Daily Thought

The passage starts with Paul expressing the deepest possible pastoral concern for the Galatians, his little children in Christ. God had used him to lead them to faith. Now he tells them that he is enduring the spiritual equivalent of childbirth once again. This time it was to see them brought to Christ-likeness, real spiritual maturity. That cost him a deep expenditure of time and emotional energy in earnest intercession and the writing of this mighty Epistle. Are we willing to spend and be spent for the blessing of others?

Ideally, Paul would have loved to have come alongside the Galatians to appeal to them face to face to remain faithful to the gospel. Instead, he relies on the challenging exhortation of the Spirit-inspired words of his letter.

The apostle presents an allegory, a symbol of spiritual truth from history. He draws attention to the story of Hagar and Sarah and the sons each bore to Abraham: Ishmael and Isaac. The two mothers and their sons embodied the conflict in Galatia. The point of the argument is that legal bondage and evangelical freedom cannot co-exist. They stand in deadly opposition.

Hagar was a slave. Sarah was free. Ishmael was born by the operation of the flesh. Isaac was born in fulfilment of God’s promise. Hagar represented Mount Sinai. That stern mountain symbolized the system of legalistic bondage with its headquarters in earthly Jerusalem. In contrast, the heavenly Jerusalem is the mother city of the true people of God, the citadel of spiritual freedom. Isaac corresponds to all Christians, God’s freeborn sons by His Spirit. Ishmael sneered at Isaac. So the followers of the law persecuted those who relied on the gospel. Ishmael’s taunts led Sarah to demand the casting out of the slave woman and her son. She knew that Ishmael would always be a threat to Isaac. Abraham could only have one heir, not two.

Legalism endangered the spiritual inheritance of the Galatians. They had to make up their minds. Which covenant would they follow, the Old or the New? They must grasp that spiritually they were the children of Sarah. They were born to be free. Liberty in Christ was their birthright. It is ours.