Two Covenants
Galatians 4:21-5:1
Galatians Chapter 4, verse 21 through Chapter 5, verse really should be taken as a unit, and we'll endeavor to do that at least in part tonight if we don't finish it all. These verses, 21 to Chapter 5, verse 1 form the final section of Paul's argument on justification by faith. He has been trying to prove and with great success that a man is saved by grace, not law, by faith, not law, by promise, not good works, and he's gone about every way you can go since the beginning of Chapter 3 to show that.
We said that Galatians is divided into three sections, Chapters 1 and 2 are personal. That is he defends his personal right to minister as an apostle. Chapters 3 and 4 and are doctrinal. He defends the doctrine of justification by faith. And Chapters 5 and 6 are practical. He talks about the very practical Christian life that issues from right doctrine.
Now here we come to the closing of this doctrinal area and our very next study will begin the practical implications of sound doctrine. We'll get into the practical areas in Chapter 5 and 6 and I'm telling you it's so rich and exciting that there's great anticipation already in my heart. But here we're coming to the closing of the doctrinal area where Paul is attempting to show clearly that salvation is a matter of faith, not works, grace not law. And he's doing this in defense against the Judaisers who came in and upset the Galatian churches by teaching them that salvation depended upon circumcision and law.
Good works save nobody Paul says. And the Judaisers and all legalists of every kind are wrong. They are dead wrong. You cannot be saved by your good deeds. Now I'm not saying that God's moral law is bad. God's moral law is good. And even Christians are commanded in the New Testament to maintain God's moral law. But you can't be saved by maintaining his moral law. You have not the capacity for that. You'd have to be perfect. So the moral law is a goal to which every believer shoots. To do that which pleases God out of love for Him, but it is not a possibility for salvation.
And I might add too that in the Christian we say we're not living by law, but when we say that it doesn't mean we don't want to keep God's moral law. It means in terms of the Christian life that we do not live by the ceremonial ritual law. One of the things I think you learn in studying the New Testament is that the same word may have various meanings in different contexts. Paul says you can't be saved by the moral or ceremonial law. And the difference in that is, there's a moral law that says you should love God and you shouldn't kill and you shouldn't love, but there's a ceremonial law that says do this with an animal and make sure you dress like this and make sure you eat like that, so forth. God's moral law still works. It's still operative.
God's ceremonial law passed away didn't it with a new covenant. And so we are Christians still obliged to maintain the moral ethics of God in the power of the Spirit out of love for God, but not circumscribed to a ceremonial routine. A ceremonial law as he said earlier, "you observe days and months and times and years," and he says you're still hung up on the old ceremonies.
And so there is in this a very careful distinction. We're not saying that you throw out all of God's Old Testament moral law. We're saying that God, Himself, dispensed with the ceremonial part of it. The moral law is still good. And men today, Christians are still to seek to serve God obediently by keeping that which is his moral law, but never to be in bondage to the ceremonial.
Now in this particular section of Galatians, we have seen that the Holy Spirit who is the real author of Galatians behind Paul, the Holy Spirit gives us a contrast between faith and works. And the demarcation line is very explicit. It's a very obvious opposite. The only confusion that ever arises in faith and works arises in the minds of men. God is never confused about it. And I dare say if you've been with us all through our study of Galatians you shouldn't be confused about it either because it's so clear. There was an old covenant, a covenant of works, there's a new covenant, a covenant of faith and it's not really totally new because it was initially promised to Abraham.
The distinction between the two covenants is clear. Law is absolutely opposite from grace. If you mess grace up with law, you've ruined grace. The co-existence of those two is impossible. One cancels out the other. You can't have law and grace going together. There is only one way to be saved, that's by grace, and law cannot enter into it. But I think it's interesting and I think we know this that there's a satanic tendency and Satan propagates his truth avidly, but there's a satanic tendency among people to seek to serve their own salvation to themselves on the basis of their good deeds.
And I think it's true too that Christians often get in the same trap. We become saved by grace and then we revert back to thinking that we can gain merit with God by certain traditional dictated items that somebody laid down that make us spiritual or non-spiritual. It is characteristic of the human mind that it gravitates in its self diluted pride towards a system of salvation by good works or at least spirituality by good works and we sometimes hope that we can show our spirituality publicly by little things that we do. They'll think I'm spiritual if I'm doing this.
And it's like when you're sitting there watching television and you're watching something you shouldn't be watching and if the doorbell rings and you turn it off and grab your Bible and go to the door. Yes, yes, yes, how can I help you see? You know? And we're feigning a kind of spirituality at that point. It is characteristic then of the human mind to want to appear more holy or to gain more of God's favor by acts of the flesh.
And legalism, as I've said time and again, is not a question of what you do, it's a question of why you do it. You are a legalist if you did it to gain favor with God. You are not a legalist if you did it out of love for Him. That's the difference. If you're saying to yourself, well, I'll do this and God will rack up some more points for me and he'll like me better, then you're a legalist. It's a question of motive. If you're doing this to be spiritual, if you're doing it because you love God, you're not a legalist.
So Paul then brings these two into a final comparison and contrast in verses 21 through 5:1. Grace versus law, they cannot exist together. One cancels out the other. Now he uses a different type of argument here. He uses an allegory. And it's not so much an argument as it is an illustration of the argument that he's already made. It's as if he...and I want you...you're really going to have to think with me tonight. I'm going to try to go over this quickly so you don't get bogged down, but this is a very, very difficult passage. Some say it's the most difficult passage in the New Testament. There are things here that are very, very hard to understand, but not only this, the verses themselves it's hard to understand why Paul even takes this approach, very difficult.
So we're going to do the best we can with it and you're going to have to think along with me or you're going to come up with nothing. But Paul uses an allegory, but it isn't just so much...it isn't so much an argument as it is an illustration. You know how you make your point and then illustrate it to try to tie it down to make it clear? It seems as though that's what he's doing. He's already made his point again and again and again about grace over law. And now he illustrates it with the use of an Old Testament historical event interpreted allegorically. You say well that's fine, but what's an allegory?
An allegory comes from a Greek word believe it or not. Incidentally, verse 24 actually uses the word allegory. It says, "which things are an allegory." It comes from two Greek words, allos, which means another and allegoreo which means to speak. Allosallegoero, allegory, to speak another. It means to have an underlying meaning. It means to be saying one thing that is true, but under it implying something else that is true. It is as if the story which Paul uses here, which is fact incidentally, has in it inner principles and inner meanings inside the historic fact that is important. Now again here Paul shows that the very nature of law is inferior to the promise received in Christ. He is going to show us that mosaic law led to bondage, because it depended on the flesh. You try to earn your salvation through keeping God's law. You're doing it in the flesh and it leads you to slavery.
On the other hand, the promise given to Abraham leads to freedom, because it doesn't depend upon the flesh. It depends upon the spirit. Rigid adherence to the law, and that's any law. Anybody who tries rigidly to adhere to a code of ethics and earn his salvation leads himself into bondage and spiritual slavery. On the other hand, faith in God, faith in God purely on the basis of grace frees a man, that's the comparison.
And Paul has argued this from every angle. He presented a logical argument just reasoning it out. He presented the argument from experience when he said to the Galatians you know how it happened to you, look at your own experience. He presented the strong argument from exposition of Old Testament passages. Then he just gave a strong personal appeal which we saw last time. And now he sets forth an Old Testament story with an allegorical meaning as his final capping of this argument for grace over law.
And incidentally, it may seem an old story, but it's a relevant truth, because there are still people today trying to earn their way to God. Notice verse 21, let's begin there. "Tell me ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law?" Now what is he saying? Well, he is really exposing the ridiculous inconsistency of their desire. This little section is preached to anybody who desires to live under the law. Anybody. Tell me you that desire to live under the law. You people want to be under the law. Are you really listening to what the law says? This is what's called argumentum adhonimum. What that means is, it's an argument on your own grounds.
All right, you want to live by law, let me lay a little of the law on you and see how you like it. And it's a play on words too in a sense, because he's saying you want to live by mosaic law and that would include mostly the commands, let me lay on you the whole Pentateuch and select something out of it for you know the Jew was really, really prescribed to the first five books of the Old Testament. You who want to live by the law. Let me show you something else in the law. The first five books that's called the law, let me show you something.
And so what he does is, he argues on their grounds. You who desire to be under mosaic law, are you really aware of what's written in that law, the law that Moses wrote? The whole Pentateuch? Do you really know what it says there? Jesus used this very same argument in Matthew 21:15-16 in reference, I think it was to the Pharisees. It says there, "And when the chief priest and scribe saw the wonderful things that he did," that was the chief priest of the scribes, that would include Sadducees, "saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying in the temple and saying Hosanna to the son of David, they were very displeased and said unto him, hearest thou what thee say."
These children are crying out this to you as if you were somebody. And Jesus said, "Yes, have you never read out of the mouths of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise." You say hey you people who are experts in the law, you know what it says? You professional Old Testament scholars, have you bothered to read the Psalms? That's arguing on their own ground, adhominum.
Now it may be, this is interesting that Paul uses an allegorical approach here. And you say why does he do that? I haven't the faintest idea. Because it's the only place in the Bible where you have this. But it may be this, Paul wants such an air tight argument for salvation by faith, watch, that he even argues on the kind of arguing that they did. Now what kind did they do? Well, the rabbis always argued on the basis of allegory. So what he does here the Holy Spirit just says I've got an allegory for you and he approaches them again, adhominum on their own grounds.
The Judaisers were laying all the stress on the ritualistic laws and Paul says all right, let me talk to you about your law. And he uses that in a broad sense, much broader than they were, but they believed it all supposedly and so he was on safe ground by telling them here's what the law really says. Now let me add a footnote, because it's important. Allegory is not a legitimate approach to the scripture unless the Holy Spirit has so classified it. I personally believe that the only time you can justify allegorizing is when the Holy Spirit has done it in scripture. When the Spirit says it. It's a very clear thing. Verse 24 says "which things are an allegory."
Now you don't find that elsewhere in scripture. I believe that we are limited then to allegorizing the Old Testament insofar as the Holy Spirit, Himself, has done that. And I think the very explicit statement of scripture there indicates it. The reason I say that is you can allegorize the Old Testament away. You know, the old Hebrew rabbis, they gave meaning to everything. All the Hebrew characters, you see, have number equivalents. Instead of having a letter system and a number system like we do, ABC and so forth and 123, the letters and numbers in Hebrews mean either. So whatever your name was they would scramble all the numbers in it and come up with all kinds of crazy things.
And any time there was a repetition of a name, they would allegorize that. They would say that when God said Abraham, Abraham, what that really means is Abraham would have an afterlife. They allegorized everything. In other words, they said that the meaning that is there historically is very shall, very superficial, we've got to get into the deeper meaning. Well, listen boy when you open Pandora's box and let everybody allegorize everything you really come up with a lot of stuff. And if you want to read some interesting things, get a hold of some old Jewish writings and read the way the taught the Old Testament. You won't even believe it.
And I'm not belabor the point by giving you all kinds of illustrations. Let me just give you a couple of them. Well, incidentally the Alexandrian Jews, 200 years before Christ really went bananas on this thing and they left a legacy to the world that we never got over until the reformation. You know that all through the years up until the 1500's the church was trapped in allegory? For example, the journey of Abraham from Ur was the imaginary trip of a stoic philosopher who leaves his sensual understanding and arrives at his senses.
The two pence given by the good Samaritan to the innkeeper signified baptism and the Lord's Supper. Now that was not a secondary thought. That they said was the basic teaching of the two pence. The Euphrates River was not an actual river, but means the outflow of good manners. Pope Gregory the Great had an interesting interpretation of Job. It's almost unbelievable. Pope Gregory said Job's three friends denote the heretics, his seven sons are the twelve apostles, his seven thousand sheep are God's faithful people. His three thousand hump-back camels are the depraved Gentiles.
And that went on until Ernesty wrote a book on historical, grammatical approach to scripture around the time of the reformation, we finally got off that kick. But the church was embroiled in a horrible allegorical mess that came from the Jewish school at Alexandria and prior to that, from the rabbis. And so we do not accept allegory as an approach to the Old Testament. Where you take the Old Testament and you just make it mean anything you want it to mean and teach all kinds of stuff out of it.
We accept allegory only when the Holy Spirit states that it is an allegory. That the Spirit of God has built into it underlying significance. Otherwise, we are tossed to and fro and a hopeless arbitrariness that can lead us no where but to doom in interpretation. Now Paul's enemies and their Jewish friends, the enemies in Galatia that had come in and moved against him, prided themselves in the fact that they were the descendents of Abraham. And you know, this was their big deal, biological descent. Since we're the descendants of Abraham, why that saves us. In fact, it's so important to be plugged into the Jewish line that even you Gentiles are going to have to get circumcised and obey all the law and sort of be, you know, you could be Jews by proxy.
So Paul attacks at the point of Abraham and he takes this particular story of Abraham and he says the Spirit gives this an allegory and then he teaches the allegory to make his point. There are three points to it, the historical, the allegorical, and the personal. This little passage has a historical section in which he recites the story, an allegorical section in which he explains it allegorically, and a personal section in which he applies it. Now stay with it and we'll go quickly.
Verse 22, "It is written that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a free woman." You didn't know there were free women back in Genesis did you? Women's lib came along ago. All right, so there was a man named Abraham, he had two sons, and of course, as I said later on many more, but two in particular for this record. "The one by a bondmaid and the other by a free woman."
Paul's enemies were counting on their heritage from Abraham. And one of the Jews' greatest and everlasting boasts was we are of our father Abraham. We're secure because we're Jewish. God would never, ever do anything negative to us. We're Jewish. We're in the covenant. We're of the seed of Abraham. They thought they were eternally secure, so he starts at Abraham and then says let me tell you something. Abraham had two sons. It isn't so important who your father was, it's more important allegorically who your mother was. Now Paul had already hit the issue of Abraham hard in Chapter 3, verse 6 where he says, "Abraham believed God and it was counted to Him for righteousness." And then in verse 16, "To Abraham and his seed were the promises made, but it was not to seeds, but to one Christ." And it's only as you're in Christ that you know the blessing to Abraham. So he's already attacked that.
John the Baptist, you remember in Matthew 3 said to his Jewish contemporaries, "Do not presume to say to yourselves we have Abraham as our father for I tell you God is able to raise up from these stones children to Abraham." That's no big deal. Jesus confronted them and said, you know, "If you come to me and believe in me and obey my word, you'll be free." And they all said, we've never been in bondage to any man. Why we are the children of Abraham. And Jesus said to them later on, "You're of your Father the devil."
And so Paul here elaborates on what John implied and what Jesus taught. And to those people who are always boasting about being the children of Abraham being saved just because of where they were born and having the law and all that, he really lays it down. Now notice what he says. He says there's a great difference between the two sons of Abraham. One, they born of different mothers. One was born of a bondmaid, the other by a free woman. A bondmaid, paidiske, a slave, a female slave. Her name, Hagar. Her son, Ishmael. The other born by a free woman. Her name Sarah, her son Isaac. So he says it isn't so important who your father is, it's pretty important who your mother is allegorically speaking.
Verse 23, they not only were born of different mothers, they were born in different ways, watch. The story goes on. "But he who was of the bond woman was born after the flesh. But he of the free woman was by promise." Not notice this, this is really interesting, first of all, they were not only different mothers, but the whole thing came about biologically different. You say what do you mean?
The first one, it says, was born after the flesh. In other words, the first son was born in the normal way, just according to natural birth. The promise was clear. Go back for just a minute to Genesis 15. Genesis 15, "And Abraham said, 15:2, "Lord God, what will thou give me seeing I go childless?" I don't have any heir in my whole house except Eleazar of Damascus. And Abraham said, "Behold to me thou hast given no seed, and lo one born in my house is my heir. And behold the word of the Lord came unto him saying this shall not be thine heir, but he that shall come forth out of thine own loins shall be thine heir. And he brought him forth abroad and said look now toward heaven, count the stars if thou be able to number them, and he said unto him, so shall thy seed be and he believed in the Lord and he counted it to Him for righteousness." Now the promise came. Abraham, you are going to have a son. That would have been all right, except Abraham was 86 and Sarah was 76, and Sarah had been barren all her life.
No promise child was ever born, ever conceived to this point. Verse 1 of Chapter 16, "Now Sarah, Abram's wife bore him no children." Time marches on nothing happens. The promise just kind of there. And she had a handmaid, and Egyptian whose name was Hagar. And Sarah said to Abram, "Behold now, the Lord hath restrained from bearing. I pray thee, go in unto my maid, it may be that I may obtain children by her." She actually told her own husband to go in and raise up a child to her slave. That was bad advice. That was sinful, but it was bad action on Abram's part. That was sinful. And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarah, which could be the life verse of many men.
Verse 3, "And Sarah, Abram's wife, took Hagar her slave, the Egyptian, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife. And he went in unto Hagar and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived her mistress was despised in her eyes." It didn't do anything for the relationship between Sarah and Hagar, believe me. Well, the child was born. Now notice going back to Galatians. It says "He who was of the bond woman, Hagar, was born after the flesh." What does it mean? That Ishmael was born in just the normal way, the principle there, what is the underlying principle? It's the principle of flesh. Hagar and Ishmael illustrate the flesh principle.
You reject God's promise, you reject the way of faith, and you try to fulfill the will of God on your own, right? That's operating in the flesh, and that's the underlying meaning. That's the allegory that we're going to see in a minute. This is the principle of flesh, working to obtain what God gives for nothing. Do you see? If you just wait. This child was born naturally, represents the flesh, self effort, legalism. But the other child was born supernaturally. You say was Isaac virgin born? No, no, but he was born supernaturally. In what way? Sarah was barren. It was a divine miracle that she ever conceived him. By the time she did, she was 90. And Abram was 100. And that's...in Hebrews 11:11, it makes a big issue out of that and rightly it ought to.
"Through faith," and I'm going to re-orient the verse a little bit here, it says, "Through faith, he together with Sarah received strength to conceive seed when he was passed age because he judged him faithful who had promised." God gave Abraham and Sarah the power physically to have a baby. It was supernatural miracle. So what's He saying? He was saying one was born just in the normal way, the other way was born by a supernatural miracle. Now watch, one was the child of the flesh and self effort, the other was the child of the promise and faith.
So Ishmael illustrates self effort and legalism. Isaac illustrates faith. Now there you have the two parts of the allegory. Ishmael was born according to nature. Isaac was born against nature. And even Isaac's name is significant. Do you know what Isaac means? Laughter, gladness, rejoicing. God kept His promise. Now these two sons then become the patterns for the spiritual truth here and the two mothers as well.
Hagar and Ishmael illustrate the flesh. Ishmael was a son born in the natural way and he's representative of everybody who experience only natural birth. He represents anybody and everybody who experienced just natural birth, not the birth from above. And he was born into slavery, and he symbolizes everybody in bondage to the law. But Sarah and Isaac on the other side, why Isaac was born as a promise from God as a result of Abraham's what? Faith. It says it in Hebrews 11, "God did it because Abraham believed it." And this therefore, Isaac represents all those who have come to God by faith. We then say Ishmael was flesh born, Isaac was Spirit born.
Not in the sense of Christ being conceived of the Spirit, but in the sense that the Holy Spirit carried out a divine miracle on their physical bodies to make it possible. And so you have a very simple historic event, but underneath is a tremendous spiritual application. That brings us to the second part, the allegorical. We've seen the historical, here's the allegorical.
And this is easily interpreted once you know the history. Verse 24. "Which things are an allegory." Now beloved there you have the clear statement of the Holy Spirit that this is an allegory. It's true historically, it's true factually, but it has underlying meaning. The Holy Spirit has the right to make this an allegory. I don't think we have the right to do that to scripture. "For these are two covenants." Oh, then we see two sons and two mothers who represent two different covenants. That's clear isn't it? Ishmael would represent the covenant of what? Law. Isaac would represent the covenant of what? Grace through faith.
And you can't understand scripture my friend unless you know these two covenants. The whole Bible's divided into the old covenant and the new covenant. That's just another word for testament. A covenant is an agreement between God and men in which God promises to be their God and they be His people on certain terms. The Old Testament covenant was basically law. The New Testament and the new covenant originally given to Abraham, foretold through Jeremiah, was based on promise and resolved in Christ.
And the law, for example, God laid the responsibility on men didn't He? In the law, God laid the responsibility