Abraham had a promise from God that he would have descendants that would be like the stars in the sky or the sand on the shore. He, through the suggestion of his wife Sarah, slept with her slave Hagar. Hagar became pregnant and had a son. They named him Ishmael. This was not the promised son of God. This son came through Abraham, and Sarah’s, own efforts. Later, Sarah becomes pregnant and has a son. They name him Isaac. He was the son of promise that God had told him about.

In the book of Galatians, Paul uses this story to make a point. He says the women represent two covenants. He says the slave woman represents Mt. Sinai, the mountain where God gave Moses the law. She bears children for slavery. Because following the law is being a slave to the law. She is equated to being Jerusalem and being in slavery with her children. Sarah, on the other hand, is the mother of the child of promise. She represents the Jerusalem that is above, the New Jerusalem. She is free and bears children who are free from slavery to the law. We, Christians, are those children. Those under the law and those without the law persecute those who are free and have been born according to the Spirit.

How then shall we live? Are we going to live as children of Sarah, children of the promise, as citizens of the Jerusalem that is above, as those who are free? Or will we live in slavery to the law, trying to do things through our own efforts, and never be free?

Paul sums it up best, “For freedom Christ has set us free, stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1)

This is a summary of Galatians 4:21-31, please read it for yourselves.

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