Galatians 4:21-31
The key words are: slave, free, law, Spirit. Paul uses an historical reality to illustrate his point, contrasting the child born to Hagar to the child born to Sarah. He says that Ishmael was born in the natural way but that Isaac was born by the power of the Spirit. As followers of Jesus and children of God, we are also born by the power of the Spirit and are not slaves to the law. If Paul wasn't inspired by the Holy Spirit, he would probably get a failing grade from his hermeneutics prof. This is not good bible interpretation!
Paul's point is that we have been born, by the Spirit, into freedom (just as Isaac was born into freedom by virtue of his being born to a free woman) and are not bound in slavery to the law (as Ishmael was bound by virtue of his being born to a slave woman). Paul goes even further by comparing the teasing and tormenting that Ishmael inflicted on Isaac to the attempts by the Judaizers to force the Galatians to submit to the slavery of the law.
Paul's conclusion is what stands out to me: I am not a child of slavery because I have been re-born by the Spirit and have been made a child of freedom. "Like a criminal guilty on all counts, rattling his cage iwht every ounce of resolve he never had, I was convicted. Then I took the pardon and walls came down, but I must like it here, 'cause I keep hanging around..." (Newsboys). God, give me the courage to leave the security of the things I know for the adventurous (and possibly dangerous) freedom that you offer.
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2 comments:
Love the Newsboys qoute man, but isn't that the truth alot of the time, we like our slavery it seems somehow, or maybe we just don't quite know how to grab hold of that freedom that is right in front of us. I keep thinking I can't wait until the day that I am totally free, but then again that day is today, we need to live now, we are not waiting just to go to have and have freedom, we have an active roll in the Kingdom now, and we need to live in the freedom we have in the Spirit here on earth.
I think we're comfortable in our cells simply because we are familiar with them. We are afraid of freedom - it's so big and unpredictable...
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