The law brings bondage, the gospel brings freedom
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📚✭Now I am saying that an heir, as long as he is a child, though he owns it all, does not differ at all from a slave, 2 but is under guardians and managers until the time appointed by the father. 3 📚Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the rudimentary things of the world. 4 📚✭But when the fulness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, 5 📚to redeem✭ those who were under the Law, so that we might be adopted as sons. 6 📚✭And because you are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, calling out, “Abba, Father”. 7 📚✭Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ. Did the Galatian Christians want to be slaves?
8 📚✭But at the time when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those who by nature are not gods. 9 📚But now after you have known God, or rather are known of God, how is it that you turn again to those weak and beggarly rudimentary things to which you desire again to be in bondage? 10 📚✭ You are observing days, and months, and times, and years. 11 📚I am afraid for you✭, that perhaps I have labored for you in vain.
12 📚✭Brethren, I appeal to you, become like me✭, for I became like you✭. You have not harmed me at all. 13 📚You know that because of bodily infirmity✭ I preached the gospel to you at first. 14 📚And you did not despise or scorn my trial✭ which was in my flesh, but received me as if I was an angel of God, even as if I were Christ Jesus. 15 📚✭Where, then, is that blessedness about which you spoke? For I testify about you that, if it had been possible, you would have plucked out your own eyes and given them to me. 16 📚✭Have I now become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?
False teachers, Paul’s desire
17 📚They zealously pursue you, but not for a good purpose. Yes, they✭ want to separate you from us so that you might zealously go after them. 18 📚But it is good to be zealous in a good thing, always, and not just when I am present with you. 19 📚✭My little children, for whom I feel again the pains of birth until Christ is formed in you, 20 📚I desire to be in your presence now, and to change my tone, because I am perplexed✭ about you.
The illustration of Hagar and Sarah
21 📚Tell me, you who desire to be under the Law, do you not understand the Law✭? 22 📚For it is written that Abraham had two sons, the one by a slave woman, the other by a free woman. 23 📚But the one from the slave woman was born according to the flesh, but the one from the free woman was born as a result of promise.
24 📚✭✭These things are symbolic, for these are the two covenants. The one is from mount Sinai, which produces bondage. This is Hagar. 25 📚For this Hagar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to the present Jerusalem that is in bondage with her children. 26 📚✭But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and is the mother of us all. 27 📚✭For it is written,
“Rejoice, barren one,
you who do not bear children.
Break forth and cry out,
you who have no labour pains;
for the desolate one has far
more children than
she who has a husband”.
28 📚✭Now we, brethren, like Isaac, are children of promise. 29 📚✭But then just as he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, just so it is now. 30 📚Nevertheless what does the Scripture✭ say? Send away the slave woman and her son; for the son of the slave woman will not be an heir with the son of the free woman. 31 📚✭So then, brethren, we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free.