When Sarah tells Abraham that she wants Hagar and Ishmael cast out of her home, there’s obviously an element of personal bitterness to it. Ishmael is a constant reminder of Sarah’s closed womb, her decades of sorrow. Hagar is a constant reminder that her husband has known another woman, that he doesn’t belong to her completely. And yet, God tells Abraham to go along with this rather harsh punishment that Sarah asks for. Why?
St. Paul shows us the answer is Galatians chapter 4 where he gives us an allegorical way of understanding these two women and their children. When Abraham and Sarah believed that God was telling them to conceive a child, that this was a command to obey, Abraham went to Hagar to do because her womb could do what Sarah’s couldn’t. Hagar is therefore the wife of the law and Ishmael is the child of the law. The law is good. The law is holy, which is why God turns Ishmael into a mighty nation. But the law cannot bring about salvation.
But Sarah is the wife of the Gospel and Isaac is the child of the Gospel. When hope was gone and wombs were closed, God did the impossible and brought about life from a dead womb. And from this child Isaac will come the Savior of the world who will do the same to us, filling our dead hearts with life.
And so, while the law and the gospel are related, they can’t quite dwell in the same place. Either you have a religion of the law and you end up trusting in your own works and die in your sin or you have the gospel, you trust in Christ and his righteousness, and inherit eternal life. So cling to Christ. Cling to the promise the One who came to be the Savior of both Sarah’s offspring and Hagar’s. Trust in him and the house of God will be yours forever.
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