Galatians 4:31

BONDAGE OR FREEDOM?

‘So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free.’

Galatians 4:31

In this Epistle St. Paul carries our thoughts back to the pathetic scenes associated with the names of Hagar and Ishmael. It is a beautiful story, and St. Paul finds in it spiritual significance: Ishmael, the son of the handmaid, stood for Judaism; Isaac, the son of the freewoman, stood for the Christian kingdom.

I. Israel’s bondage.—We know how the word ‘bondage’ grated on Jewish ears. ‘We be Abraham’s seed, and have never yet been in bondage to any man,’ was the angry reply to our Lord on one memorable occasion. None the less, bondage there was, besides the worst and supreme bondage of sin—bondage which the Israelitish mind could not really forget or ignore, whatever Israelitish pride might pretend. There was the bondage of a foreign yoke. Jerusalem was indeed ‘in bondage with her children,’ and in this passage St. Paul may well have been thinking of her political degradation in addition to her spiritual misery.

II. Christian freedom.—‘Children … of the free’; ‘children of the freewoman’! That is the grand claim which St. Paul puts forward for Christian believers. That is the claim which the world so often refuses to admit. ‘Leave your doctrinal imprisonment,’ it says, ‘and walk in the path of mental and spiritual liberty.’ What shall we say in answer? There is no doubt a sense in which we may all admit—may be thankful and proud to admit—our bondage. More than once does St. Paul himself express and testify to it. ‘Paul a bondservant of Jesus Christ.’ ‘Paul a bondservant of God.’ To such a bondage our Saviour Himself invites us. ‘Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me.’ But the acceptance of this bondage brought with it redemption from bitter and humiliating subjection. To be the servant of Christ—crucified, risen, ascended—was to be free indeed. The Apostle was thinking of the old dispensation. Yet what he says surely has its message for ourselves. The Gospel of Christian freedom never grows old. The Christian claim to bring freedom is as valid to-day as in the first century. The immediate application of St. Paul’s phraseology is indeed to the past rather than to the present; but it is capable of application to the present. For what was, in its essence, the bondage which St. Paul feared, and from which the Gospel promised escape? Was it not the bondage which came from imperfect communion with God? Until a man was brought into the closest union with the Almighty and Eternal, he was not free with the liberty of an accepted and obedient son. He was till then in the position of Ishmael. He had till then not realised and appropriated the calling of Isaac. And we too—except we are in communion with God through the mediation of Christ—are children of bondage. It is the restoration of that communion through the Redeemer’s cross which brings true emancipation. We ourselves could not have earned it. It is only by our unity with our Saviour that we gain it. In Christ we are of the lineage of the freewoman. Out of Him we are (as it were) of the family of Hagar the Egyptian.

—Rev. the Hon. W. E. Bowen.

Illustration

‘Before Christ the history of the world is, broadly speaking, the history of a disaster culminating in a collapse which those who beheld it might well think to be irretrievable. After Christ the history of the human race is in the main the history of a gradual recovery, though of a recovery which has been broken into by periods of dark and hideous faithlessness. And the crucial question for us is, Are we the children of that disaster or of that recovery, of the handmaid or of the freewoman?’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

‘CHILDREN OF THE FREE’

The Galatians had received the Gospel which St. Paul brought to them with joy. They embraced the Lord as their Saviour with joy, and set their hope on Him and on His grace. But now Judaising teachers had entered among them, and turned them from the simplicity of the Gospel. It is against this the Apostle speaks in this Epistle, which is confessedly not easy to understand. Let us observe—

I. How Christian freedom is derived.

(a) Not through the law, but through grace. That is strictly the answer of St. Paul. He here shows us the freedom of the Gospel in contrast to the servitude of the law, and he does this by treating a portion of the well-known history of Abraham in a somewhat peculiar way. Abraham took Hagar in addition to his lawful wife Sarah to be his spouse. She was a bondwoman. He therefore contracted marriage with a slave, a servant; and so, of course, the son, the offspring of the marriage, was a slave. This history, says St. Paul, may be treated as allegorical. Hagar means Mount Sinai, where the old covenant was made. This covenant says, ‘Thou shalt; thou shalt not. Do and live.’ Now he who is a child of the old covenant, and places himself under it, is a servant, a slave. The Jews were servants of the law, placed under it as under a severe schoolmaster. This covenant lasted until Jerusalem arose, that is, until such time as the true Jerusalem, the Church of the true children of God, appeared in Christ. Until this time Israel remained in bondage to the law, and all remain in that bondage now who cleave to the law and reject Christ.

(b) Now of this Jerusalem in its completion, this true Church ‘which is the mother of us all,’ Sarah, the wife of Abraham, of whom Isaac was born in fulfilment of the promise of God (and so the child of promise), is a type. And we all are the children of promise; and why should this Church of the free be ‘put in bondage with her children’? St. Paul contemplates the Church as the legalists would have it, as a Church in bondage, gone back to Mount Sinai; Isaac confused with Ishmael; the son of the bondwoman not distinguished from the son of the free.

II. In what does the proper freedom of the Christian consist?

(a) Freedom from the servitude and curse of the law.

(b) Freedom from the guilt of sin and its punishment, as well as from its rule.

(c) Freedom from the power and might of sin.

III. How shall we preserve this Christian freedom?

(a) It is imparted to us in holy baptism.

(b) He who will preserve it must be faithful to the Word of God and the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.

(c) The full freedom of grace is only found in eternity.

Illustration

‘What has nature to say about the forgiveness of sins? See her crushing relentlessly, by the operation of law, physical, mental, civil, the soul, the life, that has sinned. See her sternly, obdurately, refusing mercy to the poor victim of lust or intemperance, who has sinned but once or twice, sinned in ignorance, sinned under persuasion, sinned (we might almost say) by accident or by destiny. Who can dare to say for certain, apart from Jesus Christ, that that severity, amounting almost to cruelty, amounting almost to injustice, with which nature punishes transgression, is not the whole of God’s truth, and the whole of God’s counsel? Yet, unless you can believe in the forgiveness of sin, of your own sin—foul, black, hideous as you see it when you have once seen God, you must be in bondage, you must be a Hagar and an Ishmael inside the tabernacle.’