Galatians 4:23 Commentary and Bible Study

In the providence of God these two sons were born to women of very different status. Hagar, was a servant, a slave-woman in service to Abraham’s wife, Sarah. She was an Egyptian (Genesis 16:1) and had probably entered service while Abraham and Sarah were down in Egypt (Genesis 12:1). Sarah on the other hand was Abraham’s wife, a free woman. The statuses of these two mothers are a significant feature of this biblical allegory, for they corresponded to those of the two children, not only in their earthly life, but much more importantly in their relationship to God. How skilfully the Lord teaches his people, comparing one thing with another and teaching what we do not understand through what we are already familiar with. In these early generations of Abraham’s descendants, God arranged that those who were to be types of whole classes of people would have a personal experience that matched those they represented. To make the lessons all the more plain, in the case of Isaac and Ishmael, God ensured that what was true of them as types – their social relation within Abraham’s family – was also true of them spiritually – their relation to God and to the law of God. Ishmael was a natural man, without faith, as well as a son born to a slave woman and therefore inferior to the son of the free woman, Sarah; but Isaac trusted in God as did his father, and fittingly he was born to the woman who was free. God intended that Ishmael should represent man in his natural state, unregenerate and alienated from God and without spiritual life, his soul dead and unable to relate to God, not having the Spirit of God within him. Appropriately he was born in a completely natural way: ‘that which is born of the flesh is flesh’. In this natural state we are born under the law, in bondage to the elements of the world. It was entirely appropriate therefore that Ishmael should be the child of Hagar, the slave woman. But Isaac represents all those who are born again, who have had their sins forgiven and received eternal life: ‘that which is born of the Spirit is spirit’. What was all-important in connection with Abraham’s children was the promise. It was Isaac, not Ishmael, who was the child of promise. When Isaac was finally born, Abraham and Sarah both knew that this was the child promised by God, because circumstances showed that Isaac could only have come by the power of God. Isaac therefore represents all those who are born of the Spirit, who have received a new nature created by God and who have been born in a way that is impossible according to any natural process. But Abraham’s descendants would always consist of these two types of child, and not just in that first generation. The children of Isaac and the children of Jacob, and all the descendants of the twelve tribes would also be divided into these two categories. Indeed, the same distinction between regenerate and unregenerate would also exist later among the Gentiles, when the gospel was extended to them. But in the first generation the distinction was made abundantly clear, because the spiritual status of the two sons aligned with their temporal status. The mistake that Israel made was to think that this division marked out all the descendants of Ishmael as rejected by God and all the descendants of Isaac as blessed under the terms of the covenant. No, the blessing given to Isaac only affected himself; his descendants enjoyed the same blessing only if they had individual faith. The same division took place in the next generation in which God showed his election continuing to operate: Jacob was loved but Esau was hated. The same choice operated in every subsequent generation, indeed, the same choice takes place throughout the whole world and not just among the physical descendants of Abraham, because believing Gentiles are also included in the terms of the promise.