No More a Slave, But a Child of God
Sermons based on the Letter to the Galatians (IV)
Galatians 4:21-31
We move on to the fourth
chapter. I hope
you did experience God’s grace in your life, especially last week. Sermons are meaningful when they are applied in our lives.
Paul defends his case which is salvation through Jesus Christ. In this chapter, he brings the issue of being
slaves versus being children or heirs. Paul did not speak about social reform to
abolish slavery. Yet, his writings were
and are helpful to free anyone from the bondage of sin and legalism. Slavery was and is a terrible thing practiced
for a very long time. Eventually, the Christian church stood against it, thank
God.
Coming back
to the passage, Paul is a Rabbi. He knows the Old Testament very
well. He mentions a story from the book
of Genesis, the story of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael, and Isaac (Gen 16,17,21) and he gives it
an allegorical meaning. Paul gives a new meaning to the well-known
story.
The story was that God
promised Abraham to make him the father of a great nation. “God took him outside and said, ‘Look up at the
heavens and count the stars if indeed you can count them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your offspring
be’” (Gen 15:5). That is wonderful promise.
But Abraham and Sarah got old and became impatient. So Sarah and Abraham thought that their slave
Hagar could bear the promised child (the practice was common those
days.) Ishmael was born from Hagar. Then Abraham heard God’s promise again: a child
would be born and his name would be called
Isaac, not from Hagar but from Sarah. When Abraham and Sarah heard this, they
laughed mocking God. God kept His promise and Isaac was born. Then things became complicated. Hagar and his son Ishmael had problems with
this new situation and eventually Hagar and Ishmael were
kicked out of the Abraham’s clan and inheritance. God kept Hagar and Ishmael in the
Let me
clarify some historical things. Out of
Hagar and Ishmael, came the Arabs. Out of Sarah and Isaac, came
the Israelites. Both nations
need Jesus as savior. The promise of Abraham is for those who believe
in salvation through Jesus Christ. All nations of the world need Jesus to be freed from sin. Today
we have Arab Christians who are saved by Jesus. Today we have Jewish-Christians who are saved by accepting Jesus as their Messiah. Am I conflicting with
Paul? NO.
Paul is using the imagery
of the old story to demonstrate his point. Choose where
do you want to live, under slavery or freedom?
-Hagar was slave girl; she represents
living under the law, being a slave to law.
-Sarah bore the promised
child. She was free. She represents the freedom that God gave us
through Jesus Christ. So, let us not use
this allegory to say the Arabs are under the curse and the Jews are the chosen
ones because of Abraham’s promise. Let me warn you. Paul is confronting
Jews and Gentiles (we call them Judaizers who came to Christ through faith and now
they want to live under the law.)
“Tell me, you who want to be
under the law, are you not aware of what the law says? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman
and the other by the free woman. His son
by the slave woman was born in the ordinary way; but his son by the free woman
was born as the result of a promise” (21-23).
Do you want
to live as result of promise or do you want to live under slavery?
Therefore no more slaves,
but children of God.
We will continue in English.