Galatians 4:12-31

Galatians 4:12. Brethren, I beseech you, be as I am; for I am as ye are: ye have not injured me at all.

He had told them the gospel, and other teachers had come in and alienated their affections. He says, «Now I am just the same to you as ever I was; I wish you would have the same love to me.»

Galatians 4:13. Ye know how through infirmity of the flesh I preached the gospel unto you at the first. And my temptation which was in my flesh ye despised not, nor rejected; but received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus.

He dwells upon that. They had been so enthusiastic about his teaching when he first taught them, that he feels grieved that now they have gone aside to other teaching not because it injured him, but because it injured them.

Galatians 4:15. Where is then the blessedness ye spake of?

When you said that you were happy to live in Paul's days, glad to listen to so simple and plain a teacher.

Galatians 4:15. For I bear you record, that, if it had been possible, ye would have plucked out your own eyes, and have given them to me. Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?

Ah! there are many who have incurred enmity through speaking the gospel very plainly, for the natural tendency of man is towards ceremony, towards some form of legal righteousness: he must have something aesthetic, something that delights his sensuous nature, something that he can see and hear, to mix up that with the simplicity of faith; and Paul was as clear as noonday against everything of that kind, and so the Galatians got at last to be angry with him. Well, he could not help that, but it did grieve him.

Galatians 4:17. They zealously affect you, but not well; yea, they would exclude you, that ye might affect them.

They would, if they could, turn you out of our love that you might run after them. These false teachers would shut us out of your hearts that your hearts might go after them.

Galatians 4:18. But it is good to be zealously affected always in a good thing, and not only when I am present with you. My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you. I desire to be present with you now, and to change my voice; for I stand in doubt of you. Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law?

Will you not listen to what the law itself teaches? Here is a little bit from one of its first books, the book of Genesis.

Galatians 4:22. For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, and the other by a freewoman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh;

In the strength of Abraham.

Galatians 4:23. But he of the freewoman was by promise.

In the power of God, born after both father and mother had ceased to be capable of becoming parents, born in the power of God.

Galatians 4:24. Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants: the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Hagar.

Those that are under the law are the children, therefore, of the bondwoman: they are born slaves.

Galatians 4:25. For this Hagar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children.

It is old Judaism coming from Sinai, «This do, and thou shalt live,» and all the children that are born under it are children of nature, and they are not the children of promise.

Galatians 4:26. But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.

This is Sarah, and they that believe are the Isaac-children, the children of holy laughter, born according to the power of God.

Galatians 4:27. For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not: break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband, Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise. But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now.

The child of Hagar could not hear the child of Sarah, and they that seek salvation by the works of the law, and by outward ceremonies, cannot endure the children of faith.

Galatians 4:30. Nevertheless what saith the scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son; for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman. So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free.

This exposition consisted of readings from Galatians 4:12; Galatians 5:1; Galatians 5:19; Galatians 6:1.