A powerful reminder against slavery to anything or anyone other than our redeemer.

In the early Galatian churches the widespread misunderstanding of the Gospel was creating division among believers. Some of them were from a Jewish background and some of them were from a Gentile background. It was hard for those who had been brought up as Jews to accept that the Gospel places every believer on the same level. The Jewish law was providing a barrier to the fellowship of all who had been saved by trusting in the simple message that ‘Jesus died for our sins’.

In this passage, which is part of the apostle Paul’s corrective for the Galatian churches, he uses a very powerful illustration to put the relationships on the right footing. The illustration is about Abraham’s two wives Sarah and Hagar. Sarah was the free woman who had a son, Isaac, while Hagar was the slave woman who had a son called Ishmael. The Jewish background believers would have understood, from their knowledge of Scripture, that there was a big difference in the state of each of the two children.

The freewoman, Sarah, is likened to the heavenly Jerusalem which is the city of God to which every believer belongs and is free. The slavewoman, Hagar, is connected to Arabia and, in this illustration,  her offspring are not part of God’s kingdom because they are in slavery to the Law. Every child of God, no matter what their background or religious heritage, has been freed from slavery to the Law.