We are familiar with the two sons of Abraham, Ishmael and Isaac. Ishmael was born to Sarah’s handmaiden, as she gave Hagar to Abraham as a wife. Isaac was the son of promise. The one God promised to Abraham and Sarah as their heir, and the beginning of His fulfillment of the promises He made to them.
In Galatians 4 the Holy Spirit revealed through the pen of Paul that the two sons of Abraham represent something else. Two covenants. As Ishmael was born of a bondwoman according to the flesh, he represents the first covenant “from Mount Sinai which gives birth to bondage” (25). In this metaphor, we have a bondwoman (Hagar) representing Mount Sinai, and her son (Ishmael) corresponding to fleshly Jerusalem, which under the Old Covenant, remained in bondage.
In contrast, “the Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of us all” (26). Here Sarah is the freewoman who coincides with that Jerusalem which is above. Therefore her children, represented by Isaac, are free. In that she is “the mother of us all” (26), this text clearly establishes the all encompassing nature of the New Covenant of Christ. As Paul wrote earlier in the book, “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (3:26-29).
This truth, easily seen, explains Paul’s question, “Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not hear the law?” (21). It makes little sense to desire that which has only bondage to offer, and prefer it to the freedom that comes in Christ. It is especially nonsensical seeing that the entirety of scripture (that Old Covenant included) teaches otherwise.
“So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman but of the free” (4:31). We rejoice in the fact that this world is not our home. That we have freedom in Jesus Christ. That the bondage of sin has been broken by the Lord’s sacrifice, and that the death that all men suffer has been defeated by the resurrection of the Lord.
The Old Covenant had a place in God’s scheme of redeeming man. But now that the New Covenant has replaced it, “You have become estranged from Christ, you who attempt to be justified by the law [that first covenant]; you have fallen from grace [the benefit accrued under the new covenant]” (5:4). May we all rejoice in the final covenant God has made with mankind in Jesus!
