Today’s passage says: “Now you, brothers and sisters, like Isaac, are children of promise. At that time the son born according to the flesh persecuted the son born by the power of the Spirit. It is the same now. But what does Scripture say? “Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman’s son.” Therefore, brothers and sisters, we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman”.
My brother, my sister, we, the Christians, are like Isaac: born of the free woman. We are the children of God’s promise by grace. Therefore, the old law (pictured by Hagar and Ishmael) that wants to persecute us and bring us back into bondage has expired. You see, in our churches today, the problem of many believers is that they claim to follow Christ but at the same time, they want to follow or adhere to the old law. My friend, the two do not go hand in hand.
The Bible says clearly that that there is no way any human being can be saved by keeping the old law. No matter how good you are, nobody can keep the law perfectly, therefore, nobody can be saved by the law. In fact, the Law is there to show us how sinful our nature is: “Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin” (Romans 3:20). My friend, trying to live like the child of the slave woman does not honour the Lord. What honors Him is when we accept His will and do things His way. And His way is the way of grace. His way is the way of promise by faith. Our trust is in Him, not in us, as the Law points us to. We trust Him for our salvation, we don’t trust ourselves by trying to obey the letter of the law.
May we who are following Christ understand what Jesus did for us: He willingly accepted to pay for our sins and misdeeds. As a result, living by the covenant of faith is far superior to living by the letter of the law: “Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God” (Romans 3:19). Let’s therefore rejoice that we are living on the side of Calvary where the grace of God abounds and not on the other side where the Law is! We need to rejoice and live by the grace of God!
There is nothing better than knowing that we have been set free from the bondage of sin and the old law… but for us to enjoy this freedom, we need first to “Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman’s son”. Stay blessed in Jesus’ name.