The position and state of the believing Jews before the death of Christ, is very different from what it is after the Holy Spirit has come to dwell in each believer; though heirs by their birth from above, yet the Old Testament saints are compared to children under tutors and governors till they come of age (3:24-26). However godly they walked, and many of them would put Christians to shame in this way, yet they did not know God as their Father, they did not know the finished work of Christ. They were not perfected by one offering, as we are told saints of the present day are (Heb. 10:14). It is said of John the Baptist that he was the greatest of those born of women, yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he (Matt. 11:11), for in this present day of grace, believers know that their sins are washed away, and that they are sealed with the Holy Ghost, and they know God as their Father.
The fullness of time has come—God’s due time (Rom. 5:6; Heb. 9:26), the end of the age of law, when Christ the lamb of God was to make atonement (Isa. 53:5, 6), God has sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we (Jews) might receive the adoption of sons (sonship); and the Gentile believers, as born of God, are also sons. God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into their hearts, crying, “Abba, Father.” This gives them a new position and sets them free from the bondage of law.
Verse 7. “Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.” Precious privilege! Now we can serve in the liberty of grace, and enjoy being in the presence of God as worshippers. We have a title to be there (Heb. 10:19).
Verses 8-11. How strange that those enjoying such a portion should so readily turn away, giving heed to such false doctrine of being still under law, the old principle of slavery, that they had been under when they were heathen worshipers, when they worshipped they knew not what. It was the weak and beggarly elements of worldly religion, whereunto they desired to be in bondage, observing days, and months, and times and years. It was a great defection from the truth of Christ’s work that forever freed the believer from sin and from law keeping for salvation, or for the rule of life. Christ is our example for that also, and this made the apostle write, “I am afraid of you, lest have bestowed upon you labor in vain.” It was like saying, “Christ and His work are not enough; we must add something of our own;” but, “All our righteousnesses are filthy rags” (Isa. 64:6).
How glad the apostle was to say, “Not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith” (Phil. 3:9). Christ is our righteousness now (2 Cor. 5:21).
Verses 12-16. He pleads with them: “Brethren, I beseech you, be as I am; for I am as ye are.” Every believer in Christ has the same blessed standing and portion, and here he wants them to lay hold of it. He wants them to know their perfect portion in Christ as their subsisting righteousness. It was not a personal question at all. They had not wronged him; he wanted to see them delivered from the evil influence under which they had fallen. He puts them in mind how through infirmity of the flesh he had preached the gospel to them at the first; and the trouble with which he was afflicted, they did not despise, nor reject, but received him as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus. What blessedness was theirs then, for they would if they could have given him their eyes, such was their love to him then. And now he asks the question, “Am I therefore become your enemy, by telling you the truth?”
Verse 17 means: “They are not rightly zealous after you, but desire to shut you out from us, that ye may be zealous after them” (N. T.). They wanted to gain adherents to their doctrine.
Verses 18-21. “But it is right to be zealous at all times in what is right, and not only when I am present with you.” He surely had longing desires for their good. Here His love to them breaks out “My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you, I desire to be present with you now, and to change my voice; for I stand in doubt of you. Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law?”
Verses 22-27. “For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondwoman, the other by a freewoman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise. Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants: the one from Mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Hagar, for Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children; but the Jerusalem which is above is free, which is our mother.” Hagar is the slave under law; and is cast out with her son Ishmael; Isaac was the child of promise, with all the unconditional blessings of grace—by grace and of faith, and not by the works of the law (Rom. 4:16).
Verse 28. “Now we (or ye) brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise.”
Verses 29-31. “But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now. Nevertheless what saith the Scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman. So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free.”
Verse 27, is from Isaiah 54:1 giving the thought that the setting aside of Israel under law has increased the number of children now saved by grace.