Last night, I was talking with my friend who is studying Islam. He is a Christian but in his attempt to understand Islam and help others to know Christ, he is studying Islam to help these people exit and follow Jesus.
In the course of the conversation, my friend looked up from his studies and simply said:
If I was a Muslim and knew what is in the book that I was following, in the religion that I was following, I would be in despair. I would be so sad.
I won’t go into the detail of what he meant by that at this point, but I was reminded of that this morning when I read what Paul wrote to the Galatians as they were seeking to know God by following the Law.
As I wrote previously, the Judaizers had come into the Galatian churches preaching that, Yes, these Christians must follow Christ, but they must also follow the Law. They must do everything that Moses had commanded them to do. They must follow the commandments that God had given all of the way back to Moses if they truly wanted to follow God. For example, God had commanded Abraham that the men of his people must be circumcised, so all Israelite men would then subsequently be circumcised.
Some of the Galatians began to believe and follow what the Judaizers had been teaching them. There were enough people that were doing this that it alarmed Paul enough to write a letter to pull them back from doing it. Paul had experience with where the Law would take them. Paul knew the futility of trying to keep the Law as a way to be justified by God. He knew that their attempts would lead to nothing but despair.
And so for this reason, and because many of the people that he was writing to were Gentiles and not Jews, thus not having all of the background that Paul had given that he was a Pharisaical Jew, Paul asks them: Do you even know what you are asking for by trying to follow the Law? Do you know what it says?
Tell me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. His son by the slave woman was born according to the flesh, but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a divine promise.
Galatians 4:21-23
Paul goes on to say that Abraham’s two wives represented two separate covenants, two agreements between God and his people. Hagar, the servant woman to Sarah, had come from Egypt, given to Abraham after Pharaoh had sent Abraham and his entire family away, out of Egypt. As he sent them out, he gave Abraham several servants and livestock. Hagar was one of these that came from Pharaoh, leaving Egypt with Abraham. In short, Hagar was a slave and would remain a slave. She only became a wife to Abraham because Sarah had given her to Abraham in an attempt to have a child, given that it seemed that Sarah was no longer able to have children.
Hagar represented the covenant that God made with his people through the Law. He gave the Israelites the Law and said that, if they will follow the Law, God would be their God and they would be his people. If they kept the Law…
So like Hagar, the Israelites were slaves to the Law. If they wanted to be God’s people, they must follow the Law. And of course they didn’t follow the Law, and in fact they found that it was impossible to follow the Law. No one was able to follow it completely. No human was able to fulfill the Law completely.
On the other hand, Sarah was Abraham’s one, legitimate wife. She represented freedom. She represented the promise. God had given Abraham a promise that his descendents would be like the stars in the sky, but he didn’t even have a son. He didn’t even have one descendent, let alone his descendents being numbered like the stars in the sky.
Yet God had given a promise, and his promise would be fulfilled. In fact, God told Abraham that it would be fulfilled through Sarah, not through Hagar. Even though God would bless Hagar’s son Ishmael, God would make his covenant with Isaac, not with Ishmael. God would be the God of Isaac, Sarah’s son. She was the free woman. She was the one through whom God’s promise would be fulfilled. Not the slave woman, but the free woman.
In the same way, God made a new covenant with his people. Jesus said that his blood would be poured out as a sign of the new covenant. It would be for the forgiveness of all people. And this forgiveness would allow people to enter into the presence of God. Not because they have somehow been good religious people, but because they have received the promise that has been given to them by faith in the blood of Christ which allows them to enter into God’s kingdom.
Paul therefore asks the Galatian church: Is that really what you want? Do you really want to enter back into slavery by the Law? Do you even know what that means?
Of course they don’t understand it! Otherwise, they would have never chosen that particular path. Otherwise, they would have rejected the Judaizer’s message immediately. They would have said that they were God’s people as a result of the promise that was fulfilled in Jesus Christ, not as a result of being good religious people.
The good news – in fact, the best news! – is that this promise is for all people. It was available to the Galatians, but it is also available to us today. We can be God’s people by believing God. We can be God’s people by receiving the promise, by placing our faith in Christ, that his death and resurrection will allow us to live, allow us to receive the promise that God has given. In this way, we will not be children born to the slave woman, but instead, children of the promise born to be free.