13. Isaac and Ishmael
Many people regard this as the most difficult passage in the epistle to the Galatians. For one thing, it assumes a knowledge of the Old Testament which few people possess today; there are references in it to Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael, Isaac, Mount Sinai and Jerusalem. For another, the argument of Paul is a somewhat technical one; it is an allegory which would have been familiar in the Jewish rabbinical schools.
Even so, the message of these verses is right up to date and is especially relevant to religious people. According to verse 21 it is addressed to those who want to be under the law. There are many like this today. They are not, of course, the Jews or Judaizers to whom Paul was writing, but people whose religion is legalistic, who imagine that the way to God is by the observance of certain rules. There are even professing Christians who turn the gospel into law. They suppose that their relationship to God depends on a strict adherence to regulations, traditions and ceremonies. They are in bondage to them.
To such people Paul says: you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says? (21). With these Judaizers he meets them and refutes them on their own ground. He exposes the inconsistency, the illogicality, of their position. ‘You want to be under the law?’ he asks. ‘Then just listen to the law! For the very law whose servant you want to be will be your judge and condemn you.’
There are three stages in the argument of this paragraph. The first is historical, the second allegorical and the third personal. In the historical verses (22–23) Paul reminds his readers that Abraham had two sons, Ishmael the son of a slave and Isaac the son of a free woman. In the allegorical verses (24–27) he argues that these two sons with their mothers represent two religions: a religion of bondage which is Judaism, and a religion of freedom which is Christianity. In the personal verses (28–31) he applies his allegory to us. If we are Christians, we are not like Ishmael (slaves), but like Isaac (free). Finally, he shows us what to expect if we take after Isaac.
1. Stage one: the historical background (4:22–23)
It is written that Abraham had two sons (22). One of the Jews’ loudest and proudest boasts was that they were descended from Abraham, the father and founder of their race. After centuries of confusion following the fall of humanity, it was to Abraham at last that God revealed himself plainly. He promised to give to Abraham both the land of Canaan and descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. Because of this divine covenant with Abraham and his descendants, the Jews believed themselves to be safe – eternally, undeniably safe.
So John the Baptist needed to say to his Jewish contemporaries: ‘do not think you can say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our father.” I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham’ (Matt. 3:9). In the same way, when Jesus told the Jews that if they continued in his word they would truly be his disciples and would know the truth which would set them free, they replied,
‘We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?’ . . .
‘If you were Abraham’s children [that is, spiritually as well as physically],’ said Jesus, ‘then you would do what Abraham did. As it is, you are looking for a way to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. Abraham did not do such things . . .’
‘We are not illegitimate children,’ they protested. ‘The only Father we have is God himself.’
Jesus said to them, ‘If God were your Father, you would love me . . . You belong to your father, the devil.’
(John 8:31–44)
The apostle Paul now sets out what John the Baptist implied and what Jesus taught explicitly. True descent from Abraham is not physical but spiritual. Abraham’s true children are not those with an impeccable Jewish genealogy, but those who believe as Abraham believed and obey as Abraham obeyed. This was the argument of Galatians 3, namely that the blessing promised to Abraham comes not upon Jews as such, the physical descendants of Abraham, but upon believers, whether Jews or Gentiles (see Gal. 3:14). Again, ‘If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise’ (Gal. 3:29; see also Rom. 4:16). We cannot claim to belong to Abraham unless we belong to Christ.
This double descent from Abraham, the false and the true – the false being literal and physical, the true being figurative and spiritual – Paul sees illustrated in Abraham’s two sons, Ishmael and Isaac. Both had Abraham as their father, but there were two important differences between them.
The first difference is that they were born of different mothers: Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman (22). Ishmael’s mother Hagar was a slave woman, Abraham’s servant. Isaac’s mother Sarah was a free woman, Abraham’s wife. And each boy took after his mother. So Ishmael was born into slavery, but Isaac into freedom.
The second difference is that they were born in different ways. Not, of course, that the biological processes of conception and birth were different, but that different circumstances gave rise to their births. His son by the slave woman was born according to the flesh [or ‘in the course of nature’, neb], but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a divine promise (23). Isaac was not born according to nature, but rather against nature. His father was a hundred years old and his mother, who had been barren, was over ninety. This is how it is put in Hebrews 11:11: ‘by faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she considered him faithful who had made the promise’. Notice the word ‘promise’. Ishmael was born according to nature, but Isaac against nature, supernaturally, through an exceptional promise of God.
These two differences between Abraham’s sons, that Ishmael was born a slave according to nature, while Isaac was born free according to promise, Paul recognizes as an allegory (these things are being taken figuratively, 24). Everyone is a slave by nature, until in the fulfilment of God’s promise he or she is set free. So everyone is either an Ishmael or an Isaac, either still what he or she is by nature, a slave, or by the grace of God set free.
2. Stage two: the allegorical argument (4:24–27)
Although they are historical events, the circumstances of the births of Ishmael and Isaac also stand for a deeply spiritual truth. The women represent two covenants (24).
An understanding of the Bible is impossible without an understanding of the two covenants. After all, our Bibles are divided in half, into the Old and New Testaments, meaning the Old and New ‘Covenants’. A covenant is a solemn agreement between God and human beings, by which he makes them his people and promises to be their God. God established the old covenant through Moses and the new covenant through Christ, whose blood confirmed it. The old (Mosaic) covenant was based on law; but the new (Christian) covenant, foreshadowed through Abraham and foretold through Jeremiah, is based on promises. In the law God laid the responsibility on human beings and said ‘You shall . . . you shall not . . .’; but in the promise God keeps the responsibility himself and says ‘I will . . . I will . . .’
In this passage there are not only two covenants mentioned, but also two Jerusalems. Jerusalem, of course, was the capital city which God chose for the land that he gave to his people. It was natural, therefore, that the word ‘Jerusalem’ should stand for God’s people, just as ‘Moscow’ stands for the Russian people, ‘Tokyo’ for the Japanese, ‘Washington’ for the Americans and ‘London’ for the English.
But who are the people of God? God’s people under the old covenant were the Jews, but his people under the new covenant are Christians, believers. Both are ‘Jerusalem’, but the old covenant people of God, the Jews, are the present city of Jerusalem, the earthly city, whereas the new covenant people of God, the Christian church, are the Jerusalem that is above, the heavenly. Thus, the two women, Hagar and Sarah, the mothers of Abraham’s two sons, stand for the two covenants, the old and the new, and the two Jerusalems, the earthly and the heavenly.
Take Hagar first. As the mother who bore children into slavery, she stands for the covenant from Mount Sinai, the Mosaic law. This is clear, Paul says in an aside, because Mount Sinai is in Arabia, and the Arabians were known as ‘the sons of Hagar’. It is even more clear from the fact that the children of the law, just like Hagar’s children, are slaves. So Hagar stands for the covenant of law. She also corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children (25).
But Sarah was different: But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother (26). That is, if Hagar, Ishmael’s mother the slave woman, stands for the earthly Jerusalem or Judaism, then Sarah, Isaac’s mother, being a free woman, stands for the heavenly Jerusalem or the Christian church. And, Paul adds, she is our mother. As Christians we are citizens of the Jerusalem that is above. We are bound to the living God by a new covenant, and this citizenship is not bondage, but freedom.
Paul goes on (in 27) to quote Isaiah 54:1. Its reference to two women, one barren and the other with children, is not to Hagar and Sarah, but to the Jews. The prophet is addressing the exiles in Babylonian captivity. He likens their state in exile, under divine judgment, to that of a barren woman finally deserted by her husband, and their future state after the restoration to that of a fruitful mother with more children than ever. In other words, God promises that his people will be more numerous after their return than they were before. This promise received a literal but partial fulfilment in the restoration of the Jews to the Promised Land. But its true, spiritual fulfilment, Paul says, is in the growth of the Christian church, since Christian people are the seed of Abraham.
This, then, is the allegory. Abraham had two sons, Ishmael and Isaac, born of two mothers, Hagar and Sarah, who represent two covenants and two Jerusalems. Hagar the slave stands for the old covenant, and her son Ishmael symbolizes the church of the earthly Jerusalem. Sarah the free woman stands for the new covenant, and her son Isaac symbolizes the church of the heavenly Jerusalem. Although superficially similar, because both were sons of Abraham, the two boys were fundamentally different. In the same way, Paul is arguing, it is not enough to claim Abraham as our father. The crucial question concerns who our mother is. If it is Hagar, we are like Ishmael, but if it is Sarah, we are like Isaac.
3. Stage three: the personal application (4:28–31)
Now you, brothers and sisters, like Isaac, are children of promise (28). If we are Christians, we are like Isaac, not Ishmael. Our descent from Abraham is spiritual, not physical. We are not his sons by nature, but by supernature.
What follows is this: if we are like Isaac, we must expect to be treated as Isaac was treated. The treatment Isaac got from his half-brother Ishmael is the treatment that Isaac’s descendants will get from Ishmael’s descendants. And the treatment that Isaac got from his father Abraham is the treatment that we must expect from God.
a. We must expect persecution
At that time the son born according to the flesh persecuted the son born by the power of the Spirit. It is the same now (29). At the ceremony at which Isaac was weaned, when he was probably a boy of three and Ishmael a youth of seventeen, Ishmael ridiculed his little half-brother Isaac. We do not know the details of what happened, because Ishmael’s attitude is described by only one Hebrew verb, probably meaning that he ‘laughed’ or ‘mocked’ (Gen. 21:9). Nevertheless, it is clear that Isaac was the object of Ishmael’s scorn and derision.
We must expect the same. The persecution of the true church, of Christian believers who trace their spiritual descent from Abraham, is not always by the world, who are strangers unrelated to us, but by our half-brothers, religious people, the nominal church. It has always been so. The Lord Jesus was bitterly opposed, rejected, mocked and condemned by his own nation. The fiercest opponents of the apostle Paul, who dogged his footsteps and stirred up strife against him, were the official church, the Jews. The monolithic structure of the medieval papacy persecuted all Protestant minorities with ruthless, unremitting ferocity. And the greatest enemies of the evangelical faith today are not unbelievers, who when they hear the gospel often embrace it, but the church, the establishment, the hierarchy. Isaac is always mocked and persecuted by Ishmael.
b. We shall receive the inheritance
But what does Scripture say? ‘Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman’s son’ (30). Although Isaac had to endure the scorn of his half-brother Ishmael, it was Isaac who became heir of his father Abraham and received the inheritance. At one stage Abraham wanted Ishmael to be the heir: ‘If only Ishmael might live under your blessing!’ he cried to God. And God replied, ‘Your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him’ (Gen. 17:18–21). So Sarah asked Abraham to cast out the slave and her son, and God told Abraham to do what Sarah said. For, although he was going to make a nation of the slave woman’s son too (that is, Ishmael the father of the Arabians), yet he added, ‘it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned’ (Gen. 21:10–13).
So it is that the true heirs of God’s promise to Abraham are not his children by physical descent, the Jews, but his children by spiritual descent, Christian believers whether Jews or Gentiles. And since it is Scripture which said Get rid of the slave woman and her son, we find the law itself rejecting the law. This verse of Scripture, which the Jews interpreted as God’s rejection of the Gentiles, Paul boldly reverses and applies to the exclusion of unbelieving Jews from the inheritance.
Such, then, is the double lot of ‘Isaacs’ – the pain of persecution on the one hand and the privilege of inheritance on the other. We are despised and rejected by other people; yet we are the children of God, and ‘if we are children, then we are heirs – heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ’ (Rom. 8:17). This is the paradox of a Christian’s experience. As Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians 6:8–10, we are in ‘glory and dishonour, bad report and good report . . . sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything’.
4. Conclusion
This passage teaches us the sparkling glory of being a Christian believer. It involves, among others, two great privileges.
First, we inherit the promises of the Old Testament. The true fulfilment of the Old Testament promises is not literal but spiritual. They are fulfilled today not in the Jewish nation, as some hold, nor in the British or Anglo-Saxon people, as some others teach, but in Christ and in the people of Christ who believe. We Christians are Abraham’s seed, who inherit the blessing promised to his descendants (3:29). Like Isaac we are ‘children of promise’ (28) and ‘children . . . of the free woman’ (31). We are citizens of the true Jerusalem, ‘the Jerusalem that is above’ (26; see also Heb. 12:22; Rev. 3:12; 21:2). We are ‘the Israel of God’ (Gal. 6:16) and ‘the circumcision’ (Phil. 3:3). No doubt we shall be persecuted, but all the promises of God to his people in the Old Testament become ours if we are Christ’s.
Second, we experience the grace of God, his gracious initiative to save us. We have seen that Abraham’s two sons and their two mothers stand for the two covenants, the old and the new, and for the two Jerusalems, the earthly and the heavenly. We have also seen that whereas the categories of the old covenant are nature, law and bondage, the categories of the new are promise, the Spirit and freedom. What is the basic difference between them? It is this. The religion of Ishmael is a religion of nature, of what we can do by ourselves without any special intervention of God. But the religion of Isaac is a religion of grace, of what God has done and does, a religion of divine initiative and divine intervention, for Isaac was born supernaturally through a divine promise. And this is what Christianity is: not ‘natural’ religion but ‘supernatural’. The Ishmaels of this world trust in themselves that they are righteous; the Isaacs trust only in God through Jesus Christ. The Ishmaels are in bondage, because this is what self-reliance always leads to; the Isaacs enjoy freedom, because it is through faith in Christ that people are set free.
So we must seek to be like Isaac, not like Ishmael. We must put our trust in God through Jesus Christ. For only in Christ can we inherit the promises, receive the grace and enjoy the freedom of God.