Now if you would take a Bible in hand and turn with me please to Paul’s letter to the Galatians, Galatians chapter 4, as we continue our studies in Paul’s letter. You can find that on page 974 if you’re using one of our church Bibles. You will remember Galatians is divided into three, roughly equal sections. There is an autobiographical section in the opening two chapters, then a theological section in chapters 3 and 4, and then a more directly practical section and applicatory section in chapters 5 and 6. Here in this last section then, of the central part of the letter, the theological part of the letter, Paul is making his argument against the Galatians’ backsliding into legalism. He’s making a theological defense of his gospel and urging them not to slide back into legalism. Last time we looked at chapter 4, verses 8 through 20, which really were something of an aside from the more overtly theological discussion that surrounds it as Paul appeals to the Galatians on the basis of his deep, personal and pastoral bond and relationship with them. But now, as he concludes the theological part of his letter, he turns back to make his appeal once more directly on the basis of holy Scripture.
Look for a moment with me please at our passage, Galatians 4:21-31. Paul recalls here the way God gave Isaac to Abraham’s wife supernaturally by His grace according to His covenant promise, very appropriately on a baptism Sunday where we rehearse that very same covenant promise upon which we depend not only for our own salvation but also for the salvation of our children. You can find that in Genesis chapter 17. But then Hagar, Abraham’s slave woman, bore Ishmael to Abraham, naturally, Paul says, “according to the flesh.” And Paul is reflecting on these two women and their two sons. And as he does so, he identifies a pattern; one that is repeated in all the covenantal dealings of God with His people across the ages, and most especially repeated in the contrast between a religion of legalistic, works-based self-righteousness that is no better, he says, than slavery, and a religion of free grace which operates, he says, according to the covenant promises of God.
Now let me just pause here and preface this whole exposition by acknowledging that many scholars of Paul criticize his writing in this part of Galatians as the least clear section of the book. It is, admittedly, a difficult passage. And scholars will often ring their hands over what Paul calls here “an allegory,” which they say is nothing more than Paul reading back into the story of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar, details that are not actually there in service of his own theological agenda. That is, fundamentally however, to misunderstand what Paul is really doing here. It is true that in verse 24, if you look at it, Paul says that the Sarah and Hagar story can be interpreted allegorically. But he’s using that word “allegory” differently than the way we tend to use it today. Paul means something more like “analogy.” That is, he is tracing patterns and common trajectories that keep on appearing in different contexts throughout the holy Scriptures. And that’s why in verse 25 he uses another word, a different word, that helps explain what he means by this word “allegory,” is translated in our version, “correspondence.” That’s what Paul means by “allegory.” There is a typological and thematic correspondence between the Hagar and Sarah story and the way God deals generally with His people.
And so far from cynically criticizing Paul’s handling of Scripture, I think we ought to learn from it. Paul is not imposing on a passage or randomly spiritualizing the text in order to force into it a meaning that it did not originally carry. That would always be a misuse of the Bible. In fact, he is reading the text so carefully and so sensitively that he discerns themes and patterns emerging in one place that continue to appear and recur in many other places. And in our passage, he connects them subtly and well together as we will see. Paul is doing whole-Bible theology noticing how God weaves the storyline of His dealings with an individual and ways of working with us together so that there is a continuity and a consistency in all of God’s ways. So one good reason to wrestle with this complicated and challenging passage is because it will push us actually to think more deeply about how we read our Bibles and how we build our doctrine. Paul is modeling to us here whole-Bible theology because he wants to produce whole-Bible Christians.
But of course much more is going on here than simply providing a model of how to read the Bible. Paul is trying to persuade. He wants to win the Galatians back from the legalism into which they have been drifting. And we’re going to see him do that by making three principle arguments. Look at the passage with me. First of all, verses 21 through 28, Paul highlights the inheritance that grace gives. The inheritance that grace gives. Then in verse 29, the irritation that grace causes. The irritation grace causes. And then finally, verses 30 and 31, the intolerance grace requires. The intolerance that grace requires. So those are the main contours of Paul’s argument as he works to deliver us from the clutches of legalism. The inheritance grace gives, the irritation grace causes, and the intolerance grace requires. Before we unpack those themes, let’s pray together and then we’ll read the passage. Let us pray.
O God, we’ve been trying to orient our thinking to this difficult text. Far more importantly, we pray now that You would orient our hearts to Your gracious work and make them receptive to Your truth, for we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Galatians chapter 4 at verse 21. This is the Word of God:
“Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. 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.’
Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. 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. 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.’ So, brothers, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman.”
Amen, and we praise the Lord that He has spoken in His holy, inerrant Word.
The Inheritance Grace Gives
Now we sometimes hear people say, “Like mother like son,” or “He’s his mother’s son alright.” Well in some ways, that’s what Paul is saying about Christians and the matriarch, Sarah, Abraham’s wife, in the first part of our passage. Believers in Jesus are all Sarah’s sons and daughters. Now notice how Paul starts his argument in verse 21. It’s actually really rather a sharp challenge to the Galatians, isn’t it? Look at verse 21. They seem to want to embrace life under the full complex of the Mosaic Law as a necessary part of being accepted by God. And so Paul says to them rather sternly, “Tell me, you who want to be under the law, do you not listen to the law?” So you remember the Jewish people divide the Hebrew scriptures into three sections – the law, the prophets, and the writings. The Law, the Torah, refers not just to a body of legal codes or to case law, but the whole of the first five books of the Old Testament, including the narrative sections. It’s all “the Law” and it is to this Law that the Galatian false teachers, these legalists, were making their special appeal among the Galatian churches.
But now Paul is about to beat them at their own game, referring to a central story from the Law, which most inconveniently for the legalists in Galatia, will not promote their conclusions about how to relate to God at all. It’s the story of Abraham’s two sons – Isaac, born to Sarah his wife, and Ishmael, born to Hagar the slave woman. Ishmael, verse 23 says, “was born according to the flesh,” whereas Isaac, we are told, “was born through the promise.” You see that language in verse 23 – “according to the flesh…through the promise.” Those two phrases, in many ways, give us the key to understanding this whole passage. Paul is highlighting the contrast between the flesh and living according to the flesh and the slavery it incurs, and life on the basis of the promise of God and the freedom it bestows.
Now remember the story Paul is dealing with. Sarah was too old to have a son, and so despite the fact that God had promised that she would have a son, Abraham, in his impatience and unbelief, took matters into his own hands and had a baby by his slave, Hagar. But then after Abraham’s attempt to fulfill the promise of God by his own efforts, God then worked supernaturally, just as He promised that He would, and Sarah conceived and gave birth to Isaac in her old age. And that’s the story. And Paul’s point is that that story illustrates two ways of relating to God. There is the way of life according to the flesh that takes matters into our own hands, as if there was the possibility of securing the favor and blessing of God by our own efforts, and then there is the way of life that rests on the promise of God and the supernatural provisions of His free grace. We are all sons and daughters of one of these two women. We are all children of the flesh or children of the promise. Children of works or children of grace. Children of the Law or children of the Gospel. That’s the pattern, the basic argument in a nutshell.
Now let’s look a little more closely at how Paul makes that case. These women, he says in verse 23, represent two covenants. That is to say, they reflect two possible approaches to God’s covenant relationship to His people. The first approach to God’s covenant, represented by the legalists with whom Paul is locked in this argument, it seizes upon the Law of Moses given to Israel at Mount Sinai. This is a little tricky, so hang in there with me, but we need to see that Paul isn’t actually saying that the Mosaic covenant is actually a covenant of mere or pure law that offers salvation on the basis of our own obedience. Not at all. Paul is saying, rather, that’s how the false teachers in Galatia misunderstand God’s covenant. It’s how they view and distort the Mosaic Law. They turn it into a covenant of works, into a way of self-salvation, which it was never intended to be.
In an earlier sermon in this series, back when we looked at chapter 2:17-21, you may remember we used the illustration, not original to me, of a railway line and a ladder. Do you remember that? The Law of Moses is meant to be a railway line along which the engine of our Christian lives travel, empowered all the way by God’s free grace alone. God’s Law is not meant to be a means to salvation; it meant to provide the direction of our lives that they now gladly take, having already been saved freely, not by works but by grace alone. But the legalists pull up the railway line of God’s Law and turn it on its end and make it into a ladder. They sought to use the Law for what it was never meant to be and cannot ever really be – a means by which to climb our way to God under our own strength, by means of our work good works and efforts, one good work of ours at a time, one rung of the ladder after the next. That’s how the false teachers were using the Law of Moses and the covenant at Mount Sinai.
But as persuasive as the legalists made that approach appear to the Galatian believers, Paul says it is really only life according to the flesh. In fact, in verse 25 – look at verse 25 – he says all this approach can ever do is reduce your life to slavery. You will end up resembling the mother of this approach, Hagar, who provides a child for Abraham without regard to the promise of God. They took matters into their own hands instead of trusting in the Lord and slavery is the consequence. Everyone who uses God’s Law, who tries to come to God this way, ends up in bondage. So Hagar models the fleshly approach. Have you got that? That’s how the legalists understood Mount Sinai and the Mosaic Law – as a way of self-salvation, by the power of fleshly obedience. You’ll notice in verse 25 that in Paul’s contemporary situation, that approach to relating to God was embodied by the earthly city of Jerusalem, the home of global Judaism which, though it tried to keep the Law for justification in the sight of God, only ever resulted in spiritual slavery.
But there is another approach, Paul says, to relating to God. The approach represented in the passage by Sarah and her son, Isaac. They embody another way of thinking about God’s covenant with His people – one entered not by Law keeping but by free, undeserved grace, held out in the promise of the Gospel. If Hagar is the symbolic mother of legalism, represented by earthly Jerusalem, then Paul says in verse 26 Sarah is the mother of all who trust the promise of grace in Jesus Christ, represented by the Jerusalem above which is free, not in bondage. She is our mother, he says.
And then in verse 27, you’ll notice how Paul takes that pattern and sees it repeated again much later on in the story of Israel’s own national life as he quotes from the prophecy of Isaiah, chapter 54. Do you see that in verse 27? Paul quotes Isaiah 54 which is speaking to national Israel. “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.” So Paul is highlighting in Isaiah the same pattern of grace not works, promise not flesh, Gospel not law. Just like the barren Sarah, the apparently barren remnant of Israel in Isaiah’s time will one day bear more children by the supernatural work of God than the one who has a husband ever could by natural means. The children of promise will multiply as the true sons and daughters of Abraham all over the world as they come to trust the promise of the Gospel.
Despite the complexity – and I’ll admit, that was a big chunk of raw beef I’m asking you to digest – but despite the complexity of that argument, it’s densely packed and takes a bit of untangling, the point Paul is making is actually very simple. Isn’t it? He’s asking us all the question, “Whose child are you really? Who is your mother?” I was really tempted at this point to say, “Whose yo mama?” but I just can’t quite bring myself to say that! Is it Hagar or Sarah? Is it Sinai or Calvary? Is it Moses or Christ? Is it the Law or the Gospel? Is it the flesh or the promise? If you are trusting in Jesus, then on the basis of the promise of grace alone, you are the child of the new Jerusalem, born like Isaac – not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but born of God. You are “born from above,” as Jesus told Nicodemus he must be. You are a child of the Jerusalem above. That’s why the citation from Isaiah 54 is so appropriate here because it begins with a summons to joy. If you are born from above, regardless of your earthly circumstances, you have the best reason of all for joy, don’t you? And so he says, “Rejoice.” Only the sons and daughters of the free woman, heirs of the Jerusalem above, have grounds for lasting joy. They are not in the bondage and slavery of sin, bondage under the law, bondage before the wrath and curse of God, bondage under Satanic opposition and oppression. No, we are free by His grace, adopted children of God, born again and made His own, heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ and bound for glory forever. Rejoice. That is the inheritance that only grace gives. Who is your mother? Is yours a life of slavery or do you know the joy of Gospel freedom?
The Irritation Grace Causes
Then, notice with me in the second place – first of all, the inheritance grace gives, now in the second place, the irritation grace causes. The irritation grace causes. Suppose you are in fact a child of the free woman, an heir of grace, a citizen of the heavenly Jerusalem, you are trusting today in the Lord Jesus Christ alone for your salvation – is it always and only joy and gladness from here on out? Is that what you can expect – to bounce through life with a smile on your lips and a skip in your step? Is that how it’s going to go? What ought we to expect of the Christian life? Well look down at verse 29. Notice Paul’s great realism with the Galatians as he extends his metaphor. “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.” Ishmael, born according to the flesh, persecuted Isaac, born through the promise. And in the same way, the legalists in Paul’s day were heaping scorn on the free grace people in Galatia. And the reason they were reacting so badly to Paul’s gospel of free grace is because grace is an irritant to the soul of the self-righteous. Grace is an irritant to the soul of the self-righteous. It’s like grit under your eyelid. It’s like lemon juice in a paper cut. It’s a splinter in your toe, a stone in your shoe. You’ve got to deal with it. It provokes; it makes the legalistic heart restless and stirs it up and incites it. You have to get the grit out of your eye and the stone out of your shoe. It’s making you miserable.
And maybe that’s you today, truth be told. The Gospel is making you miserable. It is grit in your eye. It is a stone in your shoe. It makes you uncomfortable every time you hear it. Maybe you find yourself grumbling at the Gospel. You kick and struggle and argue with the Gospel. And Paul gives us the explanation for it. If that’s what’s happening in your heart, here’s why. The reason the preaching of the Gospel rubs you the wrong way isn’t because the Word is wrong, you are. Your heart is so wedded to self-righteousness. You want to justify yourself before God. And the truth is, a Gospel of free pardon in Jesus, received only by faith plus no works at all of yours, well that puts the ax to the roots of our ego. Doesn’t it? It strips us of any claim to personal merit before the gaze of God. We’re not saved because, “Look what I did,” but only because of the obedience and blood of Jesus. But if you are seeking to assert your own righteousness, you cannot tolerate a salvation that’s free on the obedience of another. I wonder, could it be, could it be that your irritation under the Word is actually a red flag, it’s a warning light, it’s a tornado siren, alerting you to just how far from the only safe path to peace you still are? All your religion, all your piety, all your morality notwithstanding, if you trust in it, you cannot hope for peace. The only way is by the grace of God in Christ alone.
There’s also a word of warning here for faithful Christians. Paul wants the Galatian Christians to understand opposition and pushback and criticism and persecution really shouldn’t surprise them. Of course the Christian life will not be an endless succession of happy moments where you skip cheerfully through the daffodils of divine favor. Oh no. Just as the rebellious, self-righteous heart is irritated and provoked by free grace, so also the world is provoked by the witness of the faithful. Grace drives legalists mad. It is an irritant. And so, believer in Jesus, don’t be surprised at the hostility of non-Christian friends. Get ready. This is part of the normal Christian life. Martyn Lloyd-Jones somewhere said, “If in our preaching of the grace of God in the Gospel we could not be accused of antinomianism, we really are not yet preaching the Gospel as we should.”
Antinomianism is the heretical idea that grace means we no longer have to obey God’s Law at all. And as we’ll see as we get into chapter 5 in the weeks to come, Paul is not an antinomian in any way. But antinomianism, this idea that the Law is now no longer relevant for a Christian, is the fear that grips the heart of every legalist every time they hear the real Gospel preached. “It just can’t be that easy,” they say to themselves. “It can’t be that free. It can’t be that gracious. There must be something left for me to do. In fact, preacher, you’re encouraging license and lawlessness and libertinism. If you say that God accepts you for free, only for the sake of the righteousness of Christ reckoned to your account once and forever in the moment that you trust in Jesus, if you say that well someone might think holiness doesn’t matter. No, no, you need to qualify every statement of grace with a reminder, ‘We have to keep the law.’” But beloved, remember that grace that is qualified by works is not grace at all. Make your stand, Paul is saying, on free grace alone. It will lift a terrible burden from your heart, for sure – the burden of guilt from your shoulders, the burden of trying to be so holy that you will impress God. A fool’s errand you will never accomplish. But beware and count the cost as you begin to build your life on the promise and on free grace and on the gift of God in Jesus Christ, get ready. Don’t be surprised at just how annoying the world is going to begin to find you. No matter how kind and warm and loving you may be, to someone who hangs their hope before God on their own deadly doing, you will be obnoxious. The glory of the Gospel is that it is free. Wiley said it earlier – “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household.” That’s all the Gospel requires.
Repent. Turn from your sin and yourself to Jesus alone. Trust in His obedience and blood. You will find Him to be a perfect and comprehensive Savior, now and forever. There is no hope, none for you, apart from this simple message. But as you embrace it, Paul wants you to know, count the cost, get ready, because the world is perfectly happy with almost any form of self-salvation. The world is glad to allow and embrace all manner of works righteousness. But strip people from their own power, tear from them all grounds for hope in themselves, and in their own efforts shatter the illusion, “Hey, I’m a nice guy and God is bound to accept me because I’m a nice guy” – take that away and say, “No, no, the only hope for you is Christ,” you’ll soon find out how hostile they can be. The inheritance grace gives and then the irritation grace causes. Do you see it?
The Intolerance Grace Requires
Then thirdly, look at verses 30 and 31 and notice the intolerance grace requires. Verse 30 – “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.’” Paul again is quoting from the same story, this time, God’s command to Abraham to set Hagar and her son aside in favor of Sarah and her son, Isaac. Isaac is the child of promise, he alone is to inherit, and so Hagar and Ishmael are to be ejected. And what is his point? Well it’s a not so subtle hint, isn’t it, to the Galatians – there must be a limit to our tolerance when it comes to error; there must be a limit to our tolerance when it comes to error. We live in a time, don’t we, when tolerance is virtually the only non-negotiable ethic people have left. It’s their only law. And yet even the most socially progressive voices in our society that are constantly preaching inclusion and tolerance become awfully intolerant indeed when their own moral vision is challenged.
Haven’t you found that to be so? Go on social media and affirm that homosexuality is a sin or maintain that a person cannot change their biological sex and you’ll see how rapidly the culture of tolerance evaporates. We all have limits to our tolerance. Tolerance cannot, not for anyone, tolerance cannot be an absolute ideal. And Paul is urging the Galatians to understand the intolerance that free grace requires. “Cast out the slave woman and her son.” False teaching must have no place in the church of Jesus Christ. Do not make room for lies. Do not accommodate those who pedal a counterfeit gospel. You cannot include in the same church both grace and anti-grace, Christ and anti-Christ, the free Gospel and the false gospel.
The inheritance grace gives – joy at your adoption, at your inclusion in the household of God on the basis of God’s rich gift. The inheritance – the irritation, rather, that grace provokes – embrace free grace, you strip away all ground for boasting in yourself, but watch out, such grace is always an irritant to the heart of the self-righteous. And the intolerance that grace requires – we ought not to live with lies; we must be kind, yet we must be firm in standing for the truth. And so brothers, Paul concludes in verse 31, “We are not children of the slave woman but of the free.” Time to stop flirting, Galatians, with legalism. Oh sure, it will keep the world off your back, people understand self-salvation even if they don’t embrace your peculiar, religious brand of it, but they do not like the God-centeredness and the self-negating clarity of free grace that’s for sure. But in the end, you can’t have it both ways. Are you trying to have it both ways – to be in the world and of the world? Do you see how you are either Sarah’s son or you are Hagar’s?
Who is your mother? If you are a child of the free woman, a child of grace, then it’s time to embrace the Gospel of free grace and all its fullness and clarity that it deserves and to put away now the last vestiges of legalism that may remain in your heart. They will only ever rob you of joy, and that is Paul’s message to the Galatians and to us. May God give us grace truly to embrace it. Let us pray.
Our Father, this is a difficult passage and a hard message and our hearts are, well, they’re fickle. My heart. I want to assert my own righteousness and to boast in the work of my own hands and to claim some corner of my salvation for myself. I suspect that is the confession of so many of us here today. But now before the searchlight of Scripture we stand exposed, and so we ask You please for Your mercy. Forgive us for the idolatry of self-reliance. We humble ourselves now before You and we entrust ourselves, entrusting one another even to the Lord Jesus Christ in whom alone, in whose obedience and blood alone there is hope for time and eternity. Hear our cries and draw near and have mercy on us, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.