Galatians 4
DODDGalatians 4:1-20
The apostle illustrates the superior excellency and freedom of the state into which believers as the sons of God are brought by the gospel, above the state which they were in before under the law, when they were only as minors under a rigorous tutor : and at the same time he reproves the Galatians, that they were no more resolute in adhering to that better dispensation, the first tidings of which they had received from him with so much affection. Gal. IV. 1—20.
GALATIANS IV. 1.
I OBSERVED to you, my friends, a little before, that while we were under the law, we were as in a state of minority ; (Chap. iii. 24, 25 ;) Now, for the further illustration of that thought, by what is known to be the usual method of dealing with children, I say, [that] so long as the heir of the most plentiful estate is a child in his nonage, he, with respect to the possession and free use of it, and to the right of managing it in his own person, differeth nothing from a servant, or bond man, though he be in title and by right of inheritance lord of all : But during his minority he is under the authority and restraint of governors and guardians, to whose tutorage and management he is committed, till the time appointed by the father when he shall be deemed of age, and be at liberty to manage his affairs himself. So likewise we, who, having been Jews before, have now embraced the faith of the gospel, when we were but as children in minority, though we had the promise and hope of the Messiah, were held in bondage under the discipline of the law ; in which we were employed, in a way suited to the imperfect circumstances of an infant state, about worldly elements, or about those inferior things which are but like the letters of the alphabet when compared with that sublime
• Worldly elements.] The Jewish rituals might be so called, not only on account of the relation which they had to worldly things, by which they were adapted to the low conceptions of children, who are most affected with sensible objects, and have no taste for spiritual and heavenly things ; but also, because the same kind of things had before obtained in the world, and were
in use among the heathens, though under the Mosaic law they were directed to better object and end. Some would consider it as referring to the unfitness of the Israelites, in the infancy of their common wealth, for receiving a more rational and sublime plan of religion, having been used in Egypt to so many pompous ceremonies,
VO . 5.
But we receive by Christ the adoption of
sense which they may be the means of teaching, when their power is duly understood, and the use of them become familiar to the mind: But when the fulness of the time, which had been marked out by the prophets for the accomplishment of this great event, was come, and we were arrived at the age appointed by our Father for entering upon our adult state, God sent forth his own Son, to give us the inheritance of the promise he had made of pardon and salvation, and bring us to a state of liberty and happiness. For to this end it was that the Messiah came; and that he might effect this grand design, he was pleased indeed to appear in a most humble form, taking upon him mortal flesh, made of the substance of a woman, according to the great original promise, (Gen. iii 15,) and was thus made under the discipline of the Mosaic law in all its rigour; That so by his submitting, not only to the precepts of the law, but likewise to the penalty and curse of it, he might redeem them who were under the yoke and curse of the law, and bring us into an happy liberty, both from the sentence of it, and from any future obligation to obey the ceremonial part of it; that, instead of that servile spirit which the law breathed, we might all, as believers in Christ, receive the adoption of sons, and see and know the happy privilege to which we are advanced in consequence of it. For unto all who are partakers of it, it is attended with the most joyful and beneficial effects; and because ye are thus admitted by the gospel to the full character and dignity of his sons, God hath graciously sent forth an abundant effusion of the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, O ye believing Galatians, as well as into the hearts of the Jewish converts, crying, Abba, Father;ᵇ giving us all, both Jews and Gentiles, in our different languages, an equal freedom in addressing ourselves to him with the overflowings of filial confidence and love.
So that now, O Christian, whatever be thy rank or station, or whether thou be Jew or
ᵇ Crying, Abba, Father] The learned fr Selden (de succ. in Bonna Def. cap iv.) hath brought a very pertinent quotation from the Babylonian Gemara, to prove that it was not allowed to have to use the title
of Abba in addressing the master of the family to which they belonged, or the correspondent title of Imma, or mother, when speaking to the mistress of it.
The Gentiles had been in bondage to idols :
Gentile, thou art no longer to look upon thyself : as a servant or bond man, or as standing on a level with such an one in point of present enjoyment ; but, on the contrary, as admitted to the liberty and freedom of a son at age : and if thou art indeed a son in such circumstances, then it follows, by an happy consequence, that thou art an heir of all the promises of God through Christ, and hast a claim to God himself, as to thy father and thy portion.
But if this was the case with the Jewish converts, that they were in a state of servitude while they continued under the law, the bondage of the Gentiles in their unregenerate state must have been greatly worse ; and it is still more absurd and unreasonable as to you Gentile converts, that when you have been called into a glorious liberty by the gospel, you should not entertain such liberal sentiments as are suited to it, but should be willing to submit to another servitude : for then indeed, when ye knew not the only true God and the way of being accepted with him, ye were in bondage to those stupid idols which by nature are no gods ; and greatly were your rational natures debased by so ignoble and absurd a service. But now, after that ye have known the mind and will of God, or rather are so happy as to be known of God, and he has shewn his favour to you, and brought you to the knowledge of himself by the instruction of his word and by the influence of his Spirit, how turn ye again into another kind of servitude to the weak and poor elements of the Mosaic ceremonies, which are
c Ye were in bondage to those which by nature are no gods ] It is evident here, that though these Christians had before their conversion been idolatrous Gentiles, the Judaizing teachers were desirous of subjecting them to the Mosaic ceremonies : from whence it appears how much those learned writers are mistaken who think the Jews only imposed these ceremonies on those who were already, as they affect to call them, Proselytes of the gate, or worshippers of the true God : and how vain is the attempt to prove from hence, that the instruction of abstaining from blood is to be considered as peculiar to them
d Weak and poor elements. ] The ceremonies of the law were weak, as they had
no sufficient power to cleanse the soul from sin, and justify the sinner in the sight of God ; and poor, as they could not confer the spiritual riches of the gospel, pardon and peace, and the assurance of enjoying life and happiness. Besides which it is to be remembered, that those who were most zealous for imposing the observance of the Mosaic ceremonies on the Gentile converts, were of the sect of the Pharisees, (Acts xv. 5,) who therefore would not fail to impose a great many additional observances, taught only by the tradition of the elders ; which may sufficiently account for the low terms which the apostle uses upon this occasion. Compare Rom. viii. 3 ; and Heb. vii. 18.
nd why would they su mit to another bon
so far beneath that glorious and happy state into which ye are called? Elements to which ye unaccountably desire again to be in bondage anew, changing indeed the form and object of your ceremonies, but retaining many of the same low, perplexing, and unprofitable observances. For as under heathenism you had your frequent feasts in honour of imaginary deities, so now ye observe the Jewish solemnities with as scrupulous an exactness; even your sabbath days, and the beginning of your months or new moons, and your times of grand festivals, and your sabbatical years, and those of jubilee. Indeed, my brethren, when I think of these things, I am afraid of you, lest it should be found that I have bestowed upon you so much affectionate labour in vain, while, after all the pains that I have taken to instruct you in the faith and liberty of the gospel, you appear to act as if you had forgotten what I taught you, and would be seeking justification from the law.
Give me leave, brethren, while I am thus expostulating with you and reproving you, most earnestly to beseech you with all tenderness, that ye be as I [am;] that ye maintain the same affectionate regard for me as I bear towards you; and that ye candidly receive those sentiments, which I, to whose authority in the church ye can be no strangers, have been inculcating upon you. And this I may the rather expect from what I have experienced in myself; for it is well known there was a time when I [was] as ye [are,] as much bigotted to the Mosaic rituals and Pharisaic traditions as any of you all can be: but God hath now taught me better;
Ye desire again to be in bondage anew. It is certain they could not be said to be in bondage to the Jewish ceremonies anew who had never been acquainted with them; but it was a bondage in some measure of the same kind; and that is all that can be intended here. I cannot think as you should be rendered from above; as if the meaning were, they had received such notice or demands from Jerusalem
I am afraid of you, &c.] Some have observed, there was a greater reason for this apprehension, as the fixing the time of the Jewish feasts depended upon the grand sanhedrim, so that their observing
them would bring them into such an intercourse with and dependence upon that court as might be greatly to the hazard of their Christianity.
I [was] as ye [are,] &c.] The words as you are ambiguous, and may either signify, I was, or I am as ye are. Our translation takes them in the latter sense; and then it must express his unanimity with them, which he urges as an argument for their unanimity with him, and affection to him. And as this suits the connection with the latter part of the verse, I have expressed that sense in the paraphrase; though the
tle reminds them how they at first received him.
and that your hearts may also feel the power of his grace, and every prejudice may be subdued and rooted out, I am solicitous that the purity of that truth which I have learnt in so extraordinary a manner, and which I have faithfully preached among you, may continue with you. Remember too, that I am Paul your apostle and your friend, for whom you have formerly expressed the highest affection; and as, whatever instability you may have shewn as to some important doctrines which I taught you, ye have not personally injured me at all, I can have no ill will to you, nor any inclination to find fault with you on my own account.
But, whatever change may be in you, I still retain the same affectionate regard I manifested for you at my first coming to you, when I was treated by you with the greatest respect, and you esteemed yourselves happy under my ministry, notwithstanding all the disadvantages that attended it: for ye well know that I preached the gospel among you at first, when ye were entire strangers to the happy contents of it, in the infirmity of the flesh, and indeed with a great mixture of weakness in my manner of expressing myself; which was the consequence of that disorder in the whole system of my nerves, that was occasioned by the revelations I had the honour to receive some time before I came among you: And yet with respect to this my temptation that was seated in my flesh,
former seems preferable, as more weighty, copious, and striking, and indeed I think more natural too; for it is certain many of them were much prejudiced against him, (chap. i 6; iv. 16,) while he was most tenderly affected towards them
My temptation that was in my flesh.] What the apostle here refers to must have been so well known to the Galatians, that it was needless he should give a particular description of it in his writing to them. Dr. Hammond and others explain it, of the persecutions which he suffered for preaching the gospel: but these could be no cause why the Galatians should despise him, and were so far from making him contemptible, that they must rather be an inducement to their receiving him with more respect, when he could bear such
sufferings in vindication of the doctrine he delivered. The apostle speaks of it as an infirmity and temptation seated in his flesh, which by the effect it had upon him might render both his person and his speech obnoxious to contempt, and have a tendency to make him despicable in the eyes of others; agreeable to which he elsewhere mentions it as objected to him, that his bodily presence was weak, and his speech contemptible, (2 Cor. x. 10,) and, on the whole, there seems to be so manifest a resemblance between his representing this temptation as in his flesh, and what he says of the thorn in the flesh, that was given to humble him after the abundance of his revelations, (2 Cor. xii. 7,) that I can see no room to scruple why we may not take it for an effect of that memorable circum-
They then thought themselves happy in his m
(for a temptation indeed it was, and sometimes threw me into greater anxiety than it ought to have occasioned,) I had however the consolation to see, that *you did not despise it, or reject [me] with scorn on account of it; but, on the contrary, struck with the importance of my message and those evident proofs of a Divine cooperation that attended it, ye received me as if I had been an angel of God come down from heaven to you, [yea] with as much affection and submission as it can be supposed you would have shewn to our Divine master Christ Jesus himself, if, instead of sending me as his messenger and ambassador, he had visited you in person. What was then your felicity?¹ and how great was the sense you had of your happiness, upon your first receiving the glad tidings of the gospel from me, when such a change was made in your state, and your hearts were under the impulse of such holy affections, as that you could not but congratulate yourselves and me upon it? you cannot surely have forgot it; for I bear you witness, that if [it had been] possible you could have done it, and I could have received any benefit by it, you would even have plucked out your own eyes, and have given them to me, as a convincing proof of your affection for me. And why should there now be such a change in your disposition towards me? Am I therefore become your enemy, or have you any reason to account me such, unless it be because I tell you the truth, and bear a faithful testimony to the uncorrupted gospel which I desire to maintain among you in all the purity in which I planted it? •
stance which must have happened some time before his preaching first to the Galatians, and was attended with such consequences as might still be discernible in him, since it was not removed on his desire to be delivered from it. See note ¹, on 2 Cor xii. 7, Vol iv. p. 472.
¹ What was then your felicity? Some think that St. Paul here refers to the high things which they spake of himself, and to their blessing him for what he taught them; and Mr. Locke would have it, that the sense of this clause must be, “What benedictions did you then pour
out upon me?” But howsoever this would be, the consequence of their accounting themselves happy in having him for their apostle, and being instructed in the gospel by him, that upon this they would be heaping blessings on him, in testimony of the high regard which they had for him; it does not suit so well with the original, which rather is expressive of the sense they had of their own happiness in being enlightened by him in the knowledge of the gospel; for such appears to be the proper meaning of the words μάκτισθαι φακ. Com are Rom. iv. 6, 9
w their affection was alienated from him.
I do not indeed impute this alienation of affection wholly to yourselves; for I know that a great many dishonest artifices have been used to prejudice your minds against me, and there are those among you who would endeavour to persuade you that they zealously affect you, and have an extraordinary concern for your welfare, [but] are not upright and sincere, and what they aim at is not well, as they are seeking to subvert the truth, and to seduce and draw you off to their own sentiments; yea, they would quite exclude and shut us out from any share in your regards, that ye may zealously affect and be attached to them, and, having engrossed you to themselves, they may thus have an opportunity of promoting their own secular views at your expense. But it is fit you should remember, that [it is] good for you to be zealously affected always in that which is good:¹ for as the beauty and excellence of zeal is to be estimated, not by the degree of it considered in itself, but by the object to which it is directed; so too the warmth of your affection towards an object truly worthy of it should be at all times equally maintained; and the same fervent zeal which you have formerly expressed, ought to be manifested by you, not only when I am present with you, but in my absence too, if you really think me to deserve your regards, and have indeed received the truth in the love of it.
What shall I say to you, my dear little children, of whom I hoped I had begotten you in Christ Jesus through the gospel? (1 Cor. iv. 15.) I am in great anxiety of heart concerning you, and am so earnestly solicitous you may be
ᵇ They would shut us out.] Though most copies read it ικαλισσα υμας, the sense appears more natural and easy, if we read us rather than you; and as there is no doubt but the apostle here refers to the endeavours used by their false teachers to alienate their affections from himself, it may induce us to prefer this reading, which has the countenance of some copies, and upon this account is put by our translators in the margin.
¹ To be zealously affected always in that which is good.] Εγ καλα either may refer to
a good person, or a good thing, and may be understood of their continuing zealous in their affection, either to himself, or to the truth that he had preached. But as the apostle had been speaking of himself in the foregoing verses, he likewise seems to have still in view the warmth of their affection to him when he was present with them; though he expresses it in a graceful way, with such a latitude, as may include the zeal for his doctrine, as well as for his person: and I have chosen, therefore, not to limit it to either in the translation.
6 The apostle expresses his great concern or sect. vii found to have received the grace of God in truth, that I declare, with all the undissembled tenderness of a most affectionate parent, I travail as it were in birth again, and am in pangs about you, till Christ be fully formed in you, and I have the happiness to see clear evidences of the prevalence of true Christianity in all its branches in you, by which it may appear you are renewed after the image of Christ, and are really brought to a life of faith in him. But since I find you have lost so much by my absence, and have unhappily been set upon by those who have took the opportunity of it to practise upon you, I could heartily wish to be present with you even now, and to see cause to change my voice towards you, so as to speak to you in terms of greater confidence, assurance, and complacency, than I now can; for indeed I am in great doubt and in much perplexity about you; and though I do not absolutely despair of your recovery and establishment, yet I am not without very discouraging apprehensions lest, after all the pains that I have taken with you, the good effects of my labours among you should in a great measure be lost. Gal v. 19 20 verse As the church in general was in its minority till the full revelation of the gospel came, so is every true member of it a minor while he continues in this world, and is in many instances inferior to some who have no part in the inheritance; but the time will come, when, as an heir who is deemed of age, he shall be admitted into full possession; and it will amply and immediately repay all the abasements and mortifications of that state in which the wisdom and love of our heavenly Father hath at present placed us. 4, 5 The grand foundation of this hope is that infinite love which we can never sufficiently acknowledge and admire, even the love of God our Father, in sending forth his Son at the appointed time made of a woman, and made under the law, subject at once both to its precepts and its penalty, to redeem us when we were under its condemning sentence, and to introduce us to all the privilege of that Divine adoption which we receive from him. May each of us, in consequence of it, receive more and more of that spirit of adoption whereby we may be enabled to raise our souls to God with all the holy overflowing of genuine filial affection, while
Reflections on the regard due to faithful ministers.
we daily cry, Abba, Father, “Send forth, O God, this Spirit of thy Son into our hearts, whatever worldly benefits and delights thou mayest deny us; that we may thus rejoice in the assurance that we are heirs of God through Christ, and may be able to glory in this, that the Lord is our inheritance!”
If we thus know God, being delivered from the bondage of corruption, and from those idolatrous regards to the creature, to which our hearts are naturally so inclined; let us acknowledge that it is because we rather have been known of him, and being apprehended by his grace, he hath received us into the number of his sons, and given us the knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus. Let us act suitably to such a character, and be solicitous to maintain the purity of that religion by which we are brought to such exalted dignities and hopes. And let our hearts be always open to receive the truth in the love of it; not despising the infirmities of those that preach the gospel to us in faithfulness, nor allowing ourselves at any time to look upon them as our enemies, for the plainness with which they may tell us the truth; which is sometimes the case with regard to those who might once have been ready, in the forwardness of their zeal and affection, almost to have plucked out their own eyes for ministers whom they afterwards slight and forsake.
Let us labour after a steadiness in our temper and conduct, and take heed that our zeal be so guided as that it may centre upon objects truly good, and may continue to act in proportion to their excellency; always suspecting those principles and those persons who would alienate our hearts from any of the faithful servants of Christ, because they do not agree with our sentiments about the circumstantials of religion.
Such as the apostle Paul expresses here with so much tenderness will be the desires of every faithful minister for the spiritual children which God hath given him: and where he sees reason to stand in doubt of any of whom he had once good hopes through grace, lest perhaps he should have bestowed upon them labour in vain, it will give him a deep and a tender distress, and he will, as it were, travail in birth again, till Christ be formed in them. His very heart will be in pain for this: and what can be a greater or more worthy object of desire? O that it might appear that Christ is formed in the very souls of all that are called by his name! So would ministers have a firm foundation of joy in them, and they of hope towards God for that eternal happiness which can only be built upon Christ; upon Christ formed in them, as the only well grounded hope of glory. (Col. i. 27.)
VOL. 5.
An allegory drawn from the two sons of Abraham.
Galatians 4:21
The apostle illustrates the subject of his foregoing discourse by an allegory borrowed from what is written of Sarah and Hagar, and their respective seed. Gal. IV. 21, to the end. V. 1.
GALATIANS IV. 21.
I HAVE been saying a great deal to take you off from any further thoughts of becoming subject to the Mosaic law: but if you still have any inclination to it, tell me now, ye who are desirous of being under the law, do ye not hear and call to mind what is said in the book of the law itself, which is so often read in your assemblies? There is a passage even in the first book of that sacred volume, which is very capable of being improved to your instruction, if you rightly enter into it. For it is written there, (Gen. xvi. 15, and xxi. 2, 3,) that Abraham the great patriarch, in a descent from whom so many are ready to glory, had two sons, who, though equally related to him, were by no means equal with regard to the blessings which they were to inherit: the one of these he had by Hagar a bond woman, and the other by Sarah a free woman, whose name signifies a Lady or Princess, and so may be understood as importing not only liberty, but authority. But there was a great difference between them; for he [who was born] of Hagar the bond woman, that is, Ishmael, was born only according to the flesh, and produced in the common order of nature, without any particular promise of God, or any unusual interposition of his power and providence; whereas he [who was born] of Sarah the free woman, that is, Isaac, [was born] by virtue of the promise, when his parents were in the course of nature absolutely incapable of producing a child; and upon him the peculiar blessings of the Divine promise were entailed.
Now I would lead you to an evangelical improvement of this remarkable and mystical fact; which contains many concurrent circumstances, so nearly resembling what we now observe with regard to the Jewish and Christian religion, and
The apostle illustrates, by Hagar and Sarah,
an allegory: for the professors of both, that I cannot but prothese are the two pose them to you as things that may be profitacovenants; the one bly allegorized. For these two persons (Hagar rom the mount Si- and Sarah) are, that is, may well be considered ai, which gender- as representing, the two celebrated covenants, th to bondage, or the two dispensations of the law and gospel, which is Agar. the tenor of which is so different: the one that
was delivered from mount Sinai, is that which bringeth forth her children to bondage, which is Hagar, whose servile disposition and state may be considered as an emblem of that less ingenuous dispensation. This Hagar, I say, whose name signifies a Rock, is a representation of those who are under the law given from mount Sinai in Arabia, in the deserts of which the Hagarenes who descended from Ishmael were settled; and it answers in the allegory to the present state of the earthly Jerusalem, which with her children is in a state of bondage, as being in subjection to so many ritual observances, and under a sentence of wrath on the commission of the least wilful offence, which hath the greatest tendency to produce a mean and disingenuous fear. But the Jerusalem above, or that celestial society to which all that believe, both Jews and Gentiles, are come, and are united, under the new and better dispensation of the gospel covenant, is the free woman, answering to Sarah in the superior character and state to which it introduces us, and is indeed the mother of us all; to whom we as Christiians do all belong, and by virtue of our relation to whom we not only are at present in a more liberal and happy condition, but become heirs,
a This Hagar, I say, &c.] The particle cannot here have its illative force, since it would be very injurious to the apostle to suppose he meant to argue thus, Mount Sinai is Hagar — for this Hagar is Mount Sinai. It must therefore here signify the same with I say, and only introduce the repetition of a thought which the apostle was desirous to inculcate; as it often does elsewhere. Compare Rom. iii. 2, and xv 27
b Jerusalem above is the free woman, which is the mother of us all.] Some have thought the apostle here suggests an
argument to prove the liberty of the Christian Church from the great number of its converts, which would have rendered the observation of many of the Mosaic precepts impossible: but that intimation, iintended, must have been very obscure. It is more reasonable to conclude that hrefers to the free genius of Christianity, which, when compared with Judaism, is extremely obvious, and made it evidently fit, in the illustration of this allegory, to consider the free woman, that is, Sarah, as representing the church under this noble form.
The two dispensations of the law are gospel.
as Isaac was, of the promises which God was pleased to make to our father Abraham.
And there is a passage in the prophecy of Isaiah, which may naturally suggest such a thought: *for it is written there,*⁵ with reference to the greater freedom and enlargement of the church in the times of the Messiah, (Isa. liv. 1.) “Rejoice, and be exceeding glad, thou barren, who for a long time didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud for joy, thou who didst not travail in birth: for such is now thy happy state, that many more are the children of the desolate than of her who had an husband.” The children of the Christian church, the spiritual seed of the true Sarah, shall (as the prophet there suggests) be abundantly more numerous than those of the Jewish ever were; and what we see at present of its enlargement and prosperity may encourage our faith in the promises relating to its yet
⁵ For it is written.] Mr. Pierce has a learned and ingenious dissertation (at the end of his paraphrase on the Philippians) to prove that the apostle here asserts that Isaiah, in the passage he quotes from his prophecy, points out the allegorical correspondence between the Christian church and Sarah, on which he had been insisting in this section: and accordingly this critic renders those words in ver 24, *ἀνάσιος ἀνάσιος, which things are allegorized, that is, are actually turned to this sense by the prophet; who (as he says) calls out, in this liv⁶ chapter, to some woman celebrated for having children after long barrenness, to shew that something like this should happen after the sufferings and resurrection of the Messiah, which had been foretold in the lii⁷ And having observed that no person mentioned in the Old Testament can so properly be addressed in such language as Sarah, who in respect of children might be called desolate, whereas Hagar was the married wife and mother, he thinks it reasonable to conclude from hence, that she was referred to by Isaiah, as St. Paul according to him asserts in this text. But, not to insist on the impropriety of giving Hagar, who was only a slave and a consubine, the character and title of the married wife, in opposition to Sarah, the principal wife and undoubted mistress of the family, I think the context in Isaiah plainly shews that the prophet refers to the future conversion of the Jews, and the increase and prosperity of that happy nation after its long rejection, as far exceeding what it had known before in its most favoured state. (Isa. liv. 6, seq.) And therefore I would choose to explain this passage in St. Paul, as an allusion, rather than an argument; which frees it from many objections and embarrassments to which it would otherwise have appeared liable. If any should urge that such glosses are of little importance, it may be sufficient to reply, that they were much in the Jewish taste, and that we may assure ourselves that the apostles were preserved from any thing in them which was not perfectly agreeable to the mind of the Spirit. On the whole, I entirely agree with Mr. Chandler, that this part of the epistle was not intended to prove Christianity, but to illustrate the different genius of that and Judaism, and to shew that no all the carnal descendants of Abraham, but the spiritual offspring only, were heirs, even according to the principles which the Jews themselves readily admitted. See Chandler of miracles, p. 345, 346. And Dr. Sykes’s interpretation agrees with this. Compare Sykes on the Truth Christianity, p. 195, 199.
The children who are after the flesh are cast out.
more universal spread and brighter glory in the latter day.
Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, the children of promise.
Now, to apply what I have been saying to ourselves, we, brethren, like Isaac, are the children of Abraham, not according to the flesh, but as born of the Spirit in virtue of the promise; and so are heirs of the blessings of the covenant, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, in consequence of our believing in Christ, and being united to him, as the Seed in which it was declared that all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
But as then he that was born after the flesh, persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now.
But indeed the parallel holds farther still, in this respect; that as then he who was born after the flesh, that is, Ishmael, in whose production there was nothing beyond the common course of nature, mocked and derided.
and so persecuted him [who was born] after the Spirit, that is, Isaac, who was produced as the spiritual seed by the special energy of God’s miraculous power, even so [it is] now; the carnal Jews, who are the seed of Abraham after the flesh, abuse and persecute us Christians, who are Abraham’s seed after the Spirit. But what saith the scripture in regard to this? The oracle is correspondent to the case before us; for it there follows, (Gen. xxi. 10,) “Cast out the bond woman and her insolent son; for the son of the bond woman shall not inherit with Isaac, the son of the free woman:” which howsoever grievous it might seem to Abraham, when it was said by Sarah, yet God himself confirmed the sentence, and directed that it should be done: and in like manner also shall the rebellious Jews be treated, who, notwithstanding their boasted descent from Abraham, shall be cast out of the church and family of God, and shall be visibly expelled and (as it were) turned out of doors by him, as the mocking Ishmael was, for insulting those whom God hath chosen for his covenant children, and shall not be permitted to be heirs of the promise with them.
So then, upon the whole, my brethren, we that believe in Christ are not children of the bond woman, under subjection to the servile dispensation of the law; but we are children of the free woman, and have the privilege of being
Reflections on the liberty we obtain by Chr
called into a state of liberty under the spiritual covenant of the gospel. See to it, therefore, that you strenuously maintain the privilege and freedom you are called to, and, without yielding in the least to those who are endeavouring to seduce you to a subjection to the law, let me exhort you to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free:ᵈ contend earnestly for the purity and honour of that religion which he hath established, and be not persuaded to be entangled again with the yoke of bondage; of which you appear to be in danger, from what I hear of your circumstances, and am informed of the temper of some among you.
IMPROVEMENT.
chap. Let us not allow ourselves to cavil at a passage like this that iv. 21 we have now been reading, but submit to the authority of this seq. divinely inspired interpreter, who we are sure was enabled to explain and improve scripture in such a manner as he, by whose Spirit it was dictated, knew to be most agreeable to its spiritual design.
chap. Let us bless God, that we are children of the free woman; that iv. 31 we are so happy as to be called to so liberal and ingenuous a dispensation, and are not fettered with that yoke of bondage, or doomed to those servile terrors, which would have been so grievous, had we been left to them unsupported by the grace of the gospel, and which would so much have abated our comforts, had they been incorporated with the Christian dispensation.
Well may we rejoice to hear in prophecy of the glorious increase here promised to the church: let us be thankful that it hath in part been accomplished; and let it invigorate our prayers for the hastening that happy time, when the desolate shall enlarge the place of her tents, and stretch forth the curtains of her habitations; when she shall lengthen her cords, and strengthen her stakes; and, though long afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted she shall see her pavement of fair colours, and her foundations of sapphires; her windows shall be made of agates, and her gates of carbuncles. (Isa. liv. 1, 2, 11, 12.)
In the mean time, let us guard against the disingenuous temper of the son of the bond woman, against every thing that may
ᵈ Therefore stand fast in the liberty, &c] the end of this section. It is made the close This exhortation is so evidently grounded of the fourth chapter in three of Stephens’ what the apostle had been saying just copies; which seems to be more proper before, that it seems best to be connected than to make it, as we generally do, the with it, and I have therefore placed it at beginning of another chapter.
Christ profits nothing, and is become of no effect
look like persecuting our brethren. It is much better, if such be the will of God, that we should suffer ill usage from them; staying our souls upon the promises of God, which shall all be assuredly accomplished in their season. Yet may all this meekness and gentleness be exercised, in full consistency with that generous care to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, which we owe to ourselves, our brethren, and our children; and indeed owe to the honour of our common Christianity, and to the regard we should express to him who hath broken the yoke from our shoulders; who cannot be pleased to see us voluntarily entangling ourselves with it anew, or meanly lying down under the oppressive hands of those who in the abuse of his sacred name would presume again to bind it upon us.