Gospel Meditation

Galatians 4:21-31

Find a quiet place, alone and apart from distractions. Be comfortably alert, still, and at peace. Recite the Lord’s Prayer. Sing or cant the Jesus Prayer. Pray for family, friends, neighbors, and yourself. Slowly and carefully read the passage of Scripture.

1. Paul reminds the Galatian believers of the history of Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac, which history contains the plan of salvation by means of love and grace and not by law keeping.
2. “Judaizers,” those Jewish people who also were believing in Jesus as Savior but who also demanded that the Law of Moses be observed as well. These people were upsetting the faith of others and so Paul must defend salvation by grace alone.
3. Paul points to the difference between the slave woman, Hagar, and the free woman, Sarah, and that the son of the free woman, Isaac is born through promise.
4. It is also evident that the essential Gospel story of grace was long noted, all the way back to Genesis 3:15, and it would always, in that day, and in all of history, be attacked.
5. Paul says to the Galatian Christians that they, like Isaac, are children of promise, which is grace and freedom from the burden, and continual failure of keeping the Law.
6. In verse 30 then, a quote from Genesis 21:8–14, “Cast out the slave woman and her son” and this from Sarah and backed by God.
7. How incredible is it that the ultimate plan of God for our salvation was clearly laid out by means of actual human events more than 2000 years before the birth of Jesus.