Galatians 4:21-31
In our text, the apostle Paul uses the two wives of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar, as an allegory. His words, “which things are symbolic.”
The two women represent the two covenants. Hagar is the Old Covenant “from Mount Sinai”, and Sarah the New “the Jerusalem above.”
The point of the allegory is to establish that the New Covenant, like Sarah, is to be preferred. Sarah was the mother of Isaac, the child of promise. It was through this lineage that redemption came, not from Hagar and Ishmael.
In the same way redemption is found in the New Covenant, not the Old. The New Covenant of Christ is to be preferred to the Old. We are to cast off the Old, just as the scripture says, “Cast out the bondwoman and her son.” As Paul wrote, “So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman but of the free.”
