Galatians 4

Galatians 4:21-5

VI THE TWO Galatians 4:21-5:12. This discussion commences at Galatians 4:21, and we note first the distinct paragraphs in what remains in this letter. From Galatians 4:21, where we commence, to Galatians 5:1 is a distinct paragraph. That chapter division is very unfortunate. Galatians 5 should commence at Galatians 5:2. The next paragraph is from Galatians 5:2-6. There the most of the argument of the book ends, though he takes up an argument after that. The next paragraph Isaiah 5:7-12. The next paragraph Isaiah 5:13-26. The next paragraph Isaiah 6:1-10. Then we have the closing paragraph. It would be well if, instead of chapters and verses, the book had been divided on the paragraph plan as I have suggested, and as we would find if we were studying it in the Greek.

I call attention to some textual matters: Galatians 4:31; Galatians 5:1 ought to be really just one verse, and it is an exceedingly difficult matter, according to the manuscripts, to tell just how that verse should stand as to its parts. The oldest manuscripts are followed in the American Standard Revision. Lightfoot insists that we should read those two verses this way: “Wherefore, brethren, we are not children of a handmaid [or bond woman] but of a freewoman in the liberty with which Christ has made us free; therefore stand and be not entangled again in the yoke of bondage.” That is the way Lightfoot would read it. It is just a question of the manuscript about the position of the words. The Revised Standard Version follows the best manuscripts, making it read just as we have it here, only it is not all one verse: “Wherefore, brethren, we are not children of a handmaid but of the freewoman. For freedom did Christ set us free: stand fast therefore, and be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage.” I would call attention to a great many others of that kind if we were studying the Greek.

In the Standard Revision Galatians 4:25 reads: “Now this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to the Jerusalem that now is: for she is in bondage with her children.” Some manuscripts make that read: “Sinai is a mountain in Arabia.” I don’t agree with those manuscripts at all. Everybody knows that Sinai is a mountain in Arabia, and the Revised Version follows the best texts in that.

We will now take up the exposition of Gal 4:21 : “Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do you not hear the law?” I call attention to the fact that what the law here says does not occur in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, or Deuteronomy, but it occurs in Genesis, and the point about it is this, that the New Testament as well as the Old Testament, calls the history in the Pentateuch law, as well as the legislation itself. The history is the background of the statutes – the whole of it. History and legislation is called the law. If we get that clear in our minds it will save us from the mistakes of the radical critics. Whether it be history in Genesis or legislation on Mount Sinai, it is called the law.

Galatians 4:22 : “It is written that Abraham had two sons.” He says the law (which is in Genesis) tells us that there was one by a handmaid and one by a freewoman. The next verse shows us the distinction between the births of those children. The son of the handmaid ‘is born after the flesh – a perfectly natural birth. The son of the freewoman is born through promise. The birth of Isaac was just as supernatural as any miracle can be. There were no powers of nature in either Abraham or Sarah to bring about the birth of Isaac. It was supernatural. Now that is what the scripture says.

Paul expounds that scripture in order to show that the Old Testament history is itself prophetic – that it has more than a literal, historical sense. It has that, but it has more. He says, “Which things contain an allegory.” That part of the history of Genesis, besides its literal meaning, contains an allegory. Here the radical critics object to what they say is a strained interpretation that Paul puts upon plain history, and they say that he gets his allegory from Philo, an Alexandrian Jew, or he follows the rabbis in allegorizing the history of the Jewish people. Did Paul get the idea of the allegorical significance in that history from Philo the Jew, or from the rabbis, and if from neither, where did he get it? It is true that Philo did allegorize, but his allegories and Paul’s are poles apart as we see if we put them down and read them together as I have done many times.

In the second place, Paul did not get the idea from what the rabbis had said, but he got it from the Old Testament, and particularly, from the book of Isaiah. The book of Isaiah consists of two parts.

Isaiah 1-39 relate to one thing, and the rest of it relates to spiritual Israel, and it is called the Old Testament Book of Comfort. And whenever Isaiah from Isaiah 40 on, speaks of Israel, he is referring to spiritual Israel. For instance, in Isaiah 51 he refers to Abraham and Sarah, and then in Isaiah 54 he uses the language that Paul cites here in the context, showing that Sarah occupied a representative and allegorical position in his mind, and the quotation is specified here: “Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife.” That is Isaiah’s use of it in which he is addressing Sarah as representing the motherhood of spiritual Israel, and she that hath been barren is called desolate; because no children have been born to her, she is called more desolate than Hagar. So Paul gets his theory from the inspired people; he simply follows the history when he says, “that scripture contains an allegory.”

Let us now see what the allegory contained. These women are two covenants. As, in the dream of Pharaoh, the seven lean kine are seven years of famine. Pharaoh uses the verb, “are” in the sense of “represent,” is., the seven lean kine represent seven years of famine. And, as where our Saviour says, “this is my body,” that is, “this unleavened bread represents my body.” He is showing what the allegory represents – that those two women represent two covenants – one from Mount Sinai bearing children into bondage which is Hagar. The Hagar woman represents, allegorically, the Mount Sinai covenant.

He goes on to say in the next verse that Hagar, that is, this allegorical Hagar that he is speaking about, is Mount Sinai in Arabia and answereth to the Jerusalem that now is and is in bondage with her children. Sarah represents the Jerusalem, not the Jerusalem that now is, but the Jerusalem which is above that is our mother.

We, the children of the freewoman, represent the Jerusalem which is above. It is necessary to make clear the meaning of Jerusalem above as contradistinct from the Jerusalem on earth. In Hebrews 12:18 ff., distinguishing between the two covenants the two regimes, this language is used: “For ye are not come unto a mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, and into blackness, and darkness, and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they that heard entreated that no word more should be spoken unto them; . . . and so fearful was the appearance, that Moses said, “I exceedingly fear and quake.” In other words, “Ye Christians are not under the Mount Sinai regime, but ye are come unto Mount Zion, . . . the heavenly Jerusalem.” That is the Jerusalem above, or in the place of “heavenly” we may use “spiritual.” We are not come to the literal mountain in Arabia, nor are we come to the literal Jerusalem situated over yonder in the Holy Land, but to the spiritual Jerusalem. How many of our hymns are written with that ideal In Revelation that thought is elaborated about the spiritual Israel, the spiritual city, Revelation 3:12 : “He that overcometh I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go out hence DO more, etc.,” and in the closing part of Revelation, “I saw the New Jerusalem come down out of heaven.” In view of this, I point out the folly of the crusades, preached by Peter the Hermit and encouraged by subsequent popes. The object of the crusades was to rescue the Holy Jerusalem from infidels – that Jerusalem which has lost ‘its value. They were to rescue the empty tomb of Jesus. The crusades did an immense amount of good, but there never wag a more profound piece of folly than to think it was necessary to rescue the city under the curse of God, with an empty tomb in it, as a religious duty.

We will go on with our allegory: “For it was written.” Here he quotes that passage in Isaiah 54, and here is his conclusion from the allegory in Galatians 4:28 : “Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise” – i.e., supernaturally born, regenerated – “but as then he that was born after the flesh [Ishmael] persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, so also it is now.” The literal Jerusalem and the Judaizing spirit will persecute the spiritual Israel. Just as Ishmael did, so will the Jews do now. Galatians 4:30 : “Howbeit what saith the scripture?” Notice then that the scripture is again personified. The words, ta hiera grammata refer to the whole collection of scriptures; every one of those scriptures is God-inspired. So Paul takes a part of the history in Genesis and says, “The scripture saith.”

I am giving this to show the folly of the people who say, “The book contains the word of God, but not all of it is the word of God.” Well, what did the scripture say? “Cast out the handmaid and her son: for the son of the handmaid shall not inherit with the son of the freewoman.” Sarah used these words to Abraham: “This bond-slave child should not inherit with my child; cast her out and her son.” It grieved Abraham until God spoke to him and endorsed what Sarah said, God having in mind not only what was best for them at that time, but having in mind the allegorical meaning of those two women.

Here is an important matter: The ablest debater that I ever read after was the great Presbyterian, N. L. Rice, and here let the reader note just what Rice said about the covenant and how the covenant puts the infants in the church. A certain man was once quoting Rice to me on that and he said, “The Old Testament put the children in with the parents; and now if it put them in, how are you going to put them out?” I said, “Here is the passage, ‘Cast out the bondwoman and her son.’ " That casts the covenant out and infant membership. It is true that the children come in the new covenant; it is true that we baptize every child in the new covenant, but he is a regenerated child – a spiritual child – and nobody in the world can answer that. And yet I never heard a pedobaptist make an argument that he did not bring in the relation that the children bore to the old covenant, viz.: that they were in the covenant. That is their first and, indeed, their only respectable argument.

A certain Baptist wrote a book with this title: Baptists the only Pedo baptists, i.e., the Baptists are the only denomination that really baptize children. They baptize every spiritual child if he is only converted, and if his spiritual childhood is only an hour old. The Baptists baptize him, and others don’t do that; they baptize the goats – those that are not children. He makes a very fine argument, and if we just understand him, he is hitting the nail on the head. The Baptists don’t baptize anything but children, but they belong to spiritual Israel, and they often baptize them the very day they are new born. They don’t wait eight days.

Let us now consider those joined verses of Gal 4:31 : “Wherefore, brethren, we are not children of a handmaid, but of the freewoman. For freedom did Christ set us free: stand fast therefore, and be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage.” Where does Christ himself discuss that just as Paul does? It is very important to see that Christ and Paul are in agreement in that very matter. John 8:31 : “Jesus therefore said to those Jews that had believed him, if ye abide in my word, then are ye truly-my disciples; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. They answered unto him, We are Abraham’s seed, and have never yet been in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free? Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Every one that committeth sin is the bondservant of sin.

And the bondservant abideth not in the house forever; the Son abideth forever. If therefore the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. I know that ye are Abraham’s seed [that Is, the fleshly seed]; yet ye seek to kill me, because my word hath not free course in you.” John 8:39 : “They answered and said unto him, Our father is Abraham. Jesus sayeth unto them, If ye were Abraham’s children, ye would do the works of Abraham. But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I heard from God; this did not Abraham. Ye do the works of your father.

They said unto him, We were not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God.” John 8:44 : “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father it is your will to do.” Paul says, “For freedom did Christ set us free.” I am showing that Christ taught precisely on the line that Paul did here in this letter to the Galatians.

I now commence Galatians 5:2. This paragraph consists of the following thoughts (in Galatians 5:2-6 he discusses circumcision): First, he says, “If you insist on circumcision Christ will profit you nothing. Second, if you insist on being circumcised, then you are a debtor to do the whole law. Third, if you insist on being circumcised and being a Jew in order to salvation, then you are severed from Christ; you are fallen away from grace.”

A man once said to me, “Does the Bible teach falling from grace?” I said, “Yes.” “Well,” he says, “I thought you didn’t believe in apostasy.” I said, “I don’t; we mean by apostasy, (1) that a man has to be regenerated and (2), that this regenerated man is finally lost. This falling from grace here does not mean that; it simply means that a man who will turn from salvation by grace to being a Jew in order to be saved, that that man is fallen from grace. The Bible does not teach that he severs himself from Christ.”

The next thought presented here is that “Christians through the Spirit by faith wait for the hope of righteousness.” What is the hope of righteousness for which the Christian waits? He is speaking of the doctrine of justification by faith, and that doctrine by faith had a certain hope in it. And what is the hope? The hope includes everything that is involved in the final coming of the Lord to give the crowning glories to those that are justified by faith; it has a hope that refers to the future. That hope is, If my name is written in the Lamb’s book of life, it not only stands secure, but it will bring everything else that it has promised, as “whom he justified, them he also glorified.”

The next thought is, that “in Christ neither circumcision nor uncircumcision availeth anything.” We don’t get into Christ because we are circumcised, and we don’t get into Christ because we are not circumcised. We get in on an entirely different term, as the next thought shows, “faith working by love.” The Roman Catholics teach certain doctrines based on this verse, “Faith worketh by love,” that is, they say that “worketh” should be translated “wrought.” Therefore, the Catholics have a doctrine that they call fides caritate formosa, “Faith made by love,” that is their special doctrine based on that verse. But the verb is not in the passive voice. It isn’t “being worked;” it is the doing, the working. And this leads me to another observation that when Paul talks about faith working by love he bridges an apparent chasm between him and James. James, in his letter, says that the faith that is apart from energy, or work, is dead.

Paul says that the faith that justifies is the faith with energy; it works by love. As that passage bridges the apparent chasm, there is no discrepancy between Paul and James. Practically the argument closes here, but he brings up some argument later.

The next paragraph is Galatians 5:7-12 : “Ye were running well; who hindered you?” Let us consider that as it is in the Greek’ the idea is that of a foot race. The foot race is along a prescribed or prepared track. Here is a man running on that prepared track, and suddenly he comes to a place where the track is all broken up. The word “hindered” means a broken-up track. “You were running well? Who broke up the track? He who started you would not break up the track ahead of you; if that track is broken up, the enemy did it.” The next thought in this paragraph is that they seemed to have said that if they had gone astray it was a small matter, and he is answering that when he said “A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.” “You think the wedge ‘is little, but that wedge will split the whole log. It is a vital and fundamental thing.”

The next thought is the distinction which Paul makes between the Galatians and the one that side tracked them. He says, “Now, brethren, I am confident that you will come to my way of thinking about this. I don’t think that about the one that is misleading you.” There he mentions him in the singular for the first time. “Whoever broke up that road will have to bear his penalty and will have to pay the penalty of what he has done.”

The next thought is that he seems to reply again to an accusation that they had made saying, “Why does he object to our views of circumcision? I am told that he circumcised Timothy and preached circumcision himself.” He answers that: “If indeed I preach circumcision as you are preaching it, i.e., if I am on a line with them, why am I persecuted?” Then he said, “If I presented it to you as they do I would take away the stumbling block of the cross and there would be no issue between me and these men who are misleading you.” “The Jews find the cross a stumbling block,” says Paul in his letter to the Corinthians. He says here, “I would that they that unsettle you would even go beyond circumcision.” What does he mean by that? The thought is this: “You are insisting upon the physical mutilation of the body; now why not go to the whole length like the idolaters that were among you?” They mutilated themselves, cut their bodies with knives. “If you are going to insist on this use of the knife, why not take it to that extreme?”

1. What does the law of Gal 4:21 say, where is it found, and what bearing has this on the meaning of the word “law,” as used in the Old and New Testaments?

2. Explain the allegory in Galatians 4:21-5:1 from these standpoints: (1) Where did Paul get the idea of this allegory, and what the evidence? (2) Ishmael and Isaac. (3) Hagar and Sarah. (4) Jerusalem that now is and the Jerusalem above. (5) Show the parallel in the two covenants. (6) Give the distinctions as expressed in Hebrews. (7) What the folly of the crusades? (8) What the attitude of the children of the flesh toward the children of the Spirit? (9) What argument is sometimes made for infant church-membership, and what the answer? (10) Then who the children of the handmaid and who the children of the free woman?

3. What is the exhortation based upon this allegory, and where does Christ discuss this same idea?

4. What four things does Paul show are the result of their insistence on being circumcised? Explain particularly the last clause of Gal 5:4.

5. What is the hope of righteousness for which the Christian waits?

6. Expound “but faith working through love.” What the Catholic interpretation of it, and how does the true interpretation bridge the apparent chasm between Paul and James?

7. Explain Galatians 5:7 : “Ye were running well; who hindered you, etc.?”

8. What is the force of “a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump”?

9. What distinction does Paul make between the Galatians and the one who side tracked them?

10. What accusation does Paul seem to reply to in Galatians 5:11, what the stumbling block of the cross, and what does he mean by “beyond circumcision” in Galatians 5:12?