sets clear limits.
How do we guard against misusing what was written long ago? First, we must carefully refuse to start any doctrinal argument of our own from an earlier historical event, as an inspired writer has done here. Second, we must keep inside the limits of stated apostolic teaching when we try to draw a Christian sense out of the ancient Jewish Scriptures.
Each woman pictures a covenant — an agreement between God and man. The two agreements differ in what blessing depends on.
These two women stand for the two covenants. One is the covenant of law, which makes blessing depend on man carrying out his part. The other is the covenant of promise, in which man's blessing depends entirely on the sovereign grace of God. The two sons stand for the two conditions these covenants produce: the one a condition of bondage, the other of liberty.
Why does the first covenant run on those terms? The answer lies in what happened at the mountain.
Enjoying the results of the covenant depended on both sides being faithful. At Mount Sinai God promised blessing on His part, if Israel were faithful to His will. So Israel was bound to obey, to enjoy the privileges granted under the law. What God had promised to Abraham with no conditions attached, the people accepted at Sinai on condition of their own obedience.
Paul's charge is not that Israel broke the law. It is that the arrangement itself can only produce servants.
The law and the covenant of Sinai were tied to man in the flesh… For man, the law and its regulations were only bondage. They aimed at holding the will in check without changing it… And notice that the apostle is not speaking here about breaking the law, but about the principle of the law.
Hagar was Sarah's servant, and an Egyptian. Both details are read as saying something about the place law holds and where it tends to drift.
She is the covenant "from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery." It is the only kind of religion man's own thinking leads him to, and what we sink back to whenever grace is left behind. So Hagar is an Egyptian, a child of nature… God took up the principle of law for the purposes of His wisdom, but it was never His own thought. He uses it so that man, fully tested by it, may prove to himself the folly of his own ideas… How little Christians suspect this tendency in the very thing they use to seek holiness and fruit!
Since there are two, and only two, the practical conclusion is that they cannot be joined.
The two could not be united; the one shut out the other.
Another writer states the same conclusion as a warning about how Christians actually live and preach.
This mixing up of the law with the gospel is as harmful as it is unscriptural. "For you have not come" to Sinai, but to Zion, even had we been Jews. "By grace you have been saved through faith." It rests on a completely opposite principle.
- Two mothers. The two women in Abraham's house stand for two covenants: Hagar for the law given at Sinai, the other for the promise of grace.
- Two terms. Under the first, blessing depends on man keeping his side. Under the second, it rests on God's sovereign grace.
- Two births. The law deals with man in the flesh. It curbs the will but never changes it, so Sinai can bear nothing but slaves.
- Two lines that never merge. Law and gospel rest on opposite principles. Mixing them is harmful and unscriptural.
- Still true history. "Allegory" does not turn the story into fable. The events really happened. When we draw such meanings ourselves, we must keep to apostolic teaching.
For Hagar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to Jerusalem which [is] now, for she is in bondage with her children;
Paul takes a family story from Abraham's household and reads it as a map of two religious systems. Hagar the slave woman stands for the covenant given at Sinai, and Paul puts the Jerusalem of his own day on her side of the line.
Each woman stands for a covenant. Each covenant then shapes the people under it.
These two women stand for the two covenants. One is the covenant of law. It makes the blessing depend on man carrying out his part of the covenant. The other is the covenant of promise. In it the blessing for man depends completely on the sovereign grace of God. The two sons stand for the two conditions that come out of these covenants: the one a condition of bondage, the other of liberty.
The link between the slave woman and the mountain was not just Paul's idea. It rested on how people in that region spoke.
The apostle's language here is bold. What truly justifies it is the divine authority by which he wrote. But it is also supported by its fitness as an allegory, and by a fact of geography that his readers most likely knew. Hagar was Sinai, and Sinai was Hagar, in the speech of the local people descended from the original slave woman. Keeping her name alive in that place gives a fair basis for the parallel he draws here.
Paul says the slave woman is in slavery "with her children." Another writer names who those children are, and why the law leaves them there.
Those who are under the law must keep the law in order to receive blessing. "Do this, and you will live" (Luke 10:28). This is bondage and slavery. We must work and do in order to obtain, and we can never obtain this way. Those who are under this covenant are those who put themselves under law, and they are slaves, like the children of Hagar. They are from Mount Sinai. God gave the law at Mount Sinai, and so Mount Sinai stands for the law. People think that Hagar went to Arabia when Abraham sent her away. So Arabia seems to speak of the land of slavery, or the bondage of the law.
Paul is not talking about a city's walls. He means a whole system of law with Jerusalem at its centre.
Now this Hagar is Mount Sinai. She answers to Jerusalem with her children — that is, to the system of the law of which Jerusalem was the centre — and also to those who are under the law. But Jerusalem which is above is free, and she is our mother. She is the true church of God seen in her heavenly state.
The teachers troubling the Galatians boasted about their standing. Paul answers by naming where Jerusalem now stands.
Hagar speaks to us of the energy of the flesh, and of bondage too. The apostle shows that this is where Jerusalem now is, whatever the boast of the law-teachers who had troubled the Galatians. "Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children" (v. 25). Yet the Jews boasted to the Lord that they were never in bondage to anyone (John 8:33)!
If the earthly city stands on the slave's side, the case for the law collapses. Its defenders end up with the wrong son.
The gospel does not go up to Jerusalem on earth. It does not try to join with the law or anything else here below. It wants no such allies, but rejects them all. The very reverse of their system is true. The true link is with Jerusalem above, as our pattern is Isaac, the child of the free woman. Theirs was the slave's son — Ishmael.
One writer names the reason bondage still appeals.
How strange, yet how true, that we should prefer spiritual bondage to spiritual freedom. But the reason is plain. If we are set free, it must be owing completely to the grace of God, and our proud hearts refuse to submit to this... When Christians lost the sense of a calling that is heavenly and not of this world, as the apostle's keen eye saw the Galatians beginning to do, they looked to Hagar, not to Sarah.
- Two mothers. Hagar carries the covenant where blessing depends on what man does. Sarah carries the covenant where blessing depends on God's grace alone.
- Two births. Each covenant gives its children a matching condition — bondage or liberty.
- Two addresses. Sinai in Arabia and the Jerusalem of Paul's day speak of the same thing. Both stand for the law. Both hold their children as slaves.
- Two claims. Paul puts those who boasted they were never slaves to anyone into the slave woman's household.
- Two choices. Pride prefers a system it can perform in. The gospel refuses that alliance and links us to the Jerusalem above.
but the Jerusalem above is free, which is our mother.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break out and cry, thou that travailest not; because the children of the desolate are more numerous than [those] of her that has a husband.
Paul backs his contrast between the two Jerusalems with a strange line from the prophets, where a childless woman gets a command to sing. Who is she, and why does God's richest harvest come in a season that looks like abandonment?
Paul takes the words from Isaiah 54. One writer points out what comes just before it.
Notice where this comes in the prophet's writings. In chapter 53 we have Israel bowing to the truth of the atonement, owning the once smitten One as having died for them. Then we hear the remarkable call quoted by the apostle in this letter. The truth is that in the coming day Israel will learn with astonishment what God has been doing during their long widowhood. They will find countless children born to Abraham — true children of promise.
Most readers assume the barren woman is Sarah, since Sarah fills the verses around it. Commentators differ here. Some read her as Sarah. Others insist the link runs elsewhere:
Verse 27 gives many minds some difficulty, because people confuse it with Hagar and Sarah. But it is a separate matter, suggested by the idea of the Jerusalem above. … The apostle quotes it to show that Jerusalem had more children during the time of her desolation than when she had a husband. … Sarah was not without a husband. Here is a different order of thought.
Another writer names the barren woman and traces the marriage language through Israel's history.
Paul quotes Isaiah 54 here. The barren one is not Sarah. It is Israel, as the context shows — the one who was without a husband. Israel had a husband. God took Israel as His wife (Jeremiah 2) — when He entered into that covenant relationship with her, she became His wife. But then she became unfaithful, and God had to send her away. … So she became desolate, without a husband, and so she had no children. … In the future Israel will come back to God. Then she will see what happened in the meantime: in the two thousand years that she was set aside as a nation, God brought in this harvest from the nations.
The verse reverses what anyone would expect. The empty years produced more than the favoured ones.
During this time God has set Israel aside. … Their house has indeed been left to them desolate (see Matthew 23:38). In that day it will seem amazing to them. They will find far more children born through the gospel in their desolation than in their days of greatest prosperity. The children brought in by grace are "more numerous" than those ever were under law. But these children do not belong to the earthly Jerusalem. They belong to the Jerusalem above, the heavenly Jerusalem, which is free.
Commentators also differ over which Jerusalem Isaiah 54 addresses. Some read it as the restored earthly city. One writer argues for the heavenly one, and counts the harvest twice over:
When God fulfils the prophecy in the millennial day, He will count those who now believe as Jerusalem's children, as well as the race to come in that day. … Think of her most flourishing times, say under David or Solomon. What fruit of those days could compare with the gathering in of Christian believers since the Jews lost their place as the recognised witness and wife of Jehovah?
Notice where the harvest began.
Jerusalem on earth and her children boasted in the law. Through the law they fell into bondage, and by breaking the law they became desolate. Still, the words of the prophet Isaiah show that during the time of her desolation there will be more children than when God owned the city as His earthly centre. Is this not because the very city that proved man's guilt became the place from which the gospel of God's grace went out to all the world?
The verse does more than report a fact. It commands singing. One writer ties that song to the difference between law and grace.
The barren woman bearing can only find utterance in praise. Outward greatness and glory can go with bondage. Men are slaves of sin, or of the law, or of the world, until they know redemption. … The law knew nothing of praise. Hagar's son was born of the flesh. Sarah's child was the child of God's grace and power.
- Desolate. The story starts with a wife sent away for unfaithfulness and a city left desolate. Nothing here begins with human strength.
- Fruitful. In those very years of desolation God has been gathering children. They outnumber all that came in the days of favour and law.
- Free. These children belong to the Jerusalem above, not to the earthly city. They are children of promise, born by God's grace and power, not of the flesh.
- Global. The message of grace went out from the very city that had proved man's guilt, and reached all the world.
- Singing. So the command is to rejoice. Only grace puts a song in a barren mouth, because the law knew nothing of praise.
But *ye*, brethren, after the pattern of Isaac, are children of promise.
Paul has just set Abraham's two sons side by side. One was Hagar's son, born in the ordinary way. The other was the free woman's son, born by God's promise. Now Paul tells the Galatians which of the two they resemble. The question is what makes someone a true heir: human effort and law, or God's promise alone.
Isaac did not arrive by natural strength. His birth came late, and it took a miracle. One writer draws the line from that birth to every believer. He quotes an older translation, which reads "we" here where the ESV reads "you."
"Now we, brothers, as Isaac was, are children of promise." He now turns back from the picture he has been drawing out. He says nothing here of Sarah. He speaks instead of the first child of promise, to show that all believers share one origin and stand equal as heirs of the grace that chose them. We are children of promise, he says, in the same way Isaac was. Abraham's heir came late, and his birth was a miracle. The birth of each child of God is just as much a miracle. Flesh and blood have no part in the kingdom of God, and the children of promise are not born by the will or the power of men. … These deceived Galatians are "brothers" still. He will not treat them as illegitimate, but as true sons of God by faith in Jesus Christ.
Elsewhere Isaac points forward to Christ, but here he is used differently. Paul turns the household into a portrait of the two natures at work in a Christian:
In this passage the apostle uses Isaac, not as a picture of Christ, but of believers — those who receive God's sovereign grace. Just as he uses Isaac to show all that we are as born of the Spirit, so he uses Ishmael to show our old man — all that we are as born after the flesh.
Ishmael came from Abraham's own effort to help God's promise along:
The comparison is now concluded, "You brothers, after the pattern of Isaac," that is, the son of the free woman, "are children of promise," over against the flesh. Abraham tried to act according to the flesh, but what was the result? He had this son from Hagar. Here we see the result of what the flesh can produce, even with the best intentions. Abraham had good intentions, but the flesh can only produce flesh.
Isaac's place was settled before he could do anything about it:
God called Abraham out of the world — away from his relatives, his country and his father's house — separating him to Himself and to His promises. But Isaac was already chosen, called and set apart while still in his father's house. He was at home from birth, and he was there with God. He was born by promise, and by a power that gives life to the dead. In all this he pictured sonship, as Abraham had pictured God's choosing. In Isaac we see the family "born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God," who stand in liberty.
Some teachers wanted these believers to stand before God on the ground of law. One writer's answer is blunt:
What a death-blow to all who maintain that the child of God has anything to do with the law as that which determines his own relationship to God! The law is a powerful weapon for probing the ungodly; but in our own standing we have done with it.
Knowing you are a child of promise is not a fact to file away. It is the cure for a joyless Christian life:
The Galatians had heard and received the good news, and for a while had run well. But legal teaching and its principles had trapped them… They had lost the true joy and liberty of redemption, though, thank God, not the redemption itself. How sadly true this is of many today: saved but not satisfied, redeemed but not rejoicing, saints but not singing. The Spirit's way of recovery is by the ministry of the positive truth.
- Promise, not power — Isaac came when nature had nothing left to give. Every child of God begins the same way, never "by the will or the power of men."
- Spirit, not flesh — Isaac stands for believers born of the Spirit, and Ishmael for the old nature born of the flesh.
- Effort, not promise — Abraham meant well, but his own effort produced only flesh. Good intentions do not change what the flesh can give.
- Home, not on trial — the child of promise starts inside the family, free and a son. He does not work his way in.
- Free, and singing — promise, not law, fixes your standing before God. The mark of knowing it is not just being saved, but rejoicing.
But as then he that was born according to flesh persecuted him [that was born] according to Spirit, so also [it is] now.
Behind this verse is a family scene in Abraham's house. Ishmael came by ordinary human arrangement. Isaac came because God promised him. Paul reads that old quarrel as a picture of something still going on, and he asks the Galatians which side of it they stand on.
The two boys stand for two sources of life, and those two sources cannot get along. One writer traces the clash through three settings at once.
Turning again to his allegory, the Apostle says that believers now are like Isaac, the children of promise. But on the day Isaac was weaned, Ishmael mocked. So now the one born according to the flesh, under the bondage of law, will persecute the one born after the Spirit, in the liberty of grace. The flesh and the Spirit are always opposed. It was so in Abraham's house, it is so in the world, and even in the heart of the saint. It was always the religious Jew who persecuted the Apostle.
Ishmael had lived in the house for years without trouble. Scripture says nothing against him until the child of promise arrives and receives his place.
As soon as Isaac was weaned and a great feast was made, the son of Hagar the Egyptian mocked. Ishmael shows his true character. As long as there was no Isaac, we hear nothing of Ishmael. The presence of Isaac makes known what was in the son of the slave woman. The presence of the new nature makes known what the flesh really is.
Genesis records laughter, not violence. Paul still calls it persecution, and one writer follows that same hatred all the way to the death of Christ.
The old nature and the new can never be reconciled. The old always hates and persecutes the new, driven by a will that will not submit to the will of God. This hostility shows in the smallest instances as well as the greatest. A child's mocking laugh is as real a mark of persecuting hatred as the bloody death of a prophet or apostle of the faith. That is the judgment of the heart-searching Spirit of truth. Ishmael mocked Isaac. The joined authorities of this world mocked the true Heir and Firstborn of the whole family of God, and persecuted Him to death without pity.
The real offence is not God's holiness. It is that God gives, and the receiver adds nothing.
There is nothing man more instinctively dislikes than grace. He cannot bear the thought that God makes one person differ from another, and that man does not make that difference himself. Man frets more against the grace of God than against His holiness. He assumes he can somehow meet God's holiness by ways of his own devising. But grace is God's ability to meet man in his deepest need and to bless him beyond words. The story of religious persecution repeats again and again. It is simply the story of Ishmael and Isaac that the apostle points to here.
The hostility is not random. Paul could have preached a message that bought him peace. He refused.
Here another incident is taken up. In Ishmael's mocking, the Spirit of God saw an expression of the deep-seated hatred of flesh towards Spirit. Paul knew much of this. Had he been a preacher of circumcision, he would have been spared a great deal. That would have put honour on the first man, and no persecution would have followed for him. But he was a faithful minister of heavenly things. He had to bear the consequences in his own person and circumstances. Others know this in some measure.
Paul's "so also it is now" is not just a complaint about bad manners. One writer names the source of the pressure and its aim.
The Galatians had become spiritual sons. So the religious flesh grew zealous, and the false teachers came after them. Satan does not want this position of sonship to work. He does not want us to be true worshippers. So the flesh will always be there to persecute what is after the Spirit.
Paul gives no end date for this conflict. One writer marks how far it runs, and what actually draws the hostility.
The "now" of this verse covers the whole time of God's patience. What provokes contempt and persecution from people who do not know God is not what someone professes, but what is real. Christians stay safe from persecution as long as they pursue the same goals as the world.
- Born. Two sons, two origins: one produced by human effort, one given by promise. Everything in the verse follows from that difference in birth.
- Exposed. Ishmael causes no trouble until Isaac is honoured. The arrival of the new nature is what reveals what the flesh has always been.
- Mocked. Persecution here begins as a laugh. On the Spirit's scale, a sneer and a martyr's death belong to the same hatred.
- Grace. The mocker cannot stand a blessing he did not earn and cannot match. That is why religious zeal, not unbelief, has led the attack.
- Free. Paul could have preached circumcision and been spared. He stayed faithful to heavenly things and paid for it, as every child of promise may have to.
But what says the scripture? Cast out the maid servant and her son; for the son of the maid servant shall not inherit with the son of the free woman.
Paul has been using Abraham's household as a picture of law and grace. He now closes the argument by asking what Scripture itself says about the two sons. His answer is a demand Sarah once made, and it raises two hard questions. Whose voice was that? And what does "cast out" mean for a believer today?
On the surface this sounds like an angry wife's outburst. Paul calls it Scripture. The words carry an authority far above the woman who spoke them.
The voice of Sarah, and her natural motherly anger, is here swallowed up in the louder and more solemn tones of the Spirit by whom she spoke. Notice, too, the apostle's way of speaking. The Scripture foresaw and preached to Abraham the blessings of free grace. Through the lips of Sarah, that same Scripture passes the sentence of disinheritance and exclusion on the unconverted person who claims the name of Christ.
The reason is not personal. Law and grace cannot live under one roof.
The sentence of Scripture is to cast out the slave woman and her son. Grace refuses partnership with law or flesh. The child of promise alone inherits.
The verse settles who gets the inheritance. It shuts a door: law-keeping makes no one an heir.
That is the end of those under law. "Cast them out." There is no inheritance for them. The inheritance is all of grace; none whatever can be had by law. What a grand ending! Everyone could see they must take their stand on one side or the other. Who would be willing to side with the one who was to be cast out?
The same verdict decides where a person stands before God:
"What does the Scripture say?" That is the decisive question. And the answer is that "the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman." The son takes the servant's place. The one who would stand before God on the basis of the law falls. The one who stands in the fullness of grace truly stands.
Paul's opponents appealed to the law. He answers them out of the law itself. One writer aims the verse at anyone who makes the law the measure of a Christian's relationship with God.
What a death-blow to all who maintain that the child of God has anything to do with the law as that which determines his own relationship to God! The law is a powerful weapon for probing the ungodly. But in our own standing we have done with it… Out of the law itself he contradicts everything they were using the law for. And before the law was given at Sinai, this remarkable picture already sets out the true position of the Christian in contrast with the legalist.
Sending Hagar, the slave woman, away was hard for Abraham. One writer says the same command is just as hard for us.
The unrelenting word comes to Abraham: cast them out. It was truly painful for Abraham to do it, and it went against his feelings and affections. But it was no more painful for Abraham than it is for us to turn the law out of doors. It clings to us so tightly. It seems so hard to give up the works of our own hands, and to renounce what we have prided ourselves on most. But until Hagar is gone, there is and can be no peace in Abraham's house. Until the law, and all expectation from it, is thoroughly renounced, there is no peace in the soul.
The same two words appear elsewhere with the opposite force. Everything turns on who is coming, and how.
"Cast out" is the strict command of justice, when it weighs the claims of nature against the promises of God. "I will never cast out" is the unchangeable word of Him who still waits to be gracious. In the abundance of His freely loving mercy, He welcomes all who come to Him by faith (John 6:37). The true heir is the sincere, self-judging believer; the one facing exclusion is the person who trusts in himself or his religious views.
- Sentence. Paul quotes Sarah's demand as Scripture. The Spirit takes up her anger and turns it into God's verdict on the two sons.
- Separation. Grace will not go into partnership with law or flesh. The two cannot share one house.
- Succession. The law wins no part of the inheritance. The son takes the servant's place and inherits alone.
- Surrender. Casting out cost Abraham his feelings. It costs us the works we are proudest of. Until we do it, the soul has no peace.
- Safety. The same voice that says "cast out" to self-reliance says "I will never cast out" to everyone who comes by faith.
So then, brethren, we are not maid servant's children, but [children] of the free woman.
Paul has just told the Galatians to cast out the slave woman and her son. Verse 31 is the verdict he draws from that story for every believer. It settles what we are, and what we are not. We cannot be both.
The word "So" marks this as a conclusion, not a new thought. Paul argues from the law itself. One writer shows how that closes the door on using the law to settle a believer's standing before God.
What a death-blow to all who claim that the child of God still has something to do with the law! The law does not settle his own relationship with God. The law is a powerful weapon for probing the ungodly; but as far as our own standing goes, we are finished with it. "So, brothers, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman." That is the conclusion of the apostle's argument. And what could be more conclusive? Out of the law itself he contradicts everything they were using the law for. The Jew matched the child of the slave woman, and was in bondage then too. The apostle shows that anyone else who takes that place must certainly land in the same bondage, and suffers even more for his own folly. He is leaving freedom to become a slave.
The verse assumes you know who the two women are. Hagar was Abraham's slave. Sarah was his wife. Each stands for a whole way of relating to God.
Hagar corresponds to the covenant of law and to Jerusalem then in bondage; and Sarah to the covenant of promise and to Jerusalem above, which is free. The Christian is not under the law or in the flesh. The Christian is free, under grace.
Why can the law never produce free children? Look at what a slave mother can pass on.
The slave woman only produces bondage, and can never bring forth a free man. How could she? The law never could give liberty, for as long as a man was alive it ruled him. I can never be free as long as I am under the rule of anyone.
Paul does not offer a mixture. A child has one mother. Trying to claim both destroys grace itself.
So we are not the children of the slave woman, but of the free woman. We cannot possibly be the children of both, otherwise, as the apostle says, grace is no longer grace. We are freed from the law, from its ceremonies, from its service, from the elements of the world. This is so that we may belong to a risen Christ. He has cancelled our sins, and also all the ordinances of the law. He has borne its curse for us. And He has given us a life that stands in liberty and holiness before God.
This freedom is more than release from rules. One writer ties it to the standing of a son, and to Christ being formed in us.
It is a happy thing for us if we can truly say, "We are not children of the slave but of the free woman." Then indeed we stand in Christ. Christ Himself is formed in us. We are in the liberty of sonship, and that is liberty indeed.
One writer applies this freedom to the rules that human groups make.
We are born to freedom, not to slavery, and no one has the right to enslave us now. There are many who would like to enslave us, and many who try to. Every rule and regulation made by man is part of this slavery. Almost every religious group and human society has its own rules. All of them belong to the bondage and slavery from which Christ has set us free.
The order matters: Paul states what we are before he tells us how to live.
We are not linked with a system of bondage, but are "children of the free woman," linked with promise. This is what God wants us to enjoy, and it leads to practical consequences — we have been set free. Doctrinal truth and practical truth are closely tied. Working the truth out in life is the practical side. But we must have the doctrine before we can work it out in practice. True practice flows from true doctrine.
- Verdict — "So" closes an argument drawn from the law itself. The law does not settle the believer's relationship with God.
- Two mothers — Hagar stands for the covenant of law and a Jerusalem in bondage. Sarah stands for the covenant of promise and the free Jerusalem above.
- One family — no one can be a child of both. A slave mother can only produce slaves, and mixing the two means grace is no longer grace.
- Free for Christ — this freedom releases us from law, ceremony and ordinance so that we may belong to a risen Christ, in the liberty of sonship.
- Then live it — man-made rules are the old slavery coming back. True practice flows out of settled doctrine, never the other way round.