June 21, 2014 Galatians Chapter 4

Galatians Chapter 4

Monday August 18, 2008

General Comment: Paul has written that Christ is the singular offspring of Abraham and therefore the recipient of the God's Covenant promise and blessing. It follows that all who "belong to Christ" and are "in Christ" (believers) are also, by faith, recipients. We are Abraham's offspring and heirs of the promise. Genesis defines this covenant/promise/blessing in terms of the multitude of Abraham's descendants and the "promised land." In later history the land was the Kingdom of Israel established to its greatest extent during the reign of King David. This was considered the Golden Age. To the Israelites this was the ideal fulfillment of God's blessing and promise. Out of this grew the prophetic declaration of God's promise of the perpetual existence of the Davidic ancestral throne. There would always be an Israel and there would always be a King of the lineage of David. Of course, as history shows, this only lasted until 587 BCE when the line of David disappeared in the Babylonian exile. From then on, during and after the exile, the hope of regaining this ideal Kingdom was kept alive. There were various understandings of the re-emergence of the Kingdom to its former splendor. Most involved God working within history by raising up a new King to sit on David's throne. Some involved God's final intervention in a more cosmic sense in which God becomes the King who wipes away all enemies of Israel and establishes a new Israel as a Kingdom of justice, peace and plenty. The hope that this Kingdom would soon arrive became a central feature of Jewish Theology and was adopted and adapted by early Christianity.

For Paul Christ was the one who had already begun to establish this Kingdom. Belief in Christ became its point of entry. To believe in Christ through faith was to become "Abraham's offspring, heirs [to the Kingdom] according to the promise."

Galatians Chapter 4:1-7 The Purpose of the Law Continued

Paul addresses the Galatians who are being persuaded by "false apostles" to rely on the law for their justification. Writing of the Jewish experience, he characterizes the law as serving as a guardian and disciplinarian, a definer of sin but ineffective as an agent of justification. The law was incapable of assuring the receiving of the promise. In this chapter he develops the idea of the heir to the promise. Using the analogy of an inheritance he writes about the status of the heir. For all practical purposes the infants are like household slaves. They may own the father's estate but as long as they are minors under a guardian and before the appropriate date set by the father, they cannot possess it. The Jews, who are under the law which could not justify them, are slaves to the "elemental principles" of the world which he understands to be Satanic in nature. They could not receive the promised inheritance of justification until the "fullness of time." That time, Paul writes, arrived with the appearance in Israel of Christ, the Son sent by God, "born of a woman...under the law," to bring justification (redemption) to those under the law (Israel). Those "children" who believed received the inheritance (justification) from the Father.

In vs. 5b Paul shifts from the first bringing of redemption to those under the law to that of the Galatian Gentiles' experience when they first believed in the Christ preached by Paul. He interprets the initial sending of the Son and the offering of redemption to Israel as a necessary precursor to the mission to the Gentiles. Because they are not children of God in the way the Israelites are, Paul describes their inclusion in God's family as by adoption. In confirmation of adoption God has sent the Spirit of Christ through which they can respond from their hearts, "Abba." So then, the Galatians are no longer slaves without inheritance. They are children and heirs just as certain as are those who were under the law and believed.

Galatians Chapter 4:8-20 Paul Chastises the Galatians

Now Paul reminds the Galatians of the dire situation they were in before they came to know God. They were "enslaved" to the demonic nature of what they believed to be pagan gods. Now that they know the true God, how, he asks, can they succumb to the false gospel delivered by false apostles and turn their backs on what they have gained in Christ?" How can they submit themselves again as slaves to the "elemental spirits" to which those who are still under the law - even though they call themselves Christians, are enslaved? Here they are, adopting the useless mandates of the Jewish tradition, keeping special days (Jewish feast days), months and years, all calculated by the movement of the moon and sun. We should not lose the force of this startling reproach as Paul actually equates the Galatians' former practices of worshipping pagan idols with the celebration of Jewish events! As far as Paul is concerned this is enough to nullify all the work he has done among them. In effect he thinks he may have wasted his time.

Paul moves from chastisement to a plea. He begs them not to enslave themselves to the practices of Judaism being urged upon them but to become as he is in the same way he became the same as they were. In other words, as he has forsaken his Mosaic holiness practices to live among them as if he were a Gentile, he wants them to imitate him in his freedom in Christ. Vs. 12b is an indication that the Galatians have not completely abandoned Paul. They have not "wronged" (rejected) him yet. When he first preached among the Galatians they readily welcomed and gladly accepted him as if he were Christ. Even though he was suffering from a "physical infirmity" (thorn in the flesh) they did not shun him. So, he asks, what happened to that show of caring hospitality, that eagerness to have him among them and to hear his message? Have the false apostles depicted him as their enemy by deprecating the truth of the Gospel he preached? He charges them with deceitfully trying to flatter (make much of) the Galatians in order to win them over to their side against and to reject Paul. If it were possible to be with them he could stem this rising tide engulfing the Galatians. If he were there he would not be faced with the prospects of starting all over as their spiritual mother, going through labor pains again until they returned to the truth of Christ they first learned from Paul.

Galatians Chapter 4:21-5:1  An Allegory of Hagar and Sarah

(1) Paul supplies another example from the Abraham saga to demonstrate the false path to justification offered by the law. In the story of the birth of Ishmael, son of Hagar the slave, and Isaac, son of Sarah, a "free woman," he distinguishes between the two:

(2) Ishmael was born "according to the flesh ' while Isaac was born according to God's promise to Abraham.

(3) Fitting the two women into a rather loose allegory, Hagar represents the covenant of Mount Sinai "bearing children for slavery" to the Law of Moses.

(4) The reference to slavery to the law is understood in Paul's terms as the law being a dead end on the road to the justification the law cannot provide.

(5) Extending the allegory further, Hagar is Mount Sinai and "stands in line with" the present earthly Jerusalem of Paul's time and she is in slavery with her children.

(6) The allegorical connection here between Mount Sinai and Jerusalem is found in the similarity of the rigid demands of the Sinai covenant (Law) and that which is practiced by the Jews of Jerusalem. The false apostles who have come from Jerusalem to turn the Galatians away from Paul's freedom in Christ message represent the Jews of Jerusalem.

(7) However, if Hagar is the covenant of Mount Sinai whose children are born to slavery under the law in line with those in the present Jerusalem, the other woman, Sarah, is in line with the heavenly Jerusalem.  "She is free and she is [Paul's and the Galatians'] mother."

The cited scripture is from Isa. 54:1 in which the childless woman is meant to be the barren Sarah. She will ultimately rejoice at the birth of a son, the child of the promise. The desolate woman is Hagar whose children are many. One would think Hagar would be more blessed than Sarah based on the number of children. However her children are all under the curse of the law while Sarah's son is the bearer of the promise that ultimately comes through Christ. On another level, Sarah's line has been far more successful in bringing the Gentiles to God than Hagar's children under the law, which is the context of the Isaiah quotation.

Paul closes his argument from scripture reminding the Galatians they are children of the promise. He points to the false apostle from Jerusalem, equating their attacks against Paul with Ishmael's harassment of Isaac. Just as Hagar and Ishmael were driven out with no inheritance, so these false apostles should be driven out. They are "under the law" and, their being Christians not withstanding, they have rejected their inheritance by remaining under the law. Again for emphasis, Paul affirms the Galatians' entitlement as children of the promise, set free by Christ to remain free. He exhorts them to "stand firm" and not to turn away from what they have gained in Christ thereby submitting "again to a yoke of slavery."