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Galatians 4.16-end
May 26th 2019
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Okay – we left off with Paul, having explained the kind and longsuffering relationship that existed between he and the Gauls, asking:
16 Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?
I think it’s a really important line because for one, it shows that even all the way back 2000 years ago, human relationships are tenuously based, and it doesn’t take all that much to cause a rift in them – especially when it comes to religious differences.
Over the course of years I’ve sought to understand the means to navigate this fact and have come to believe, for whatever it is worth, is that the only solution that seems viable before God is to love all people all the time in spite of their religious affiliations or bents, to trust that God Almighty will work everything out, but to speak your truth when asked – always – realizing that in so doing you may lose friends but it will never be your choice.
That to me, in the face of the fragile human relationship especially in religion, is the only way to live true to the command to love, to freely speak your mind, and to retain as many human relationships as possible – in His name and cause.
Okay – let’s read on because Paul is going to give us a rather fantastic illustration her in the rest of this chapter, beginning at verse 17 where he first covers a few other matters, saying:
17 They zealously affect you, but not well; yea, they would exclude you, that ye might affect them.
18 But it is good to be zealously affected always in a good thing, and not only when I am present with you.
19 My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you,
20 I desire to be present with you now, and to change my voice; for I stand in doubt of you.
Let’s cover these passages first – so back to 17 as Paul says
17 They (those false teachers, Jews promoting the law) zealously affect you, but not well; yea, they would exclude you, that ye might affect them
These false teachers Paul maintains zealously were showing what appeared to be good intentions towards the Galatians or presented affections that would get them to be their followers.
We can say this because the Greek word for zealously used here most often means in a good way.
They were full of apparent love and concern for those Gaul’s who were presumably under the spell of Paul as a means to bring them out under the legalisms they promoted.
We have a number of enemies that stand firm against me and what they THINK I teach here at CAMPUS. And on now few number of times have they sought to wine and dine people who follow the ministry as a means to get them to see the dangers in being associated with me.
Many have been successful and a number of people have left – I grant them the right and freedom and love them anyway but the principle remains – they use the sway of great love and friendship to get them over to their side.
Paul adds here, 17 They zealously affect you, but not well (it is not with truly good and loving intentions and the results are not good) and he adds:
“yea, they would exclude you, that ye might affect them”
A few editions of the New Testament have us instead of you and the word “exclude” here seems to mean that they sought to exclude the Galatians from the love and affection of Paul. They would shut them out from that, in order that they might secure them for their own purposes OR
If they can once get rid of your attachment to me, then they will have no difficulty in securing you for themselves.”
And this interpretation, according to some of the more reliable translators, is found “in many of the best codices, and versions, and fathers” and has been adopted by many scholars.
Bottom-line: Paul stood in the way of their designs. Last week we read how the Galatians were truly attached to him; and it was necessary, in order to accomplish their ends, to withdraw their affections from him.
Paul adds the ultimate purpose for this aim: “That ye might affect them.” In other words, so that you would become a zealous follower of them!
Jesus accused the pharisees of such when he said:
Matthew 23:15 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.
In the face of this I want to tell you something from the heart. When I was LDS and a seminary teacher I was someone that used charm and attention to get followers or fans within the ward and stake.
Because it was all about me.
When I came to know Christ this desire began to change. In fact, I take some measures to keep my influence over people to a minimum so as to avoid making proselytes unto myself.
I will not charm people or wine and dine them as a means to gain their allegiances, nor will I try to win people over from one church to CAMPUS.
I actually move slightly to the other side so as to wholly avoid the campaigning for followers. The only time I will extend myself is in the causes of Christ toward others – when service, or counseling or help is required and some of you have perhaps been a bit rebuffed by this. Don’t be. It’s not personal. My job is to teach the Living God and Christ Jesus, not to make followers or members of campus. Period.
Because of the context of these passages I thought it would be a good time to reveal my hand. Paul adds at verse 18:
18 But it is good to be zealously affected always in a good thing, and not only when I am present with you.
In other words, “Understand, Paul seems to say, I am not against zeal toward good things. When the cause is good I am fully in support of it. So it is GOOD to be “zealously affected.”
“And not only when I am present with you,” he adds. “Go and be fully zealous for the things that lead to deeper relationship with Christ. But be warry of the romancers and swayers who seek to get you to abandon the truths I have imparted to you.”
And verse 19, Paul returns to the topic we have discussed over the past few weeks – and it is an interesting line as he says:
19 My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you,
We remember that Paul, in 1st Corinthians 4:15, said to them:
For though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel.
Paul, in other words, felt that he was the one to help bring these believers along in their maturation with Christ – as a hen gathers and protects their chicks, as it were.
So, he says here, “My little children.” Now, I want to point something out here that orbits around our discussion of babes, children, and sons and daughters of God.
In weeks past we have clearly heard Paul distinguish between children, who are nothing better than servants, and Sons and Daughters when God calls them.
We would tend to naturally think that where babes are certainly subject to falling or walking away from the faith that Sons and Daughters would be too strong to do the same.
We also recall that in verse 7 Paul clearly tells the Gaulish believers that they are sons.
Now note what he says here in verse 19
19 My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you,
Paul certainly, as he did with the Corinthians, sees himself as the one who fathered or helped to bring about the maturation of the Saints, but here he says to the Saints at Galatia, who he earlier called “Sons,” that he was travailing in birth AGAIN UNTIL – UNTIL CHRIST be formed in them (we could add, again here) proving that it is entirely possible to not only be a new convert -a babe or child but even a SON or daughter, and to leave that position and then need to have Christ be formed in us again!
His use of “travail in birth” gives us the idea of the labors – the painful labors – he has endured to bring them to the place they have since abandoned but the addition of the word (and it is in the Greek) “again” clearly tells us that he was willing, yes he even saw the need, to go through the same thing to ensure that Christ would ultimately – IF THEY WOULD ALLOW IT – be formed in them once more, or until he reigned over their hearts fully as He did when they were sons and daughters.
In the face of this, and despite the rhetoric of Calvin’s once saved always saved, we are able to plainly see that we are subject to failure in the faith, to walking from what was firmly planted and choosing to go after what is less Him and more of the other.
Paul adds at verse 20 a sentiment he has added before, and says:
20 I desire to be present with you now, and to change my voice; for I stand in doubt of you.
I desire to be present with you now and to change my tone with you all but I stand in doubt of you and where you presently stand with Christ.
Much has been lost by his absence; they had changed their views; they had in some measure become alienated from him; and he wishes that he might be again with them, as he was before, he would hope to accomplish much more by his personal presence than he could by letter, but he stood in doubt of them, or better put, he doubted the sincerity and the strength of their Christianity and remained very anxious for them on that account.
Because of this he re-enters a moment of instruction for them through his letter – and this astute and profound teaching begins at verse 21 – so let’s read our text for the remainder of our time together as he begins with a question, saying:
21 Tell me, you that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law?
22 For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman.
23 But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise.
24 Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar.
25 For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children.
26 But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.
Now, before we even get into the heart of this understand that Paul, once again, has taken some liberties in teaching the story of Abraham and Hagar and Sarah and the children from them – and there are entire books dedicated to trying to explain this unique teaching.
We are going to try and see what Paul was trying to say but will avoid attempting to make his appeal to this story stand on all four legs (as it were).
Let’s jump back to verse 21 and begin as Paul says:
21 Tell me, you that desire to be under the law, do you not hear the law?
The believers at Galatia had sought to be back under the Law (that was not even given to them) and Paul begins by asking those who sought circumcision and observing days of the week:
“Do you not hear the Law?”
Now listen – we tend to think that Paul is speaking of the Law of Moses here – and this has certainly been a topic of discussion here in Galatians.
But we note that Paul does not cite the Law of Moses but recites a story about Abraham which took place well before the establishment of the Law through Moses.
So what is Paul talking about when he asks, “Do you not hear (understand) what the law says?
He is talking about the first five books that the Jews referred collectively to as “the Law” and not the law of Moses.
And it was from the first of the first five books of the Tanakh that Paul is speaking (Genesis) that tells the story of Abraham.
Got that?
So the sense of his question is, “Will you not listen to a narrative found in one of the books of the law itself which fully illustrates the topic at hand? And he adds, continuing at verse 22 and says:
22 For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman.
At this point Paul begins to introduce an illustration he will make drawn from an important story from Jewish history.
The construction of Paul’s allegory, as I said, has brought some real confusion to to Bible expositors.
Without examining the expositions which have been proposed to explain what Paul really means we will try to explain, in as few words as possible, the simple meaning and design of the allegory itself.
Frankly the overall layout of the allegory is pretty simple as its purpose is to show the deleterious effects of being under the bondage of the Jewish law as compared to the freedom of being out from under it and operating under the pure gospel of Christ.
In this chapter Paul has made it plain that the Galatians seemed to really desire to be under bondage or to be servants. And we have discussed that for many people, and in many areas of their lives, they had rather be under the thumb and rules and laws of an other rather than be, as Jean Paul Sartre quipped:
“Condemned to be free.”
Which is a statement that means that there is an constant almost ominous power hanging over all human beings which reminds us of the condemnation we have of personal freedom.
As Rush once cited: Even if you will not choose – you still have made a choice!
The relentless chasm of choice, made wider and deeper by the constant and relentless response-ability to choose something, anything with the condemnation of freedom hanging over all of us – is too much for most people to bear – and so they resort to escapism, substances and/or religious authorities to tell them what to eat, what to wear, what to believe, how to act, how to live and even how to die.
Paul has made it clear that these Galatians SOUGHT to be in bondage. Why? Because, gosh-darn-it, living by faith alone, trusting in God alone and the finished work of his Son is hard.
Really hard.
(Tara – 760-524-7708)
Paul had (and in several places has also) represented Christianity as “a state of freedom” guided by the Spirit of Liberty and has said that Christians (as the sons and daughters of God) are not servants, but freemen.
To show the difference of the two conditions, Paul appeals to two cases which would furnish a striking illustration of them.
The one was the case of Hagar and her son. The effect of bondage was well illustrated in their lives as both she and her son were treated with severity and were cast out and persecuted.
She and her son received a fair illustration of what bondage under the law provided and of the servitude to the laws of Moses and the results of living under it.
Banishment and certain death (unless God himself intervenes)
The other case was that of Isaac. He was the son of a free-woman Sarah, the son of Promise, and he was treated accordingly in every way.
He was regarded as a son–not as a servant and therefore he was a fair illustration for those who became sons and daughters in and through the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Let’s quickly rehearse the facts about the tale of Abraham and Sarah – the wife of Promise and the handmaiden (praise be) Hagar and their ensuing offspring.
Sarah was Abrahams legal wife. She was told by God that she would have a son. She grew impatient and told Abraham to go in unto her handmaiden Hagar and let her bear them a son.
Abraham listened to his wife, went in unto Hagar, she conceived, and bore Abraham a Son named Ishmael when Abraham was eighty-six years of age, eleven years after his arrival in Canaan.
Ishmael was circumcised when he was thirteen (Genesis 17:25) and he grew up a true child of the desert, wild and wayward.
Once Isaac, the son of promise (which means he was the son promised to Abraham and his wife, Sarah) was born and then was of the age to be weened Ishmael began to insult his brother of promise and the result was Mama bear Sarah stepping in and telling Abraham to “Expel this slave (Hagar) and her son Ishamel.”
Abraham was hesitant but was influenced by a divine admonition, and so he sent Hagar and her son Ishmael off with no more than a skin of water and some bread.
This is the Old Testament description of this event:
Genesis 21:14 And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and took bread, and a bottle of water, and gave it unto Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, and the child, and sent her away: and she departed, and wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba.
15 And the water was spent in the bottle, and she cast the child under one of the shrubs.
16 And she went, and sat her down over against him a good way off, as it were a bowshot: for she said, Let me not see the death of the child. And she sat over against him, and lift up her voice, and wept.
17 And God heard the voice of the lad; and the angel of God called to Hagar out of heaven, and said unto her, What aileth thee, Hagar? fear not; for God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is.
18 Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him in thine hand; for I will make him a great nation.
19 And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water; and she went, and filled the bottle with water, and gave the lad drink.
20 And God was with the lad; and he grew, and dwelt in the wilderness, and became an archer.
21 And he dwelt in the wilderness of Paran: and his mother took him a wife out of the land of Egypt.
Ishmael became a great desert chief, but we have very little history recorded. He was about ninety years of age when his father Abraham died and it was in connection with his burial that Ishmael reappears.
On this occasion the two brothers met after being long separated. Little is known of him thereafter except that he died at the age of 137 years of age leaving
twelve sons, who became the founders of the many Arab tribes or colonies, collectively called the Ishmaelites, who spread over the wide desert spaces of Northern Arabia from the Red Sea to the Euphrates.
Scripture says of the Ishmaelites that
“their hand against every man, and every man’s hand against them.”
In the case of Ishmael, and the life he was forced to face, Paul seems to find a perfect illustration of life under the Law.
In the son of Promise, Isaac, Paul sees a reasonable illustration of those who were free, and not under bondage – an illustration of the New Jerusalem; the heavenly city; the true kingdom of God.
It is in and through the DIFFERENCES that existed between these two sons that Paul sees a striking ILLUSTRATION of the nature of the bondage to the Jewish law, and of the freedom of the gospel.
So, Abraham for sure had two sons. They were both his, just as the Nation of Israel by blood and those who became the Sons of Abraham by faith in Christ are both Sons of God.
Abraham subsequently had several other sons by Keturah, after the death of Sarah, but the two sons by Hagar and Sarah were the most prominent, and therefore served Paul in his illustration where he says that “one (son – Ishmael) was by a bond-maid (his mother Hagar).
Now Hagar was an Egyptian slave, which is important to Paul’s illustration, to whom Sarah gave to Abraham in order that he might not be wholly without posterity.
The other son (Isaac) was born of a free-woman (Sarah) who was not a slave but free.
So, Paul says (at verse 23)
23 But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise.
We could suggest that when Paul says that Ishmael was born after the flesh that all he means is that he was born in the natural manner all children are born but I cannot help but believe that the parallels are deeper.
We recall that it was Sarah (who at one point) did not trust in the promise of God recommended that Abraham take her slave-servant as a means to conceive which was a fleshly (and not a godly) endeavor.
To me this has application to being born of the flesh instead of by the promise of God. It also seems that because the Law appeals to the flesh and not the Spirit that Paul speaks of Ishmael as of the flesh as a means to describe or reiterate this point too.
But he of the free-woman (the birth of Isaac) was in accordance with a special promise, and by a remarkable heavenly interposition or miracle.
Which is what the things of the Spirit seems to appeal to. So the idea of Paul here seems to be that the son of the slave was in an inferior condition from his very birth. There was no special promise attending him. He was born into a state of inferiority and servitude, which attended him through his whole life.
But Isaac was met with promises as soon as he was born, and was under the benefit of those promises as long as he lived.
In this Paul seems to be trying to illustrate the end product of the Law – it works in and against the flesh, is geared toward the flesh and as a result, operated in and on the flesh – through bondage.
With it are evils from beginning to end; from the birth to the grave as illustrated in the life of Ishmael but blessing is illustrated through the conception, birth and life of Isaac.
We not that even though Ishmael’s birth and life was fleshly and subject to bondage as a man, God still blessed him – and made him a great nation.
Another point to show that toward those that are not His Son’s and Daughters he still blesses.
But Paul is not interested in showing alternative ways like slavery in his teachings. He want’s his reader and those who came to know Christ to see themselves as complete freemen and not slaves.
And so after mentioning Ishmael and Isaac he says at verses 24-26:
24 Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar.
25 For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children.
26 But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.
Let’s try and wrap up with these last three verses. And Paul begins by saying, “which things (that he has mentioned) are an allegory” or perhaps, “May be regarded allegorically, or as illustrating great principles in regard to the condition of slaves and freemen.”
Of course, he is not saying that the stories about Abraham’s two sons are allegories – not in the least – or that Moses had any design when writing the history to say that the story of Abraham should be seen as allegorical.
The word Paul uses here is derived from another word that means, “to speak in public” and the word does not occur anywhere else in the New Testament, nor is it found in the Septuagint, though it does occur often in the classic Greek writers.
The distinction between a parable and an allegory is said to be, that a parable is a non-factual illustration depicting an important truth (as in the parable of the good Samaritan) but an allegory is based on substantive facts.
This is the way to see Paul’s use of the term but in our day allegory does not necessarily mean the same thing which is why we need to be careful in our assessment of what Paul is actually saying here.
Allegories, parables, and metaphors abound in the writings of the East as it seems that Truth was more easily passed along in this mode and could be better preserved and transmitted when it was connected with an interesting story or parallel.
The ancient Jews were really fond of allegories, and even turned a considerable part of the Old Testament into allegory.
Then the ancient Greek philosophers were fond of this type of teaching, especially guys like Pythagoras. So the style crept into the style of many early Christians.
So when we come to guys like Origen it is not surprising that he took the liberty to take most of the Old Testament and make it allegorical – finding mysteries and meaning in some of the simplest content.
In so doing the Bible became a book of mysteries wrapped in enigma. The temptation continues today.
But in the end, spiritualizing or allegorizing the text can become really fruitless as the most imaginative become the gurus rather than the most simple and humble. And most biblical principles get lost when allegorizing is rampant. But Paul appears to use the art of allegorizing rather simply here and so the meaning of the real story is not lost.
And he says:
“for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar.
25 For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children.
26 But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.
For these two parties – one coming from Hagar and Ishmael and the other coming from Sarah and Isaac – are the two covenants.
Most scholars dispute the simple meaning of this and say that there is no way that there were two covenants represented, that there is no way that Ishmael could represent a covenant – but I don’t see why not?
Didn’t God himself say that he (God) would make him a great nation – and has he not fulfilled this with the Arab nations?
Scholars suppose that the meaning must be that the two furnished an apt illustration or representation of the two covenants – or better yet, they would show what the nature of the two covenants was – one was of bondage and one of freedom.
We will come back to these verses next week because this is where it gets more difficult to understand what Paul means through his allegory.
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