Gal 4:21–25 — Abraham Had Two Sons

Review

The Apostle of Gospel Liberty

To review, Paul’s letter to the Galatians can broadly be divided into three main sections. In chapters one and two, we look at the apostle of gospel, Liberty, where Paul talks about himself. As an apostle and gives his credentials. The Galatians are being tempted by this false doctrine that has come into their midst from the people from Jerusalem who are Jewish Christians who are trying to get these Gentile Christians to keep the law. And Paul is saying, look, their gospel is incorrect. I am the one that has the correct gospel. And so he spends some time in Galatians one and two showing how it is that they can know that he is the true apostle that has the true gospel.

And he clearly says there that I didn’t get this gospel from my own intellectual machinations. I didn’t come up with this on my own. This is not a man-made gospel. I received this gospel that we are saved by faith in Christ alone and not by works. I received this gospel directly from Christ. The risen Christ appeared to me on the road to Damascus and conveyed this gospel to me and I’m simply the messenger. I’m simply the apostle. Apostle means someone who is sent as a messenger to represent someone else. I am simply a representative of Christ and teaching you the true gospel of Christ.

The Doctrine of Gospel Liberty

Then in Galatians 3 and 4, which is where we are now, in the second major section, the two middle chapters of Galatians, we have the doctrine of gospel liberty. In this section, the apostle Paul is saying, I’ve proven that I’m a true apostle and that the gospel I preach is the gospel of Christ himself, but what is this gospel and how does it manifest itself? Provide the answer to what the false teachers are saying. And so in this section in Galatians 3 and 4, Paul examines the scriptures in order to explain why God gave the law in the first place, that it was not given in order to be a means of salvation.

Rather, the gospel was prior to the law. Before the law even came at Mount Sinai, God gave the promise of the gospel to Abraham. Long before the law came. 430 years before the law came through Moses at Mount Sinai. And so the gospel is prior to the law.

That means then that the law was given as subordinate to the gospel to prepare for the gospel. The law was given in order to show us our sin and to show us our need of Christ. As Paul puts it there in Galatians 3, 24, he says, so then the law was our guardian or custodian until Christ came in order that we might be justified by faith. The purpose of the law in the unfolding narrative of scripture and the unfolding story of God’s dealing with his people is that it was a temporary thing given in order to prepare the way for Christ.

And now that Christ has come, who was already promised long before to Abraham, when God promised to Abraham that he would have an offspring, Christ is the offspring. Now that Christ has come, who was promised to Abraham, the law has been fulfilled and we are no longer under the custodianship of the law.

This is the doctrine of gospel liberty. You Christians, you Galatian Christians who were former Gentiles and have now come to faith in Jesus, don’t listen to what the false teachers are saying. They’re saying that you need to keep the law in order to be saved and forgiven and right with God. They are misunderstanding the purpose of the law in the history of redemption.

The Life of Gospel Liberty

In the section we’ve just read in Galatians 4, 21-31, we come now to the concluding section of this second major section on the doctrine of gospel liberty. You might think, it seems like Paul has already begun to apply the doctrine because in the previous paragraph in Galatians 4, 8 through 20, which we looked at last week, he’s getting very personal with them and saying, brothers, I entreat you, don’t listen to the false teachers.

Become as I am, meaning someone who is not obligated to keep the law. In terms of all of the ceremonies, and the clean and unclean distinction, and the dietary restrictions, and circumcision, and all those things. Become as I am, even though I was raised as a Jew. Become like me, who has come to faith in Christ, and no longer feels obligated to be an observant, Torah observant Jewish life, lifestyle. Become as I am, for I have become as you are.

“You did me no wrong,” Paul says in Galatians 4:12. When he first preached the gospel to them, he suffered from a bodily ailment, yet they did not despise him and received the gospel with joy. What happened to that joy, blessedness, and trust in the gospel? Paul desires to labor again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in them.

Because of this personal plea and exhortation, it may seem that Paul has finished the doctrinal section and begun to move into application and the life of gospel liberty. This paragraph shows, however, that he has not finished interpreting the Old Testament. He continues examining Abraham and the coming of the law in order to teach the Galatians how to read Scripture and relate Abraham and Moses to Christ. In this concluding paragraph of the second section, Paul returns to Abraham and interprets Scripture for his audience.

The audience that Paul is writing to, they were pagans before. They were worshiping the pagan Greek gods. Go back to the book of Acts, in Acts 13 to 14, when it describes Paul’s first missionary journey to these cities in the center of Asia Minor, which at that time was the Roman province of Galatia. He went and preached the gospel there, and it mentions, for example, in Acts 14, one of the cities he went to, where the people were so impressed with Paul’s preaching, they thought that he was a god. And they thought Barnabas, they thought Paul was Zeus and that Barnabas was Hermes.

And they started to pull out, hey, let’s get a sacrifice. Let’s offer a sacrifice to these men because we think that they’re gods coming down from heaven in human flesh. And Paul has to say, no. I’m just a man like you. I’m calling you to worship the true God, not to worship idols. And so these are the kind of people that Paul is writing to here.

Now, of course, they have come to know the Lord, they have come to faith in Christ, they’ve become Christians, but Paul is writing this letter to them in order to instruct them and to teach them how to read the Bible, how to understand the Old Testament.

And I just think it’s somewhat amazing that the Apostle Paul would get into all of these details and almost presuppose some degree of knowledge of these stories. All of these details about Hagar and Sarah and the incidents that happened in the life of Abraham when Sarah came to Abraham and said, cast out the slave woman and her son, all of these details. These raw pagans have already begun to be instructed in the truths of God’s word. They have heard the stories of scripture. It’s possible that maybe some of them already had somewhat of preparation for this.

We know that many Gentiles in the first century were attracted to Judaism. They were called God-fearers and sometimes they would go to synagogue without becoming Jews, without being circumcised and becoming converts to Judaism. They would still go to the synagogues and hear the stories of the Old Testament and here the law. They were attracted to Judaism mainly because it seemed to provide an alternative to the licentious behavior of paganism. Provided some structure and moral order for society. The Ten Commandments are a helpful guide for living a good moral life.

So many of the Gentiles, before they became Christians, were already somewhat familiar with the scripture from their previous attendance in the Jewish synagogues. And we know that there were Jewish synagogues all throughout the Roman Empire, not just in the land of Palestine, but even in Asia Minor, there were Jewish communities. That the Gentiles were interacting with and having some understanding of the Bible because of that. So it’s possible that maybe that’s why, maybe that’s a possible explanation that some of these Gentiles had some degree of familiarity from their, before they became Christians, maybe they had gone to a synagogue and heard some of these things. But more than likely, I think that they learned it from church.

I think that when they came to church, The Bible that they used at that time, of course, was the Old Testament. The New Testament was not yet completed. They didn’t have the written New Testament. They didn’t have a Bible like we have today with the Old and the New Testament together in one book. But they did have the ability to hear the pastor read passages from the Old Testament, from the Pentateuch or the Torah, and to hear about God and to hear about Abraham and all the things that God did before the coming of Christ.

So either way, whether some of the audience already had some familiarity with Judaism, or whether they are simply hearing about these stories from their church attendance, either way, I think it’s amazing that the Apostle Paul takes the time to patiently go over these stories that seem so ancient and irrelevant to us, at first. But he goes over them, patiently explaining them and showing the spiritual significance of these stories from the book of Genesis, from the Torah.

Exposition

Galatians 4:21–23: Abraham’s Two Sons

He says in verse 21, tell me, you who desire to be under the law, because they’re being tempted to commit themselves to total Torah observance because of the false teachers who are putting pressure on them, Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, you who are contemplating doing this thing of becoming Torah observant, at least living a Jewish lifestyle, do you not listen to the law? And here he has somewhat a pun a pun. He’s playing on the word law. Because the word the law can mean more than one thing.

Sometimes the law refers to the Torah as a whole, which is what we call the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible written by Moses. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. And so that whole portion of scripture, the first five books of the Bible, is sometimes referred to as the law. And that would include all of the stories of Abraham in the book of Genesis and so on.

But there’s another meaning to the word law, which is the law that was given at Mount Sinai through Moses. Specifically all of the regulations and commandments. First of all the Ten Commandments, but then also all of the other commandments that went along with that. The ceremonial laws and the judicial laws. And the law then could refer to the legal portions of the Pentateuch. So the portions in the book of Exodus, beginning in chapter 19 and following, 19 through 24 or so, where the covenant is made at Mount Sinai. And then again in the book of Leviticus, there are more laws given about sacrifice and the dietary restrictions. About clean and unclean, about how you can’t touch a dead body and if you do you have to be purified before you can come back into the people of God.

All of that section, that is a subset of the Pentateuch. It’s not the whole Pentateuch, it’s the law portion of the Pentateuch, of the Torah. So Paul here is playing on this double meaning of the word law. He says, tell me, you who desire to be under the law, in the sense of the legal requirements, do you not listen to the law in the broader sense of the entire Torah, the entire narrative of the first five books of the Bible, including the book of Genesis, which is like the prologue to the giving of the law, describing things that took place hundreds of years before Moses, Do you not listen to what the law in that broader sense has to say?

For it is written that Abraham had two sons. Paul reminds us of something we may have forgotten because, back in chapter 3, he focused upon the promised son. Although he did not mention Isaac by name, he spoke of the offspring. The promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring, beginning with Isaac and the godly line that continued through Jacob and the twelve tribes of Israel. Isaac ultimately points to Christ, the greater offspring of Abraham. Galatians 3 focused on Isaac rather than Ishmael because the promised line leads to the Messiah.

But now, in this passage here, the Apostle Paul reminds us, go back in your mind to all those stories in Genesis 12, and Genesis 16, and 18, and 19, and so on, and remember, Abraham had two sons, didn’t he? He first had a son by Hagar, and then he had Isaac by Sarah later on. I believe it was about 14 years between the two. Abraham had two sons, Ishmael and Isaac.

And furthermore, Paul here mentions that these two sons were born in different ways. Ishmael was born according to the flesh. Verse 23, the son of the slave, meaning Hagar, was born according to the flesh. While the son of the free woman, Sarah, was born according to the promise.

Now whenever you hear the word the promise in Galatians, what are you supposed to think of? Yes, you have to think of the promises that God made to Abraham, but more specifically, in Paul’s understanding, the promises made to Abraham are the gospel. So the promise and the gospel are interchangeable ideas.

Go back to Galatians chapter three, where he says, remember in Galatians 3.8, the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, in you shall all the nations be blessed. So, according to the Apostle Paul, whenever you hear the word, the gospel, you’re to think not only of the promise, or the word, the promise, you’re not to think only of God’s promises to Abraham, that he’s going to have an offspring, in the individual sense, but also in the collective sense of the nation of Israel. But also, you’re to think of this promise as the preaching of the gospel beforehand to Abraham. So therefore, if we’re going back now to Galatians 4 verse 23, and looking at the two modes of the birth of these two sons, if we have this antithesis between Isaac being born according to the promise, i.e. what, the gospel, then what does that mean about the other son, Ishmael?

He’s born according to the flesh, But if that’s the antithesis of the promise, then what are you to think about that? What’s Paul hinting at there when he says the flesh? He’s not just saying the flesh in the literal sense of antithesis. That Abraham literally had intimacy with Hagar and a child was born. He’s thinking more spiritually here. If the contrast is between the flesh and the promise, and the promise is the gospel, then the flesh implicitly is that which is not the gospel.

It is that which is man’s sinful attempts to keep the law, in order to be saved, in order to be right with God, rather than trusting by faith in the promises of the gospel. So the two sons, Ishmael and Isaac, are very important for Paul because they have to do with these two different modes of birth, the way that they were born. One was born according to the flesh, that is the law, and the other was born according to the promise, that is the gospel.

Galatians 4:24–27: The Spiritual Meaning of Abraham’s Two Sons

And then he adds, not only that, but they each had two different mothers. Now this part of the story, this part of the passage about the mothers, and how he talks about the Jerusalem that now is, meaning literal Jerusalem, with its focus on Torah observance, and then the heavenly Jerusalem, and he says the heavenly Jerusalem is our mother, That whole part about the mother motif, the mother metaphor of our passage is going to have to wait until next week, because it’s somewhat complicated. And he quotes there from Isaiah 54, rejoice, O barren one who does not bear. But we’ll just briefly mention it here, which is this. Why does he bring out the nature of the two mothers?

Because one mother, Hagar, was a slave, and the other mother, Sarah, was free. She was not a slave. And the point is, is that if your mother is a slave, then you’re a slave. And if you’re a slave, you cannot inherit. But if your mother is free, meaning not a slave, then you are free and now you can inherit.

So we have two sons, Ishmael and Isaac. We have two different ways in which they’re born, one according to the flesh and one according to the promise. And then we have two different mothers, one who is a slave and the one who is free. In this passage here, the Apostle Paul, we can divide this whole paragraph into three sub-paragraphs. In verses 22 to 23, Paul simply summarizes the story of Abraham’s two sons and the two mothers involved.

Paul is effectively asking them to remember a familiar story. Whether they learned it in the synagogue or through instruction in the church, they had heard it before. He therefore summarizes the narrative recorded in Genesis.

You can read about it in Genesis 16 and following. So verses 22 to 23 is summarizing the story of Abraham’s two sons and the two mothers. Then in verses 24 through 27, Paul begins to interpret the spiritual meaning of the story of Abraham’s two sons and the two mothers. In verses 24 through 27, Paul now interprets it.

He’s giving us the spiritual significance of it. Don’t just look at the surface of the actual history of what happened. That there was literally this son, Ishmael, who was born from Hagar, and then there was literally this son, Isaac, who was born from Sarah 14 years later. Don’t just look at the surface of the actual historical events that happened, but rather look at the spiritual meaning of these things. So that’s verses 24 through 27. Then in verses 28 to 31, at the end of this paragraph, he applies that, he applies the spiritual significance of this story to the immediate situation at hand, which is what?

Galatians 4:28–31: Paul Applies the Story to the Galatian Crisis

That the Galatians, these new baby Christians who are being tempted to become Torah observant Jews or to live a Jewish lifestyle, He’s saying don’t follow this teaching. Don’t do that because if you do that you’re going to fall away from Christ. And so what you need to do then is you need to cast out the slave woman and her son. Meaning get rid of these false teachers. Don’t let them sit there in church and start to argue with you and persuade you of their views. Cast them out. Because you brothers are children of The free woman, you’re not slaves, you’re not children of the slave woman.

So three main sections, first summarizing the story in verses 22 and 23, then interpreting the story in 24 through 27, and then applying that interpretation to the immediate situation at hand. And there are two elements of the story that Paul brings out the spiritual meaning of. The first element is the two different ways in which these sons were born, one according to the flesh, the other according to the promise, and the other point is the two mothers, one who is a slave and one who is free. Today we’re going to look at that first point, the two modes of birth, and then next week we’ll look at the two mothers.

Doctrine

Paul’s Typological, Christ-Centered Hermeneutic

It’s very interesting how the Apostle Paul interprets these stories, these narratives in the Old Testament. He views them as historical events that really happened, but he views them as having spiritual significance. Paul’s hermeneutic, that is, a hermeneutic is the way that you interpret. His hermeneutic, his way of reading and interpreting the narratives in the book of Genesis, and not just Genesis, but throughout the Old Testament, is typological, meaning he sees these things as types pointing ahead to Christ. He sees these events that happen in the life of Abraham and Sarah as real historical events, but they are laden with significance. They’re loaded with spiritual meaning because they’re pointing to Christ. Obviously, the very idea of Isaac being the offspring who is promised and who is born in a supernatural way points ahead to the virgin birth of Christ, does it not?

Sarah was barren. She had no ability to have children. That’s the very reason why she offered Hagar, her servant, to Abraham and said, why don’t you try to have a child through her? Because Sarah couldn’t have a child. She was barren. God had closed her womb.

And so, The very idea that Isaac is born in this supernatural way is a pointer to the virgin birth of Christ. Paul even hints at that back in Galatians chapter four, verse four. When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of woman, born under the law to redeem those who were under the law. Isaac is a type of Christ, it’s obvious.

you look at the whole story of how God asked Abraham to offer up his only son, Isaac. And then the angel said, I believe that you are a faithful, obedient servant of mine. And he stayed his hand from doing it, but then the Lord provided a sacrifice. A ram caught in the thicket and Abraham said, the Lord has provided the atoning sacrifice that Isaac was about to have been himself. Obviously pointing us to the sacrifice of Christ.

Typology, Not Fanciful Allegory

These are not fanciful ways of interpreting the Old Testament. This is called typology. It’s not really the same thing as allegory. Now our text there uses that word, at least in the English. It says, now this may be interpreted allegorically But the word allegory, for us today, has many misleading connotations to it. We think of the fanciful interpretations in the Middle Ages, or of someone like Origen in the third century, who interpreted many of the stories of the Old and the New Testament in a very fanciful way, using platonic philosophy and reading that into the text. I don’t know, just to give an example, let’s say the people of Israel passing through the waters of the Red Sea and then coming out the other side is a picture of the water is the flesh, our fallen flesh.

On that interpretation, the soul must escape the flesh and emerge on the other side. Origen’s philosophy was somewhat Platonic and dualistic, opposing body and flesh to spirit. The goal was therefore to escape bodily defilement in the present age and cultivate spiritual virtues. The narrative became a picture of the soul escaping the flesh and entering a beautiful life with God characterized by morality and goodness.

That’s not how Paul was reading the text. Paul is not doing that. Paul’s not doing what Origen did. He’s not just reading in his Platonic philosophy into the text and finding all kinds of weird allegories. It’s not a fanciful, untethered interpretation of the Old Testament like Origen did in the third century.

And so therefore, I personally think that the translation in our text, even though it is accurate according to the Greek, because the Greek word that is used there is actually the word allegory, but it’s being used in a different meaning than it has today.

I think nowadays we think of it in that negative sense, like origin. So perhaps a better translation would be, this may be interpreted figuratively. This may be interpreted spiritually. These women represent two covenants. So Paul is, he’s not just coming up with some strange interpretation that has nothing to do with the text and then filtering his own ideas into the text. He is actually looking at the narrative of the Abraham story and his two sons and seeing it in light of Christ. It more has to do with typology than with allegory. However, even the word typology, even though that’s his method, even the word typology It misses a key point, which is that Paul isn’t simply looking at the text in order to give us pictures of Christ to come. That is legitimate to do. Isaac is a type, he’s a shadow, he’s a prefiguration of Christ. He’s also drawing out the spiritual meaning of these events for Abraham’s own walk with God, for Abraham’s own life of faith.

And so, even though I’m struggling here to try to come up with a good translation. I don’t want to say allegory. These things may be interpreted allegorically. I think that’s somewhat misleading because of the negative connotations. And then the natural thing is to say, maybe it should be translated, these things are to be interpreted typologically, where the type points ahead to the anti-type, where Isaac points ahead to Christ. But even that, I’m saying, I think is somewhat off, even though it’s correct. It’s correct theologically to say that Paul was interpreting it typologically. What you see here in this particular passage is that Paul is interpreting it typologically, he’s not doing fanciful allegory, but he’s also drawing out the meaning of these events in the life of Abraham and Sarah, who were real historical people just like you and me, who had real problems and difficulties and struggles and needed to grow in their relationship with God, and he’s drawing out the spiritual meaning of these events in a way that shows us something that we can identify with.

Application

The Law-Gospel Contrast in Abraham’s Life

He’s saying, put yourself in Abraham’s shoes. Look at Abraham and Sarah, how they had received God’s promise, The promise was clear from the very beginning. Go back to Genesis chapter 12, when God called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldeans. He said, I’m going to make you into a great nation. I’m going to give this land to your offspring in the collective sense, referring to the people of Israel to come.

But there was a problem. The problem was that Sarah could not have children and try as they might they weren’t able to have a child. And this went on for years and years and years. So there’s this tension, this paradox between, on the one hand, all these glorious promises that God had made to Abraham, and remember those promises really are the gospel being preached to him ahead of time. These glorious promises being preached to Abraham, and Abraham is trying to believe, and at times he does believe, but On the other hand, there’s this problem, which is that Sarah cannot have a child. And they’re both starting to get old. They’re getting older and older. And it seems impossible. Where is this child going to come from?

God, you said you’re going to make me into a great nation, you’re going to give me this offspring, you said, but it’s not happening. And so Abraham and Sarah are waiting and waiting. And in the midst of their waiting, in the midst of this paradox, this tension between the great promises that God had made, but the seeming inability of the promises to be fulfilled, Abraham and Sarah try to fall back upon their own resources in order to try to make the promise happen in their own strength. And Sarah says, I have an idea. I have a servant girl here. Maybe you can go into her and have a child through her. And he does, this is recorded in Genesis chapter 16, the very first paragraph of Genesis 16.

And the result of that union is that Ishmael is born. Ishmael is born, but he is born according to the flesh. He’s not born according to the promise. He is not the one that God had promised. The story of Genesis focuses on the failed attempt of Abraham and Sarah to get the promised son through their own fleshly efforts.

For Paul, this account is filled with spiritual significance applicable both to us and to the Galatians. The Judaizers were enticing them with the claim that faith in Jesus as the Messiah was insufficient, and that they needed circumcision and Torah observance to be recognized as members of God’s people.

The promises of God don’t seem to be coming about. And so maybe I need to take things into my own hands and figure out a way to make it happen. Just like Abraham and Sarah did. Maybe the Galatians are also being tempted to rest upon their own fleshly attempts to keep God’s law in order to have assurance that they are accepted before God and that they are indeed true members of God’s people. And so the Apostle Paul looks at this story of Hagar and Sarah, of the two sons, one born according to the flesh, the other born according to the promise.

And he uses this as a spiritual application for the people of God in their present life. It is typological interpretation. It’s not allegorical, but it is more than typological. It’s more than just simply saying, Isaac is a picture of Christ. It is spiritual because it has to do with the personal life of faith of the people of God.

And Paul is applying it then to us, to help us to live in the same way, to live by faith in God’s promises, in spite of the seeming inability to fulfill the promises. And Paul does this throughout his writings. Remember he does something similar in 1 Corinthians 10. Remember in 1 Corinthians 10, Paul is warning the Corinthian Christians, these are again another group of largely ex-pagans who have now come to believe in the Lord, but they live in this pagan city of Corinth that is thoroughly embedded in pagan idolatry and pagan worship and offering sacrifices to idols.

And it’s very difficult for a godly Christian to abstain from pagan idolatry and sacrifice to idols. They’re always being tempted by their neighbors, by going to the meat market. They’re just surrounded by idolatry around them. And the Apostle Paul is warning them and saying, be careful, flee from idolatry.

And so he says, look at the people of Israel. And in 1 Corinthians 10, he does a similar thing as he’s doing here in Galatians 4. He goes back to a story of the people of Israel in the wilderness. And the story when they were tempted to worship the pagan idols and God judged them and punished them because of that. And he says in 1 Corinthians 10, these things took place in the life of Israel as examples for us, to warn us that we should be careful and not fall into idolatry. The Apostle Paul then uses the Old Testament, not only in the broad structures of redemptive history, to show us how Christ was prefigured in all the types and shadows, but he also uses the Old Testament stories and the Old Testament narratives and the events of what happened to God’s people then, in order to be an example for us as believers in God, as those who are called to trust in God’s promises, in spite of all of the temptations not to do so.

That’s why Paul says in 2 Timothy 3.15, the sacred writings, and for him the sacred writings would have been the Old Testament, the scriptures, the law, the prophets, the sacred writings are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. All the scripture, even the stories with Abraham, which happened thousands of years ago.

This may seem culturally distant from us, but Abraham’s experience resembles our own. He received great and glorious promises, yet he also faced many struggles. During a famine, he went down to Egypt and feared that the king would take his beautiful wife. He therefore misrepresented her identity, using a partial truth to protect himself. Abraham was tempted to sin because life remained difficult while he waited for God’s promises to be fulfilled. Such waiting involves struggles, temptations, trials, and obstacles.

And we’re always tempted to stop trusting in God to do it, to trust in God’s promise. And we’re tempted to what? To try to take matters into our own hands. To see if maybe we can make it work. If I just really force my way through it, I can overcome this obstacle. I can fix this problem.

And so the Apostle Paul then is looking at Abraham’s own experience and life and walk with God, a life that is characterized by faith in the promises of God, but also by struggles to believe, by obstacles to that faith. And Abraham had to learn firsthand that his own fleshly efforts such as trying to keep the law, do not work. And that he had to trust in God in order to bring about the fulfillment.

Until Christ Is Formed in You

This is part of Paul’s pastoral plea, going back to the previous section there that we looked at last week. He says, my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you. I don’t just want you to understand the gospel as an academic doctrine. I want that gospel to be so formed into your heart and your soul that Christ is formed within you. Just like Abraham, he knew the promises of God intellectually, but he had to experience these trials and tribulations and difficulties in order to grow in his greater reliance upon God and not upon the flesh.

The Continuing Temptation to Rely on the Flesh

Even after Ishmael was born through Hagar, Abraham and Sarah realized that he was not the promised fulfillment described in Genesis 16. In Genesis 18, the angel of the Lord comes with two other men to Abraham’s tent, while Sarah listens to their conversation from the other side of the tent.

And the angel says, you are going to have a son, this time next year. Ishmael’s already been born. And the angel of the Lord says, you’re going to have a child this time next year. And Sarah laughs. I’m too old to have a child. So even after Isaac, So first Ishmael comes, then Isaac is born, and then even after Isaac is born, the true son, the child according to promise, there’s still struggles.

Remember how the story is mentioned in Genesis chapter 21, that there was an incident where Ishmael is now older, probably a teenager, and maybe even a young man, and Isaac has just been weaned, and they had a celebration for him, a feast for that. And something happened in that feast where Ishmael was mocking, making fun of Isaac, his younger son. That’s what Paul’s referring to there in our text, in verse 29. 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. The word persecuted there is linking back to that story in Genesis 21, when Ishmael did something, we’re not exactly sure, but made fun of, put down, mocked his other son, his brother Isaac. Maybe he thought, I’m the firstborn, so I’m going to get all the inheritance, even though we know that Isaac is the one who’s going to truly inherit.

We do not know exactly what happened, but the incident angered Sarah. She told Abraham, “Cast out the slave woman and her son.” Hagar and Ishmael could not remain in the household or inherit with Isaac. Genesis 21:10–11 records Sarah’s demand that Abraham expel Hagar and disinherit Ishmael.

It says that the thing displeased Abraham. His natural human affection for his firstborn son, Ishmael, made it really hard for him. He knew intellectually that Isaac was the one. That Isaac was the one who was going to receive the promises and that he was the one who was going to inherit. But yet his natural human affection for his firstborn son got the better of him.

So even this late in the story, now we’re in Genesis 21. Abraham is still struggling. He still has new temptations. He still has new twists and turns in his walk with God where he needs to learn to rely upon the promises of God. And God even came to Abraham and said to him, do what Sarah said, she’s right. Because it is through Isaac that your offspring will be named. Isaac is the promised seed, the promised offspring. He is the one who will inherit. And they should have known this because the child of a slave cannot inherit. The child of a slave is a slave and cannot inherit. Only the child of the freeborn woman, Sarah, is able to inherit.

Even after Isaac was born, Abraham’s natural affection for Ishmael was a temptation. His old fleshly ways continued to be a struggle. Even after coming to understand the freedom of the gospel, the Galatian Christians also are struggling and are asking how they can, in their own strength, attempt to be right with God. And Paul says, are you so foolish, having begun by the spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Doesn’t make any sense. Wake up, snap out of it. Don’t you understand? It’s about the gospel.

And just like Abraham and his walk with God, so also we have a walk with God. And we need to keep being reminded of the promises of the gospel. We need to continue to grow in our understanding and grasp of the truths of the gospel. Keep hearing the gospel promises over and over again. Keep learning to walk by faith and to trust in God and not in our own flesh.

Each new trial that comes into your life is an opportunity to grow in faith and dependence upon the Lord and to seek his grace to help us in our time of need.