Objection:
Paul’s allegory on the two covenants in Galatians 4 proves that we have nothing to do with law in the Christian dispensation.
Answer:
In the fourth chapter of Galatians, Paul recounts that Abraham had two sons. After relating the incidents of the birth of Ishmael to the bondwoman Hagar and the birth of Isaac to the free woman Sarah, the first “born after the flesh,” the second “by promise,” Paul declares:
“Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.” Galatians 4:24-26.
God had promised Abraham a son. He believed the promise, and the Lord “counted it to him for righteousness.” Genesis 15:6. This promise was of vast significance to Abraham, for God had also promised him: “In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” Genesis 26:4 (See Genesis 12:3). But his faith and that of his long-childless wife, Sarah, evidently waned. She encouraged him to take Hagar to wife and thus raise up seed. But the Lord told him that Ishmael, who was born of that union, was not the fulfillment of the divine promise of a son and that the promise would yet be fulfilled.
Adapting this historical incident to the recent experience of the Galatian Christians, who were trying to secure Heaven’s promised salvation by their works—“Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years.” Galatians 4:10—he declares that here is an “allegory,” a figurative description of “the two covenants.”
In the allegory, Hagar stands for Sinai. She was a bondwoman, and her children would therefore be in the same state of slavery. She also stands for “Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children.” From Mount Sinai came the old covenant. How can it be said that the old covenant “gendereth to bondage”? All Bible commentators, along with the apostle Peter, agree that our brother Paul wrote some things hard to be understood, and the book of Galatians illustrates that fact. But we believe that in two ways, the old covenant might be regarded as leading into bondage.
First, the ceremonial ritual of numerous sacrifices, feast days, and the like, by which the Israelites were to express their desire for freedom from sin—the transgression of the moral law—tended to become more and more an intolerable burden upon them as the rabbis constantly refined and multiplied the ritual. At the Jerusalem council, the early Christian leaders first considered in a formal way the contention of certain Jews who declared “that it was needful to circumcise them [the Gentile converts], and to command them to keep the law of Moses.” Acts 15:5. To this contention, Peter replied, “Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?” Verse 10.
This question seems to parallel the one that Paul asks the Galatians: “But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years.” Galatians 4:9-10.
Obviously, here is a “bondage” that suffices to provide a reasonable interpretation of Paul’s words about the Sinaitic covenant gendering to bondage. The Pulpit Commentary well observes on Galatians 4:25:
“The religious life of Judaism consisted of a servile obedience to a letter Law of ceremonialism, interpreted by the rabbins with an infinity of hair-splitting rules, the exact observance of which was bound upon the conscience of its votaries as of the essence of true piety.”
Second, the moral law, central to the old and the new covenant, can be considered as bringing a man into bondage if that man seeks to keep the law in his own strength. “The law worketh wrath,” says Paul. Romans 4:15. Why? Paul explains: “I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.” Romans 7:9. And when a man is dead in sin, is he a freeman? Again Paul speaks: “Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?” Romans 6:16.
Now, how could those of whom Paul was speaking—“Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children”—hope to escape from their bondage? The answer is, By moving from the old over to the new covenant.
In contrast to those “in bondage,” Paul, in his allegory, declares that “Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.” In Hebrews, Paul employs this figure also: “For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest, And the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they that heard intreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more: (For they could not endure that which was commanded, And if so much as a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned, or thrust through with a dart: And so terrible was the sight, that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake:) But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.” Hebrews 12:18-24.
Without going into a detailed examination of figures of speech, which would carry us beyond the range of the particular question at issue—the perpetuity of the Ten Commandments—we may say that Paul here turns to describe the state of those who are under “the new covenant.” We have already found that under the new covenant, God’s law is written in our hearts. In this very passage in Hebrews, Paul makes clear, by a series of contrasts and comparisons, that obedience to the voice of God is still of preeminent importance:
| 1. “Not come unto the mount [Sinai].” | 1. “Come unto mount Zion… the heavenly Jerusalem.” |
| 2. “That burned with fire.” | 2. “Our God is a consuming fire.” |
| 3. [To Moses, the mediator of the old covenant.] | 3. “To Jesus the mediator of the new covenant.” |
| 4. “And the voice of words.” [The voice of God, commanding obedience.] | 4. “See that you refuse not him that speaketh.” |
| 5. “If they escaped not who refused Him that spake on earth.” | 5. “Much more shall not we escape if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven.” |
| 6. [To the blood of sprinkling of animal sacrifices, even as “Abel” offered long before.] | 6. “To the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.” [The blood of Christ.] |
| 7. “Whose voice then shook the earth.” | 7. Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven.” |
Because we come under the new covenant by our act of faith in accepting the promise of God to write His law in our hearts, we are no longer “by nature the children of wrath, even as others” (Ephesians 2:3), but the children of promise. The figure is appropriate. We become children of God by the sacrifice of our Lord, and by accepting God’s promise of a new covenant relationship through faith. Isaac also was a child of promise, an answer to an act of faith on Abraham’s part. Blending the two ideas, Paul comes to the climax of his allegory with these words: “Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise.” Abraham’s act of faith in believing God’s promise was counted unto him for righteousness. Our act of faith in believing God’s promise is counted unto us for righteousness. That is the way we acquire true righteousness, new covenant righteousness.
And why did the Lord make His promise to Abraham? “Because that Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.” Genesis 26:5.
And how are those described who are waiting to be taken to the heavenly Jerusalem? “Here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” Revelation 14:12.
No, Paul’s words in Galatians do not teach freedom from the law of God. They teach freedom from bondage to sin, freedom from the transgression of the law of God through Jesus Christ, and the new covenant relationship.
