Answering Faith: A Guide to Galatians With N.t. WrightSampl

This is an allegory. Paul lays it out, but that doesn’t make it any less confusing. Paul’s allegory might sting in modern ears if we assume he is speaking directly to us today. This is where we must return to the immediate conditions of Paul’s writing. He makes this allegory about the ‘rival teachers’ who are doing three things Paul opposes. First, they appeal to the Sinai covenant (Torah) as determinative for membership in the new Messiah community. Second, they are appealing over Paul’s head to the Jerusalem apostles, thereby driving a wedge into the unity of the community. Lastly, they are apparently persecuting genuine Messiah believers, maybe even with physical violence.

Paul’s echo of Sarah’s command in Genesis 21:10 to ‘throw out the slave girl’ is one of practical, rather than spiritualized, exhortation. Discipline needs to be done within the ranks of the Galatian community, and it needs to be done quickly.

Paul’s allegory is all the more forceful because it flips our initial assumptions. Paul has previously aligned Torah, given at Sinai, with the Deuteronomic curse of enslavement. Here he extends the metaphor to add in the rival Galatian teachers, the ‘flesh’ (aka circumcision) they so ardently cling to, and Hagar, who was thought to be the mother of the Arabian peoples. He makes a tight ball of association between all of these concepts. If Sinai is in the slave-land, then its covenant, too, is one of slavery. This is one-half of the divide. On the other side, we have, then: the Abrahamic covenant, which precedes and undergirds the Mosaic covenant; the Spirit, which indwells Messiah followers and marks them out; and Sarah, the mother of the original Abrahamic promise, and the disciplinarian who sees what must be done to accomplish freedom for God’s people.

A further forceful addition to the analogy: Paul’s interpretation of the Sarah/Hagar story is laden with layers of contemporary Jewish tradition, among them, the idea that Ishmael must have been abusing Isaac to warrant such a harsh response from Sarah. This introduces the theme of violence, allowing Paul to remind his readers that persecution, like the kind the rival teachers commit, is of the flesh and leads only to slavery. The spirit means a new life has come, a new way of being and living.

Reflection:

How do you feel about Paul reinterpreting the Sarah/Hagar story for the sake of his allegory? What does it do to the character of Hagar, and is this fair?

Paul’s ecumenical imperative is that all baptised and believing Jesus followers belong as a single-family. Think about a specific situation you’re passionate about where people feel alienated from belonging. How can you work to bring the belonging of the Messiah community to that situation? Take time to pray for that today.