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Galatians 4:21-31
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Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. For it is written, "Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear; break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor! For the children of the desolate one will be more than those of the one who has a husband." Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. But just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now. But what does the Scripture say? "Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman." So, brothers, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman. (ESV)
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God Makes Right
Friday of Pentecost 2
15 June 2012
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When an advisor of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte advised against doing something that would offend the pope in Rome, Napoleon replied, "Why, how many battalions does the pope have?" Napoleon thought that he ought to be able to do whatever he had the power to do. Like many moderns, he believed that "might makes right." That worked out pretty well until he had to spend the winter in Russia or face Wellington and the thin red line at Waterloo. Napoleon thought he was the arbiter of the rightness of action, which he enforced on the tip of a bayonet. Napoleon's view is not far removed from the legalistic view that if we humans just do the right then, then we will be right. In other words, might makes right is quite close to right makes right. Both are established on the presumption that human activity is the source of rightness. Even if we presume that God is the One who defines the rightness of the action according to the ten commandments, still we are the ones who by our obedience make right by doing right. We are the same as the Emperor to the degree that we attribute rightness to ourselves. Of course, this rightness of action has its place in the city of men. And it too is a gift of God.
This is the city of Ishmael, who was born in the normal way, according to God's creative care for the world. He was an expected child, a presumed child, and a product of human action. According to human reason, when man and woman share sexual relations children are conceived. In despair, Abraham and Sarah turned from the promise to the law. They thought that their actions would assure that the promise would come. They presumed that it was all up to them. Their right action was going to cause a right result. Perhaps they even reasoned from the prevailing law of the ancient near east that Sarah could give her maid to Abraham and that the child would be his own and the seed according to God's promise. Of course, Hagar could have Abraham's child, but she could not bear the son whom God promised. Ishmael was conceived in the expected and even presumed power of man to procreate (Jn 1:13), not under the sign of weakness and barrenness according to the promise. Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar thought, "Just do the right thing and the right outcome will happen."
God would not let this presumption pass. "Cast out the slave woman and her son." Ishmael was "her son" and emphatically so. Quite clearly she had the power to bear him and she lorded this over her barren and aging mistress, "I did what was right. Look how God has blessed me. He has given me a son." How mighty Hagar now was in the household. This would more than suffice in the city of men. It was a drama to be repeated countless times by emperors and slaves alike. This drama has its place in the city of men. It has no place in the city of God.
In the city of God those who are brought low by the weakness of sin and the barrenness of humanity gutted of the power to conceive the proper seed, are given the gift of the Son of God when the Word became flesh (Jn 1:14). She who was barren has borne more children than any Hagar (Gal 4:27). In the city of God, Hagar has no place. She must be cast out with her illegitimate "right" offspring. Only the free woman's child born in impossible circumstances could belong in the city of God, for God Himself makes the city populated by His children. Abraham and Sarah did not make him at all. Therefore, they did not make him "right." By rights they ought to have remained barren and adopted Ishmael. But right does not make right. God does. |
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Augustine of Hippo
"Sarah, in fact, was barren. Despairing of offspring, and resolving that she would have, at least through her handmaid, that blessing she saw she could not in her own person procure, she gave her handmaid to her husband, for whom she herself had been unable to bear children. From him she required this conjugal duty, exercising her own right in another's womb. And thus Ishmael was born according to the common law of human generation, by sexual intercourse. Therefore it is said that he was born 'according to the flesh,' not because such births are not the gifts of God, nor His handiwork, whose creative wisdom 'reaches,' as it is written, 'from one end to another mightily, and sweetly cloth she order all things' (Wisdom 8:1), but because, in a case in which the gift of God, which was not due to men and was the gratuitous largesse of grace, was to be conspicuous, it was necessary that a son be given in a way that no effort of nature could encompass. Nature denies children to persons the age of Abraham and Sarah. Besides that, in Sarah's case, she was barren even in her prime. This nature, so constituted that offspring could not be looked for, symbolized the nature of the human race weakened by sin and by just consequence condemned, deserving no future blessing.
"Rightly, therefore, Isaac, the child of promise, typifies the children of grace, the citizens of the free city, who dwell together in everlasting peace, in which self-love and self-will have no place, but a ministering love that rejoices in the common joy, of many hearts makes one, that is to say, secures a perfect concord."
Augustine, The City of God, 15.3
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Prayer
Almighty God, keep us as children of the promise. Free us from the delusion that we can make ourselves right in Your presence. Send always Your mercy in chalice, font, and preaching, that we might experience our rightness in Christ the only redeemer from sin and death. Amen.
For Pastor Murray, as he serves the LCMS at District Conventions, that he would be strengthened in his labors
For all the faithful confessional Lutheran pastors in Scandinavia that the heavenly Father would look upon them with compassion
For Pastor Todd Wilken and Jeff Schwarz of Issues, Etc. that they would be strengthened in their labors to proclaim Christ through the gift of technology
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Art: DÜRER, Albrecht The Adoration of the Holy Trinity (1511)
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 © Scott R. Murray, 2011
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