Two Covenants
(4:21-5:1)

Tell me, you who want to be under law, do you not listen to the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the bondwoman and one by the free woman. But the son by the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and the son by the free woman through the promise. This is allegorically speaking; 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. For it is written, “Rejoice, barren woman who does not bear; break forth and shout, you who are not in labor; for more are the children of the desolate than of the one who has a husband.” And you brethren, like Isaac, are children of promise. 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. 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.

It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery. (4:21-5:1)

In this text Paul continues to contrast grace and law, faith and works. Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit he employs an Old Testament story as an analogy, which serves not so much as an argument as an illustration.

The translators of both the King James Version and the New American Standard Bible have chosen simply to transliterate rather than translate the term allgred (allegorically, v. 24). This has led to difficulty in handling the passage, because usually an allegory is either a fanciful or fictional story carrying a hidden meaning or a true story in which the apparent meaning is meaningless.

But obviously the record of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar is both historical and meaningful. Recognizing this, the New International Version translators have attempted to aid the understanding of what Paul intended by avoiding the term allegorical and rendering “These things may be taken figuratively.” But that also can have the implication of something that is not literal. It is best to identify this literal, historical account as simply analogous to and illustrative of the spiritual truth that Paul elucidates with it. The dictionary defines analogy as “a partial similarity between like features of two things on which a comparison may be made.” Paul is simply comparing the similarities between the story of Abraham and the spiritual truth he is teaching, and this interpretation is consistent with the meaning of allgore.

Paul does not explain why, after the powerful and irrefutable arguments he has already used, he chose allegory as a means of further persuasion.

Allegory as such is a tenuous and dangerous means of interpretation. Because allegory does not need to be based on fact, it is limited only by an interpreter’s imagination and is easily influenced by his personal predispositions. It frequently leads to biased and often bizarre conclusions.

The ancient rabbis regularly used an allegorical approach to interpret Scripture, often claiming to discover amazing, hidden, and extremely fanciful “truths” that supposedly lay behind the ordinary meaning of the words of a text. Numerology was especially popular and was made easier and more tempting by the fact that Hebrew numbers are represented by certain Hebrew letters, and sometimes they can be distinguished only by context. Because every word had a corresponding arithmetic number, those numbers were frequently interpreted as revealing certain esoteric truths about the person, place, or event the word represented. Also, repetition was often interpreted allegorically. For instance, “Abraham, Abraham” was claimed by some rabbis to mean that he was destined for a heavenly afterlife.

During the last several centuries before Christ, Jewish scholars in Alexandria developed a system of scriptural allegory that strongly influenced not only Judaism but also Roman Catholicism until the time of the Protestant Reformation. For example, the Euphrates River was seen as the outflowing of good manners. The journey of Abraham from Ur to the Promised Land pictured a stoic philosopher who left his sensual understandings and came to his spiritual senses. The two coins given by the Good Samaritan to the innkeeper symbolized baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Pope Gregory the Great claimed that Job’s seven sons represented the twelve apostles, his friends represented heretics, his 7,000 sheep represented God’s faithful people, and his 3,000 camels represented depraved Gentiles!

Allegory is a Pandora’s box that ignores the literal, historical meaning of Scripture and opens biblical interpretation to every extreme. Because of man’s finiteness and fallenness, it inevitably leads to arbitrariness, absurdity, and futility.

The Holy Spirit directed Paul to use analogy on this occasion in order to show the Judaizers that God’s plan of redemption has always been by grace. The law itself both teaches and illustrates that salvation has never been through the law

The term law frequently referred to the whole of the Old Testament (see, e.g., Rom. 3:19), but here it refers particularly to the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses. The point Paul makes by drawing an analogy from Moses’ writing is that the law cannot be a means of salvation but is instead the way of spiritual and moral bondage.

As an introduction to the analogy, Paul suggests that the Judaizers, and the Jewish Christians who had been misled by them, look carefully at the very law they so highly touted. Tell me, he asks, you who want to be under law, do you not listen to the law? “Since you insist on living under law,” he was saying, “are you willing to listen to what the law really says?”

Jesus used a similar approach with the Jewish leaders on several occasions. In the Sermon on the Mount, after declaring unequivocally that He had not come to abolish God’s law, He nevertheless warned that the legalistic practices of the scribes and Pharisees would never qualify a person for entrance into the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 5:17-20). The whole point of the sermon was to show that no person is able in his own power to fulfill the holy demands of the law, the first of which is a righteous and perfect heart (5:6, 8, 48; cf. Matt. 22:36-38). When the chief priests and scribes rebuked Jesus for not disclaiming the title Son of David ascribed to Him by the Palm Sunday crowd, which included many children, He reminded those religious leaders of a well-known saying from their own sacred Scriptures, on which they claimed to be the supreme authorities. “Have you never read,” He asked derisively, ‘“Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babes Thou hast prepared praise for Thyself?’” (Matt. 21:9-16; cf. Ps. 8:2).

As Paul develops the analogy, he first gives its historical background, then its divine interpretation, and finally its personal application.

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the bondwoman and one by the free woman. But the son by the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and the son by the free woman through the promise. (4:22-23)

Paul reminds his readers of their forefather Abraham, progenitor of the Hebrew race. It was in their racial descent from him that most Jews of Paul’s day placed their trust for salvation. But as John the Baptist had declared to the Pharisees and Sadducees, for Jews to say, “We have Abraham for our father,” did not make them right with God, who “is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham” (Matt. 3:9). Jesus told another group of unbelieving Jews that being the physical descendants of Abraham not only did not make them children of God but did not prevent them from being children of Satan, just like Gentile unbelievers (John 8:33-44).

Paul’s first historical reminder about Abraham was that he had two sons. The sons were distinct in a number of ways, first of all in having different mothers, one who was a bondwoman and the other who was a free woman. The first son was Ishmael, whose mother was Hagar, an Egyptian slave of Sarah, Abraham’s wife. The second son was Isaac, whose mother was Sarah.

Throughout the analogy, all distinctions between the two sons are based on the fact that they had two different mothers, not on the fact that they had a common father, Abraham. The heritage of the line through one mother is lostness and bondage, and the heritage of the line through the other mother is salvation and freedom.

Paul’s second historical reminder was that the son by the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and the son by the free woman through the promise.

Many years after God first promised a son to Abraham, Sarah had not yet conceived. When he was 86 and she 76, Abraham feared that, according to the custom of the day, his chief servant, Eliezer of Damascus, would be his only heir. He cried out to God in despair, and the Lord reaffirmed His original promise, saying, “This man will not be your heir; but one who shall come forth from your own body, he shall be your heir” (Gen. 15:1-4). But when, after several more years, Sarah still had not conceived, she induced Abraham to father a child by her female slave, Hagar.

The birth of that son, whose name was Ishmael, was according to the flesh, not because it was physical but because the scheme for his conception, devised by Sarah and carried out by Abraham, was motivated by purely selfish desires and fulfilled by purely human means.

The birth of Isaac, however, the son by the free woman Sarah, was through the promise. His conception was supernatural, not in the sense that he was conceived directly by the Holy Spirit, as Jesus was, but that the Holy Spirit miraculously enabled Abraham and Sarah to produce a child after she was far past normal childbearing age and had been barren all her life. “Sarah herself received ability to conceive, even beyond the proper time of life” (Heb. 11:11). When Isaac was born, his father was 100 and his mother was 90 (Gen. 17:17; 21:5).

The conception of Ishmael represents man’s way, the way of the flesh, whereas that of Isaac represents God’s way, the way of promise. The first is analogous to the way of religious self-effort and works righteousness; the second is analogous to the way of faith and God’s imputed righteousness. The one is the way of legalism, the other the way of grace. Ishmael symbolizes those who have had only natural birth and who trust in their own works. Isaac symbolizes those who also have had spiritual birth because they have trusted in the work of Jesus Christ.

THE DIVINE INTERPRETATION

This is allegorically speaking; 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. For it is written, “Rejoice, barren woman who does not bear; break forth and shout, you who are not in labor; for more are the children of the desolate than of the one who has a husband.” (4:24-27)

Paul here specifically states that his present illustration is an analogy. This is refers back to verses 22-23, where the analogy begins. Allegorically, the unfortunate transliteration taken from allgore, is a compound of allos (other) and agoreu (to speak in a place of assembly, that is, publicly), and means literally “to speak other than one seems to speak.” It was used of a story that conveyed meaning other than what was apparent in the literal sense of the words. It has the idea of one thing being represented under the image of another. In this case, the spiritual truth is illustrated by the historical story, and translating “analogically” is consistent with the basic meaning of the Greek.

Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the apostle explains that these women, the bondwoman Hagar and the free woman Sarah, are illustrations of two covenants. The two mothers and two sons lucidly and graphically represent two covenants. Hagar and Ishmael represent the covenant of law and works, and Sarah and Isaac represent the covenant of grace and faith.

The Old Covenant of law was given through Moses at Mount Sinai and required God’s chosen people, the Jews, to keep all the commands He gave in conjunction with that covenant. Because the terms of the covenant were humanly impossible to keep, it produced a type of religious slaves, as it were, bound to a master from whom they could never escape. Anyone, including a Jew, who attempted to satisfy God and gain freedom from condemnation by trying to live up to that covenant in his own self-righteousness was spiritually like a child of Hagar, the bondwoman. He was a slave, struggling for a freedom he could not obtain by his own efforts.

The descendants of Hagar through Ishmael eventually moved into the desert areas to the east and south of the Promised Land. They came to be known broadly as Arabs and their territory as Arabia, and it is significant that Mount Sinai is located in what is still known today as the Arabian Peninsula.

It was between the sons of Hagar and Sarah that the modern Arab-Israeli animosity began some 4,000 years ago, producing a continual conflict between two peoples who both trace their lineage from Abraham.

Mount Sinai in Arabia, Paul continues to explain, corresponds to the present Jerusalem. Both Mount Sinai and Jerusalem are commonly associated with Jews, not Arabs, but a major emphasis throughout the Galatian epistle is that historical, geographical, racial, social, and all other superficial distinctions among men have no spiritual significance (see 3:28). In fact, on the spiritual level, one’s identity as Jew, Gentile, Arab, or whatever makes no difference. What unbelieving members of those groups have in common is infinitely more important, and damning, than any of their differences. Spiritually, they are all lost, because they are all spiritual descendants of Hagar and Ishmael, religious slaves who live by the futile power and for the sake of their struggling and never-attaining flesh.

Paul refers to the first Jerusalem as present, showing he has in mind the earthly, historical city by that name. Just as God chose Mount Sinai as the geographical location to give the Old Covenant to Moses, He chose Jerusalem as the geographical location where the Old Covenant would be upheld, propagated, and exemplified. In this illustration both locations represent the Old Covenant of law and works and the bondage they produce.

It is obvious that the holy city was also the location for the consummation of the New Covenant in the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, but because the people rejected that New Testament in blood, the present Jerusalem, like Mount Sinai in Arabia, is where Hagar still figuratively lives in slavery with her unbelieving children—self-righteous, Christ-rejecting, grace-ignoring Jews. Except for a relatively few believers, the Jewish inhabitants of geographical Jerusalem in Paul’s day were truly in deep bondage to damning legalism. And the Judaizers in Galatia were trying to subvert believing Jews back into that bondage—to the ritual, ceremony, self-effort, and all other works of the flesh that constitute the hopeless slavery of the spiritual children of Hagar.

The spiritual descendants of Sarah through Isaac, on the other hand, live in the Jerusalem above and are free, because she is our mother, if we are among those who live by faith in God’s gracious promise, given to Abraham and fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

The Christian’s “citizenship is in heaven,” the Jerusalem above, “from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Phil. 3:20). Referring to Mount Sinai, the writer of Hebrews says to believers, “You have not come to a mountain that may be touched and to a blazing fire, and to darkness and gloom and whirlwind, . . . but you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem” (Heb. 12:18, 22).

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).

One day the heavenly Jerusalem will descend to earth (Rev. 21-22); but it already exists, even more surely and eternally than the present, earthly Jerusalem. “Born again” (John 3:3) can also be translated “born from above,” and it is only those who are born from above who have spiritually ascended to the heavenlies to live in the Jerusalem above.

Quoting Isaiah 54:1, Paul continues, For it is written, “Rejoice, barren woman who does not bear; break forth and shout, you who are not in labor; for more are the children of the desolate than of the one who has a husband.” Those words were originally written to cheer the Jewish exiles in Babylon but are here applied to Sarah, the barren woman whose barrenness seemingly stood as an impenetrable barrier to the fulfillment of God’s promise to her husband, Abraham. As freedom and greater fruitfulness came again to the nation in Babylonian captivity, so it would come to the people in captivity to the law and its death penalty.

As Zion was a mother of children by grace after captivity, so believers will multiply in grace in the heavenly Jerusalem, which was also figuratively barren for a long time. “The general assembly and church of the first-born” (Heb. 12:23) was not occupied until Jesus was crucified and resurrected, taking captivity captive and removing the spiritual barrenness that no human effort under the Old Covenant could remove. Heaven, the Jerusalem above, will continue to be populated with the born-from-above saints of God until every predestined believer has entered.

In one sweep Paul sets forth the common factor of divine power in behalf of Sarah, the captive Jews, and the church. The common element of all three is divine power granting freedom and fruitfulness. Everything in this trilogy is the result of regenerating grace, not human effort.

THE PERSONAL APPLICATION

And you brethren, like Isaac, are children of promise. 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. 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.

It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery. (4:28-5:1)

Again addressing the Galatian believers as brethren (cf. 1:11; 4:12), Paul tells them that, like Isaac, they are children of promise. Every believer, like Isaac, is supernaturally conceived, miraculously born, and the offspring of God’s promise to Abraham fulfilled in Christ. Those who have begun to sink back into the trap of legalistic Judaism must remember that they are children of promise, who owe their life not to their own effort but to the miraculous power of God, just as Isaac did in the physical realm. God’s sovereign power of grace gave them life, and to fall back under law was to deny that divine work and to dishonor God.

In 4:29-5:1 Paul mentions three results of being a spiritual Isaac, a redeemed child of promise through Sarah. First of all, just as in that time, when there was resentment of Isaac by Ishmael, the spiritual descendants of Isaac, who was born according to the Spirit, can still expect persecution by the spiritual descendants of Ishmael, who was born according to the flesh.

When Abraham held a feast to celebrate Isaac’s weaning, Ishmael mocked the occasion (Gen. 21:9). He hated Isaac just as his mother hated Sarah (16:4-5). So it is now also, Paul told the Galatians. Throughout history, and still today, the physical and spiritual descendants of Hagar and Ishmael have, respectively, opposed and persecuted the physical and spiritual descendants of Sarah and Isaac. Those who hold to salvation by works, trusting in their own performance of the law, hate those who proclaim salvation by grace without works.

In their own minds, the Judaizers thought of themselves as the legitimate, God-honored descendants of Abraham through Isaac. But Paul was saying something that would infuriate them more than anything else, namely, that they, and all other unbelievers, are as much the spiritual descendants of Ishmael as the Arabs are his physical descendants. “If you are Abraham’s children,” Jesus told the protesting Jews in Jerusalem, “do the deeds of Abraham. But as it is, you are seeking to kill Me, a man who has told you the truth, which I heard from God; this Abraham did not do” (John 8:39-40). Paul wrote the Romans, “He is not a Jew who is one outwardly; neither is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter; and his praise is not from men, but from God” (Rom. 2:28-29).

Whether within Judaism or Christianity, legalists have always been persecutors. Those who trust in God have always been persecuted by those who trust in themselves. True believers have always been more mistreated and oppressed by religionists than by atheists. It is the false religious system of Revelation 17:6 that is “drunk with the blood of the saints.”

Second, the spiritual children of Sarah and Isaac will receive an inheritance that the spiritual children of Hagar and Ishmael will not. Just as the Scripture says, “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.” The persecutors are going to be thrown out, and the persecuted will receive their promised and rightful inheritance. As Sarah had Hagar and Ishmael cast out of Abraham’s household (Gen. 21:10-14), so will their unbelieving descendants, those who live by works of the flesh, be cast out of God’s household (cf. Matt. 7:22-23; 25:41). No one outside the covenant of grace will receive anything from God.

Third, although believers are brethren in Jesus Christ and therefore not children of a bondwoman, but of the free woman, they are nevertheless under obligation to live faithfully for their Lord. It was for freedom that Christ set us free, Paul says. Therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery to the law and its impotence.

In light of what Paul has been saying throughout the letter, he also here implies a disturbing question: “Why, then, do some of you want to go back to being like Ishmael, who was a slave, an outcast, and separated from God?” It made no sense at all.

“Thanks be to God,” Paul exclaimed to the Roman church, “that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification” (Rom. 6:17-19).

Paul says emphatically that God’s stated purpose for redemption was for freedom of the believer. Christ set us free from the “guilt-establishing and deadening power of the law” through His death and resurrection. Going back into a yoke of slavery is absurd. Yet the believers in Galatia were being duped by the Judaizers to consider doing just that.

The spiritual descendants of Sarah and Isaac should live as they lived, by faith. “By faith even Sarah herself received ability to conceive, even beyond the proper time of life, since she considered Him faithful who had promised” (Heb. 11:11), and “by faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau, even regarding things to come” (v. 20).

Keep standing firm is the positive, and do not be subject again (lit., “do not subject yourselves”) is the negative warning for believers to persevere in freedom. Like an animal loosed from pulling a plow, we should not seek to be hooked up again.

On the human and personal level, Galatians 4:21-5:1 continues to contrast the way of the Judaizers and the way of Paul. But on the immeasurably more important level of doctrine it is an extended series of contrasts between the way of law and the way of grace, the way of works and the way of faith, the way of man and the way of God. Following that same pattern, we also explicitly or implicitly see the contrasts of Hagar/Sarah, Ishmael/Isaac, children of Satan/children of God, commandments/promise, wrath/mercy, bondage/freedom, Old Covenant/New Covenant, Sinai/Zion, present Jerusalem/Jerusalem above, fleshly/spiritual, rejection/inheritance, and lostness/salvation. Throughout this letter, and indeed throughout all of Scripture, such contrasts reflect and demonstrate the contrast of the ages: the way of Satan and the way of God. But in God’s ultimate and unchangeable plan, Satan and his way will be destroyed, and only the way of God will remain, forever and ever. Vacillating between the two is unacceptable.