Sermons from the Epistle to the Galatians

TWO COVENANTS

GALATIANS 4:21-31

AUGUST 23, 1998

Bridges are useful to cross over impassable areas from one place to another. A raging torrent may be below, but the bridge enables the traveler to carry on his journey in safety. The Apostle Paul uses a spiritual bridge in this passage to help believers traverse the journey from justification to sanctification. Bridges are not made for living, but rather for crossing. The use of an analogical literary device by the Apostle was not to camp out but to clarify one truth and press on to another.

After dealing extensively with his argument for justification by grace alone through faith alone, the Apostle now illustrates it from a familiar Old Testament scene. Part of the reason for using this passage was its probable use by the Judaizers. He helps the Galatian believers understand the difference between trusting the arm of the flesh for salvation and resting in the promise of God through the work of Christ. This becomes the springboard for teaching them how they were to live as those born of the Spirit and not of the flesh (chap. 5-6).

Self-made, self-centered ways of seeking justification only lead to deeper slavery. It is only through faith in Christ that we are born of God into the liberty of true sonship. To help us see this, the Apostle uses a series of dual contrasting ideas or pictures. The Greek word for this (in v. 24) is allegoreo, which the New American Standard Bible transliterates as "allegory." We typically use the idea of allegory differently from the way Paul used it in our text. For example, John Bunyan's famous allegorical book, The Pilgrim's Progress, uses a series of fictitious characters and places to teach spiritual truths. Though Bunyan probably had in mind some specific people and places around Bedford, England where he lived, he was not dealing with a true, historical situation as was the Apostle. Bunyan used allegorical terms like 'slough of despond', 'hill of difficulty', 'Vanity Fair' to represent the various situations which we face in the pilgrimage of faith in Christ.

Paul's use is somewhat different. He uses actual historical material from the book of Genesis as illustrative of spiritual truths. Those historical issues actually happened and can be interpreted literally as we study the book of Genesis. But here the Apostles finds it to be a series of word pictures to help us grasp in realistic terms the truths he has already described. Martin Luther said of this, "For they are pictures which set forth things, as it were painted before the eyes of the simple, and therefore they move and persuade very much, especially the simple and ignorant" [Commentary on Galatians, 278]. John MacArthur points out that it is best to understand this as an "analogy" rather than what we think of as "allegorical" [MacArthur NT Commentary, 121-123].

Perhaps it will help us to simply glance at the contrasting pictures the Apostle lays forth. Some of these are spelled out, while others are not named but assumed in the word picture.

son of the bondwoman                       son of the free woman

born according to the flesh                 [born through] the promise

Covenant of Mount Sinai--[Law]          [Covenant of Calvary--Grace]

Hagar                                              Sarah

children who are slaves                       children who are free

Mount Sinai in Arabia/present               Jerusalem above

       Jerusalem

[Ishmael]                                          Isaac

born according to the flesh                  born according to the Spirit

With all of these pictures to help deliver the message, Paul explains that legalism or adherence to the law as a means to justification can never save. It is only the promise by faith that enables a sinner to enter into a right relationship to God and become free for eternity.

Do you know this liberty that belongs to one born of God? Or have you been trapped by the blindness of legalism, hoping that your adherence to a set of laws or regulations would justify you before God? Let us see what the Scripture says and hold our own religion up to the mirror of God's Word.

I. The reality of legalism as a faulty means to justification

After explaining his deep desire to have the assurance that Christ is formed in you, Paul asks a simple, yet probing question. "Tell me, you who want to be under the law, do you not listen to the law?" It was as if the Apostle laid the whole matter before these struggling Christians. They had been duped by the legalistic Judaizers who sought to bring them into a dependence upon circumcision and the works of the law for justification. They were facing a reversion to law-dependence and abandoning a dependence upon the grace of God by faith in Christ. So Paul asks them, 'Oh, you want to be under the law? Well have you even listened to what the law says? Have you just blindly gone along with all the Judaizers have told you without checking things out for yourself?'

By means of the story recorded in Genesis 17-21, Paul explains that this great Old Testament law-book was actually a book explaining true faith. It demonstrates vividly the failure of the flesh to accomplish anything that God demands. It shows that only by the grace of God can we receive what God has promised.

1. Origin in the flesh, not the Spirit

What is the nature of legalism? By legalism in reference to salvation we mean that a person is trusting in some kind of external code, written or imagined, by which in his own power, he seeks to gain merit or approval before God. The Pharisees and other religious leaders were bent on doing this. You recall how our Lord chastened them for their legalistic tithing of mint and herb but they neglected the weightier matters of the law, as in justice and mercy. The tithe was an external code which they could pat themselves on the back for accomplishing. They had eyes to only see the external but gave no thought to the internal and spiritual issues of the heart.

So legalism by nature fails to take a look at what is in the heart. It only looks upon outward performance. It gauges merit by some outward form. Here Paul calls it, "born according to the flesh." "But the son of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh," and by contrast he speaks of "the son by the free woman [born] through the promise." Later in this same epistle, Paul describes "the works of the flesh" which become evident in a life. The flesh stands in contrast to the Spirit. It is man in his human nature, his fallen, Adamic nature, incapable of doing what God demands. It is the blindness of fallen man thinking that he has something to offer God for merit.

The word picture given is that occasion in which Abraham and Sarah panicked in thinking that they would have no son to be his heir. He pleaded with God to give him an heir so that his servant Eliezar would not be the heir to all his household. God told Abraham that he would have a son. When he and Sarah continued to age, they decided that God was not going to come through, so they would help the situation out. This is the way the flesh works: it casts aside the promises of God and the power of God to accomplish His word, and acts upon the impulses of the fallen nature. So Sarah gave Abraham her slave, Hagar as another wife to bear children on Sarah's behalf. As soon as Hagar conceived, she despised Sarah. This son was born but his birth has caused problems ever since for the son of the promise. The tinderbox of the Arab-Israeli conflict in our own day had its beginning in the work of the flesh through the birth of Ishmael.

How does this relate to salvation? The analogy Paul uses points to the same practice occurring with multitudes who cast aside the Word of God and launch into their own methods of self-salvation. It is the grave danger of taking a portion of the Word out of context, e.g., the law or the beatitudes or the sermon on the mount, and ignoring the clear teaching on justification through faith in Christ alone. This teaching ignores the cross of Christ and trusts instead in the arm of the flesh. The end result of such works of the flesh is that the sinner receives what man can do: absolutely nothing but the damnation he deserves! Unspiritual man cannot produce spiritual reality in his own life.

The sinner's only hope is to be "born according to the Spirit," so that he might be "the son...through the promise." In other words, unless God does the work there will be no saving work in the sinner. This also reminds us that our salvation has its foundation in the living God who pursues us Himself, who gives to us eternal promises Himself, and who works to regenerate us that we might embrace Jesus Christ by faith.

2. Based on law, not on grace

Paul has already laid forth his argument about the inadequacy of the law to save a sinner. He stated, "...a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus" (2:16). He also asked the Galatians, "This is the only thing I want to find out from you: did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?" (3:2-3). Now he illustrates this by helping them to visualize Mount Sinai, the place where the Law was given, and the present Jerusalem, the place where the Judaizers maintained their legalistic stronghold. "Now this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children."

The Apostle wants them to take a good look. Think about Hagar. She was a slave and bore children of slavery. Her son was not the heir. The mother determined the status of the son. So with Hagar being a slave her son would of necessity maintain that same status. Any Jew would have been offended by the suggestion that he was a son of Hagar. Yet that is exactly what Paul stated. Yes, physically they descended from Sarah, but spiritually, apart from faith in Christ, they descended from Hagar. The true sons of Sarah, "like Isaac, are children of promise."

Hagar still has her children in the church today. Paul uses this analogy to help us see that within the confines of those who profess faith in Christ, there will always be sons of Hagar or those who are seeking to justify themselves through legalistic means. When a person believes that he is a Christian because he has joined a church or been baptized, then he is a son of Hagar and still in spiritual bondage. When he clings to his good deeds as merit before God, he is a son of Hagar.

I shudder to think of the multitudes of seemingly good people who are in our churches but are sons of Hagar, not sons of the promise in Christ! They attend church each week. They collect the offering; they sing in the choir; they teach Sunday School; they serve as deacons and officers; they even preach from the pulpit, but their reliance is upon their own works of the law and not Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I know many of these people and you do too. We see them throughout the community. We chat with them about church. They may be good friends who treat us well. But if they are trusting in their own works to commend themselves before God they are sons of Hagar, not sons of the promise.

My friend, let us not skip over this truth as if it does not apply to us. Weigh your own relationship to Christ in the balance of Scripture. Hold yourself up to the light of the Word to see if you are resting in Jesus Christ and Him crucified and none of your own works. As the Holy Spirit affirms that you are a son of the promise, then pray, plead for those souls who are still blinded by their own perceived goodness who live as sons of Hagar without Christ.

3. Can only enslave, never liberate

Here is the test for the sons of Hagar: "for these women are two covenants, one proceeding from Mount Sinai bearing children who are to be slaves; she is Hagar. Now this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free; she is our mother." Do you see the clear picture? Hagar's children are enslaved. Sarah's children, or those born from above, are free. What does Paul mean by this?

First it implies that the nature of Hagar, "the bondwoman," remains in her children. Hagar was an Egyptian slave who served as Sarah's maid. Even when married to Abraham, she did not have the same status as Sarah, Abraham's wife. She thought as a slave and acted like a slave, because that was her status in life. She did not know how to act like a free woman. It would have been contrary to her nature. Even in her marriage, she still remained under Sarah. She was true to her nature and so are each of her children spiritually speaking. Even though a person professes Christ, if his nature is that of a slave, then he is exposing his heart. Please understand me. I know that many true Christians go through legalistic phases in their lives until they understand the liberty that is theirs in Christ. But the slavish nature spoken of here neglects Christ and Him crucified; it has no interest in the bloody sacrifice of Jesus Christ; it can actually view the work of the Christ as being an immature facet of Christianity, a phase which you 'get over' and go on to better things. This is a legalism in reference to justification, not sanctification.

A second implication is that the children of the promise know a liberty in obeying the Lord. Paul states that something has happened to the natures of those who are children of the promise, they are born "of the free woman." This is no different that his statement earlier about laboring "until Christ is formed in you." There is something distinctly different in the believer. Yes, he still has to deal with indwelling sin. Yes, he still faces temptation and sometimes he falls miserably. But the bent of his nature has changed. There is a freedom in his will to obey rather than to continue on in disobedience. John MacArthur expresses this clearly.

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 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) [p. 126].

4. Naturally persecutes those born of the Spirit

Those who have promoted the greatest persecutions upon God's people are not the atheists but the religious legalists, the sons of Hagar who have lived throughout the centuries. "But as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now also." Paul is referring to the historical incident of the day Abraham had a great celebration for his son of promise, Isaac, when he was weaned. Isaac was about three and a half years old while Ishmael was 17 years old. Sarah looked out of her tent and saw Ishmael maliciously harassing Isaac. So she took immediate action to have Hagar and Ishmael cast out. The point Paul makes is that this same spirit of slavery continues to persecute those who are at liberty in the Lord. It is those who think that they have a claim to God because of their legalism that do the greatest injustices to those born of the Spirit.

We need only do a little reading in church history to see this. Look at the sons of Hagar which constituted the Roman Catholic church of the 16th and 17th centuries. The persecutions they set forth upon believers is mind-boggling! For owning a Bible, they would have someone put to death. For preaching the gospel of grace, they would have a man brutally tortured and killed. For refusing to bow to the pope's authority, they would hunt down a Christian to force him into subjection. It was this spirit of the sons of Hagar that caused Martin Luther to hide in a castle in the dress of a medieval knight; William Tyndale to flee his homeland and live in secrecy while he translated the Scriptures into English; evangelical French women to hide tiny portions of Scripture in their hair lest they be found and put to death; evangelical Christians to find refuge in the mountains so that they could worship without fear of reprisal.

The sons of Hagar, religious legalists who are lost in their sin, continue to persecute the sons of Sarah and the Jerusalem above. They do it by opposing the preaching of the Word of God. I cannot tell you how many times I have talked with men who have been run out of their churches, not because of sin in their lives nor laziness, but simply because they expounded the Word of God faithfully to their people! The sons of Hagar seek to manipulate officers and leaders in churches to maintain a ministry devoid of true spirituality. They stand in opposition to holy living, prayer, and evangelism. They will give their nickels and dimes but they will not lay down their lives for the sake of the gospel and the encouragement of the body of Christ.

"The letter kills; but the Spirit gives life" (II Cor. 3:6). With all the energy and power a person can muster, a legalistic approach to justification still kills for eternity. Only the Holy Spirit can breathe life into these spiritually dead hearts and minds, so that we are set at liberty through faith in Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Are you trusting the arm of the flesh to save you? My friend, see that it will fail you. It is only by coming to the end of our self-confidence before God and casting ourselves upon the grace of God in Christ by faith that we are made children of God.

II. The response to legalism by those born of the Spirit

While this passage offers a warning and exhortation to those who yet cling to legalism as their hope before God, it also offers some vital lessons to those who are at liberty in Christ. There are at least three matters that deserve our attention and application to our lives as we see in this text.

1. Understand the distinctions between slavery and freedom

Christians are not different from non-Christians in terms of personhood, but we are different in terms of nature and practice. Since we do not live in a culture where slavery and freedom exists as it did in Paul's day, we may have some difficulty seeing this distinction. But the original audience had no such problem. They understood what it meant to be a slave, since probably one third of the vast Roman empire were slaves. They were considered to be the lowest stratum of society, mere property without personhood. They had no rights other than those given by their masters. They were under constrained obedience to their masters.

Such a picture helps us to see how Paul is expressing the distinctions between believers and those who are religious, yet unbelieving. This legalistic system represented by Hagar, Mount Sinai, and the present Jerusalem is "bearing children who are to be slaves." They are religious, they lay claim to professions of Christianity, but they are still slaves. What are they slaves to? They are slaves to their own fallen, sinful natures. They would rather follow their passions than Jesus Christ. They may have a few spurts of what appears to be true righteousness, but the constraint of their sinful master brings them back in line to wicked ways. They cannot follow Jesus Christ with any kind of consistency because they do not have the nature to follow Him. They have never been "born according to the Spirit" as "children of promise."

When we recognize this as believers, then we will find plenty more opportunities for presenting the gospel! We are not to presume that everyone who has made a profession of faith in Christ is truly a believer. Please do not misunderstand. We are not to go on some sort of hunt nor to take on a judgmental air about us. But we are to recognize that if a person does not demonstrate the nature of one who is "born according to the Spirit," church member or not, we are to seek to make the gospel clear to them.

2. Recognize the nature of 'religious' persecution

Persecution has always been the lot for Christians. It has been true in every society and in every historical era. At times, the truths of Christianity have so contradicted a particular culture that the whole society would retaliate against those who were believers, such as some of the communist regimes. We actually expect this kind of persecution. But the kind Paul speak of in verse 29 comes from the ranks of the religious, particularly, those who have made some profession of Christ but are still sons of Hagar.

Paul's analogy is quite simple. As Ishmael persecuted Isaac, the son of promise, "so it is now also." Those who are born according to the flesh will persecute those who are born according to the Spirit. This is where we have more difficulty. We expect that those who claim some form of Christianity will at least be gracious to those who have faith in Christ. But that is not the case, Paul says. Those who are legalists, who have not known the liberating power of the gospel of Christ, are so filled with hatred and animosity against true believers, that they will persecute them. It may come in various ways. It may be physical acts, which has happened many times historically. It may be siding against the true believers to squeeze them out of a church or to keep them from having a voice in a congregation. It may be opposition to the teaching of the Word. It may be the emotional opposition of some type of estrangement or perhaps circulating rumors about a true believer's character.

What Paul is saying is do not be surprised about this happening. Consider the source. It comes out of a nature that has never been changed by the power of God through faith in Christ alone. So rather than becoming bitter or angry, plead and labor for the salvation of those who are blinded by their own sinful hearts.

3. Reject and stand against the teaching of legalists

Are we to put up with the false teaching of legalists who try to promote some way to God other than the solitary way of Jesus Christ and Him crucified? Absolutely not! In terse words, Paul quotes the response of Sarah to Ishmael's harassment of Isaac, applying it to the situation in Galatia with the Judaizers. "But what does the Scripture say? CAST OUT THE BONDWOMAN AND HER SON, FOR THE SON OF THE BONDWOMAN SHALL NOT BE AN HEIR WITH THE SON OF THE FREE WOMAN. So then, brethren, we are not children of a bondwoman, but of the free woman." Was the message clear to the Galatians? I believe Paul laid it out in simple terms that they were not to tolerate the teaching of the Judaizers; they were to put them out of the church. They were to give no room for such false teaching.

Are we to be any less vigilant in our day? Of course not. We are to be discerning when people are teaching or speaking concerning the gospel. Obviously, there will be times that some may speak a word in error out of ignorance. In gentleness, we are to correct this. But when we see that someone is deliberately subverting a people through a false gospel, we are not to hold our tongues. We are to take action for the sake of the eternal souls of those hearing false teaching.

Conclusion

Are you a son of Hagar or a son of Sarah? Are you born according to the flesh or born according to the Spirit? The evidence will be seen in your nature. You either have the nature of a slave--a slave of sin, or the nature of a son--a son of promise through faith in Christ. If you are clinging to some self-generated claim to merit, cast it aside in repentance and flee to Jesus Christ, the only Redeemer and Savior of sinners.

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