In the book of Genesis we find a father's affections displayed and gratified. It is the book of the patriarchs, and the affections of a father are exercised there very beautifully.
Abraham, as well as others in this book, desired a child, and though his house might have been established in a servant—a loved and trusted servant too, Eleazar of Damascus—this would not do for him; so long as he went childless, his heart was unsatisfied.
He made a feast when his son Isaac was weaned (Gen. 21:8); this was his joy; he could hear himself addressed as father. Sarah would also have the house cleared of the bondwoman and her child.
Jacob adopted the sons of Joseph, giving them the place and inheritance of the first-born, and welcoming them with full affection.
These are among the instances which we find in the early patriarchal days of the counsels and affections of our God and Father, shadowed or expressed in these His representatives in the book of Genesis. I may add, there is no law, no Moses, no schoolmaster in Genesis; God has the elect immediately under His own hand and eye, dealing with them by a home method, so to express it, and not as by the intervention of "tutors and governors." The law came afterward, and then the elect were carried to school and put under rules and ordinances foreign to the home of their family, treated rather as servants than as children. The head of a school is a schoolmaster. But the dispensation of the Spirit has now come, the Son Himself has been manifested; He was made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that they might receive the adoption of sons. The elect are now put on the ground of His accomplished redemption, and in the acceptableness of His beloved Person.
Now this condition of things is the Father's delight; there was a need of the schoolmaster for a season. But that need has been answered, and the Father has His child home again. This is not the age of infants, the children that cannot speak, but the age or dispensation of sons, the elect who have the spirit of adoption, whereby they cry, "Abba, Father," filling the house with that music. It is the time of the weaned Isaac, and all that appertains to the bondwoman must leave the house. This again, I say, is the Father's delight; the affection of the Father finds occasion now to indulge itself to the full.
But the Galatians were disappointing this affection; they were returning to ordinances. This is contrary to the spirit of adoption, taking the elect from the Father's house again to put them under tutors and governors as before, and destroying the free, gracious, confiding communion of children with their Father. They were bringing back Hagar to the house; and it is this which the Spirit so earnestly resents in this part of the epistle to the Galatians; it is this grieved and wounded bosom of the Father that speaks in this fervent epistle.
Sarah had expressed this resentment in the book of Genesis when she said, "Cast out this bondwoman and her son." That word is quoted here, for here in like manner the Spirit in behalf, so to speak, of the Father, expressed the like resentment; Paul would act the part of a parent in this chapter (Gal. 4:19).
By faith we are justified (Gal. 3:24); by faith we are made children (3:26). A return to ordinances or works of law therefore reproaches Christ as though He had not accomplished our justification; it also silences in our hearts the cry of adoption, and this disappoints the love of the Father, and it is that which the chapter with some indignation resents. I do feel that this gives this part of the epistle a very affecting and beautiful character. No condition of things as between Him and them would satisfy His heart but the relationship of Father to those who not only are but who know themselves to be children, who are weaned, like Isaac, from the milk of ordinances, and brought home to the food of the Father's table.