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. (Galatians 4.21-26)

The point Paul makes in these few verses is truly astonishing.  In this letter, his goal is to get these fairly new, Gentile Christians to see the mistake they’re making in allowing misguided Jewish Christians to bind the law of Moses on them.  This centered around circumcision, the symbol of belonging to the nation of Abraham’s descendants.  Previously in the letter, Paul had stressed that Christians are, indeed, to be children of Abraham, but the marker was not circumcision: “Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham” (3.7); “And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise” (3.29).  Now in chapter 4, he compares the Christian’s heritage to the Jew’s.  From reading the Scriptures, these Gentile converts are aware of Abraham’s two sons and the nations descended from each.  They know, as we do, that the Jews were descended from Isaac, and the descendants of Ishmael—like the Nabateans and Qedarites to Israel’s East and South—were generally enemies of God’s chosen people.

Why then does Paul match up the Jews with Hagar, the mother of Gentiles, and the Gentiles with Sarah, the mother of the Jews?  Well, that’s not quite what he’s doing.  It isn’t that all of the Gentiles are to be identified as Sarah’s descendants, but those who have “put on Christ” (3.27).  Nor is it that all of the Jews are Hagar’s descendants—Paul includes himself among Sarah’s children when he says “she is our mother” (4.26).  Those Jews who are descended from Hagar are those who have rejected the Messiah—the blessing promised to Abraham.

But of course, we know that’s just not true—from the physical perspective.  Paul is way ahead of us: “But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise” (4.23).  When Sarah suggested using Hagar as a concubine to solve the problem of Abraham’s lack of an heir, everyone involved considered that a son born through Hagar would be a legitimate and rightful heir.  Even when God clarified to Abraham a point that should have required no clarification, saying of Sarah, “‘I will give you a son by her’” (Ge 17.16), Abraham himself replied two verses later, “‘Oh that Ishmael might live before you!’”  Ishmael, according to the laws and practices of the time and place, was the rightful heir—the firstborn, legitimate son.  Yet God reminds him again later, “through Isaac shall your offspring be named” (Ge 21.12).

Isaac was not born purely according to the flesh, but according to God’s promise, in which Abraham and Sarah trusted, though their faith lapsed at times.  But two thousand years after the firstfruits of the promise were enjoyed in Isaac, the promise still extended to God’s chosen people, and it wasn’t the nation descended from Isaac purely according to the flesh.  The same promise that foretold Isaac’s birth also said, “‘In you shall all the nations be blessed.’ So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith” (Ga 3.8), even the Gentiles who were not legitimate descendants of Abraham in any fleshly sense.

Paul further ties these two classes of people—the fleshly and spiritual descendants of Abraham—to the two covenants, which were inaugurated on two mountains.  The Jewish covenant began at Mount Sinai in the desert, while the covenant of Christ began at Jerusalem, on Mount Zion.  Here, as before with the two sons, there’s some confusion.  Isaac is both the son of promise, and the forefather of the fleshly children of Abraham; in the same way, Zion is both the physical location where Jesus died, was buried, and arose, and also the spiritual seat of the Kingdom of God.  Paul differentiates between these two by calling them “the present Jerusalem” and “the Jerusalem above.”  This covenant is vastly superior to the previous one.  This kingdom will never fall.  It is the fulfillment of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 2, the stone that destroyed the kingdoms and “became a great mountain and filled the whole earth” (Da 2.35). 

Just as that mountain is more than the physical Mount Zion, the church is about more than a physical heritage, and far more than a physical location.  It’s about God’s far-reaching promises, which are beyond our full comprehension or reasoning.  Even Abraham, the “man of faith,” didn’t grasp the full import of the promises God made to him.  They were primarily spiritual, and had to do not only with blessings and behaviors here on earth, but with the far more important world to come.  God frees Abraham’s children from slavery—to sin, to the law, to the flesh, and to death—and gives abundant life, his Spirit, freedom, and righteousness in their place. 

Paul finishes up this passage by saying,

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. (Galatians 4.28-29).

Are you a child of the flesh, or of the Spirit?

Jeremy Nettles

As our current memory verse reminds us, Joseph was given a colorful robe by his father, and it was a source of resentment from his ten older brothers.  They surely knew already that Joseph was the favorite, but the robe served as a visible sign and constant reminder of their second-class status in the family.  It must have seemed to them that Joseph was deliberately taunting them by wearing this garment in their presence.  It didn’t help, clearly, that Joseph was a stickler for rule keeping, and related his brothers’ misdeeds to their father (Ge 37.2).  That they resented the robe in particular is made clear by their actions upon deciding to throw him in the pit out in the wilderness: “when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe, the robe of many colors that he wore” (Ge 37.23).  The first order of business, even before they tossed him in the pit, was to take that cursed robe from him!  Its loss marks a major shift in Joseph’s status.  Once the favored son of a wealthy and important man, he had become a nobody—a slave no different from all the rest.  What became of the robe?  It was soiled and presented to Jacob as evidence that Joseph could no longer be the favorite son.

Upon being put to work in his new home in Egypt, Joseph quickly rose to the favored place among the servants of Potiphar, and once again a member of the household stepped in to ruin things.  Potiphar’s wife demanded that Joseph commit an exceedingly immoral act with her, and resented his refusal.  Eventually she resorted to some degree of force in an attempt to overcome his chastity—“she caught him by his garment, saying, ‘Lie with me.’ But he left his garment in her hand and fled and got out of the house” (Ge 39.12).  Once again, he had been disrobed.  And what soon followed?  The garment, apparently distinctive enough to be easily identified as Joseph’s, was used as evidence that Joseph could no longer be the favored servant.  He ended up right back “in the pit” (Ge 40.15). 

In neither of these cases did Joseph do anything wrong.  We could nitpick and “could’a-would’a-should’a” the situation all we want, but the simple fact is that Joseph was in the right, refused to go along with sin in each case, and was punished by those responsible, who didn’t mind adding another, more flagrant sin to their records.

In the prison, Joseph rose once more to a position of favor, finding himself “in charge of all the prisoners who were in the prison” (Ge 39.22).  In the course of time, his ability to accurately interpret prophetic dreams set him up for yet another major change in the course of his life.  After predicting the major events in Egypt for the next 14 years and suggesting a meticulous plan for coping with the problem, he was elevated to second-in-command of the kingdom.  But what happened to his clothes, this time? 

Then Pharaoh took his signet ring from his hand and put it on Joseph's hand, and clothed him in garments of fine linen and put a gold chain about his neck. And he made him ride in his second chariot. And they called out before him, “Bow the knee!” Thus he set him over all the land of Egypt. (Genesis 41.42-43)

The king didn’t care about the false accusations against him; he didn’t care about his humble status as a foreigner, a slave, or a supposed criminal.  He recognized Joseph for who he was, exalted him greatly, and in contrast to the previous two experiences, gave Joseph a fine robe to wear.  Instead of being humiliated and shamed, this time Joseph met with approval and glory.

This may seem like just a nice story of triumph over adversity, but as with so much else in the Old Testament, it is intended to foreshadow God’s plans for us.  Joseph is a suffering servant, much like Christ, and he ends up saving his brothers, even though they did so much evil to him, and welcoming them into his own home, much like God has done for us.  But in addition to these, Joseph serves as a pattern for us, too.  We all encounter some degree of suffering and shame from other people in this world.  Those who are powerful tend to enjoy preying on those who are weaker, and there’s always someone more powerful than we are.  In the first place, the story demonstrates that if we handle our own humiliation properly—by following God’s instructions, that is—eventually we will receive a great reward, and be exalted, even in the sight of the very same people who cast us down, before.  More importantly though, as Joseph’s garments were soiled, stripped off, and used as evidence against him, we have all experienced the same thing before God, through sin.  But what does God promise?

They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been. (Revelation 6.10-11)

This describes the souls of the martyrs, whose blood was poured out beneath the spiritual altar.  The battle isn’t over yet, and God has much to accomplish before the final rewards are given.  But because these souls accepted shame and humiliation even to the point of death for the sake of Jesus—because they were faithful—God gave each one a new robe, much like Joseph was given after suffering so much.  This one is white.  Why?  “They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” (Re 7.14).  What are you wearing?

Jeremy Nettles

When the Israelites were preparing to cross the Jordan and enter the promised land, they had finally learned through 40 years of wandering in the wilderness to rely on God.  He’d given them their daily food, he’d provided water for them, he’d protected them from enemies all around, and he had led them night and day through foreign lands.  After crossing the river, they would rely on God to fight their battles.  It’s a good thing, too—40 years prior, God was all set to give them the land, but they still relied on their own strength; when they saw the sheer size of many of the people they’d be fighting, they concluded, “‘We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we are’” (Nu 13.31).  Their wandering was a punishment specifically for this lack of faith, and that generation all died off in the wilderness.  But their children learned the lesson, and when their turn came to receive the blessings, their tune was a bit different: “Truly the Lord has given all the land into our hands” (Jos 2.24).

In this case, the older, faithless generation gave way to a new generation of the faithful, and the results were spectacular.  But of course, God doesn’t lay his plans only with a view toward the present time; he’s always planning for the future—for the next generation and beyond.  If the current, faithful generation then gave way to a generation that did not know God, would he continue to provide blessings for them?  Would he feed them, protect them, and fight their battles?  No; and God told them as much, on several occasions.

How could they avoid this problem?  How could they prevent the promised land from being taken away just as easily as it was given to them?  God had a plan for that:

You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the heavens are above the earth. (Deuteronomy 11.18-21)

The promise is clear: “that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give them.”  It also implies a warning—their lives will be short, and they won’t retain their homeland, if they refuse to devote themselves to God’s commandments.  This reminds us that we’ve left out something pretty important from our list of the ways God provided for the Israelites, both in the wilderness and subsequently in their newly-won home.  It was easy to think of the food, water, guidance, and protection.  What more could anyone want, than those?  Well, there’s more to this life than having our flesh satisfied and preserved.  What about our hearts and souls?  It’s far worse for those to be sick, lost, or hungry, than for our bodies to experience the same problems.  Left to our own devices, we would all try to satisfy our thirst for water; but we’re not as likely to make a big deal of quenching the thirst for righteousness unless someone else brings it up.  But God isn’t just worried about our bodies; in fact, he considers our souls to be far more valuable.

How did he provide for the souls of the Israelites?  He gave them a Law, of course.  A portion of it was spoken from heaven directly to the people.  It also appeared on tablets of stone.  The rest came through his prophet, Moses, who wrote the law for the people so they could read it for themselves, even after he was dead and gone.  But that introduces another problem: just as Moses eventually died, so would each of the Israelites.  What would become of those who replaced them?  Would they remember the lessons God taught their parents?  Only if someone taught them in turn—hence his instruction: “you shall teach them to your children.”

In the same way, we should never take for granted that the next generation will simply fall in line and make consistently good decisions.  Just as we work to prepare them for the need to find jobs and work for a living, we must teach them the spiritual lessons God has taught us—our own failures along the way included.  Pleasing God and cultivating their souls’ health is far more important than equipping them for a successful career, and yet how much time do we devote to each goal?  Kids go to school for many hours, five days a week; we encourage most of them not just to go to college, but to shop for the best college possible, to pick a marketable field of study, and pay (or borrow) a year’s salary or more, in hopes they will recoup all of that investment and build atop it.  How much time, effort, worry, stress, and money do we put toward their spiritual education?

It may seem like there’s no way to correct this imbalance; but there is.  We can teach God’s love and commandments to our kids in the same way he instructed the Israelites: speak of them when we sit at home, when we drive in our cars, when we put them to bed, and when we wake them each morning.  Read them often.  Write them in prominent locations to remind them what God expects.  The next generation may face financial struggle, civil strife, famine, disease, and natural disaster.  There’s nothing we can do to ensure they live through it all.  But we will have done our job, if they learn from us to know God and be known by him; to love God and to be loved by him, forever.

Jeremy Nettles

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2.8-10)

These verses are justly loved by many, but they are also the topic of fierce debate, between those who adhere to extreme versions of “faith only” doctrines, and those who emphasize the requirement that we act on God's offer.  Typically, the argument goes back and forth as each side seeks to emphasize its preferred focus within the passage.  One group shouts, “saved through faith!”  The other shouts, “created for good works!”  Neither budges, and no progress is made toward reconciliation.  The situation is oddly similar to the current political climate—most people generally just want to be left alone, but for someone to pick up the phone if they need to call 9-1-1.  But the people who really care, who are deeply engaged in public affairs, become more polarized by the day, and more entrenched both in their opposite policy proposals, and in their conviction that the other side is made up of the most evil people ever to walk the earth.

That’s clearly ridiculous; is the solution, both in politics and the church, to form a compromise right in the middle?  No.  In the political sphere, to make up an absurd example, if one side of the argument were to advocate the seizure of all children nationwide at age 8 to work in the salt mines, and the other side disagreed, would the proper solution to be to wait until the children turn 13 before enslaving them?  No, clearly one side has it right, and the other has it wrong.  When good and evil compromise, the result is still evil.  In the same way, we should not be deceived by the allure of compromise in our doctrine.  Compromise isn’t the highest good.  Good is the highest good.  If the truth happens to lie somewhere between the ideas of the most extreme fringes, we shouldn’t be surprised; but that doesn’t mean we can throw a dart anywhere between them and declare the spot where it lands to be the new truth.  Many religious bodies, exhausted with arguing, simply vote their way through the crises, as if the will of the Lord can be determined by a 51% majority opinion among men.  God gets to make the rules, and our job is to listen and obey, not nitpick, interpret them out of existence, and substitute our own; and yet, not just today but throughout the long history of Christianity, if we look we will find many times when men put themselves in the place of God and professed to make the rules on his behalf.

But even if we shun that approach, refusing to play God is the easy part—we understand that these aren’t just matters of life and death, but matters of eternal life and death, and so we hold fast our convictions.  But those convictions don’t always line up, from person to person.  We end up with two or more groups of people who have become, through their apparently honest desire to please God and get to heaven, irreconcilable.

Funnily enough, that’s exactly what Paul was leading up to when he wrote the words about grace, faith, and works in Ephesians 2.  His next sentences aren’t just about the salvation of individuals, but about the reconciliation of Jew and Gentile:

Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands—remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. (Ephesians 2.11-16)

These two groups of people—one vastly outnumbering the other—seemed irreconcilable.  God’s chosen people Israel had the oracles of God, the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the law, the worship, the promises, the patriarchs, and to top it all off, the Christ is, at least in fleshly terms, a member of their nation (Ro 3.2, 9.4-5).  The Gentiles, on the other hand, were separated from all these things, and had no hope of salvation, even though many of them sought God.  Understandably, there was a great deal of hostility between the two, as a result.  The Jews passed judgment on the Gentiles, and the Gentiles resented it and persecuted the Jews in return.  This conflict was often violent.  As much as it ever truly ended, it was with the destruction of the Jews’ cities and appropriation of their land, after which the survivors were scattered to the winds.

But what has Christ done?  Purely out of his deep love for the world, he gave his life to break down the wall between these two groups, unifying them into one body.  That’s his goal for all of us, too.  He requires that we be faithful to him.  He requires that we devote ourselves to good works.  But we are saved by his grace.  God reached out to us even though we were utterly undeserving, and through his doing—not ours—opened the path to reconciliation.  Let’s keep that in mind, look first to him as our Lord and shepherd, and spread the news far and wide.

Jeremy Nettles

Jesus described John the Baptist as greater than all of “those born of women” (Lk 7.28).  Yet he spent the last several months of his life wasting away in a prison, cut off from his disciples, cut off from society, cut off from his purpose of preparing the way for the Lord.

This man had said many of the same things that later  irritated the rulers about Jesus—he called the Pharisees and Sadducees a “brood of vipers” and said they would be “cut down and thrown into the fire” (Mt 3.7 & 10).  He told those with plenty—not just the rich, but all of those who weren’t destitute—to “share with him who has none” (Lk 3.11).  He told the wealthy (and unscrupulous) tax collectors, “Collect no more than you are authorized to do” (v13), and told soldiers not to make use of their strength to oppress the weak (v14), which were some of the primary reasons people got into those professions in the first place!  He told the crowds of his followers that they needed to be winnowed and threshed, and that the chaff—including people present to hear the message—would be burned “with unquenchable fire” when the Messiah came (v17).  All of this they tolerated, and even accepted.  But when John told king Herod, “It is not lawful for you to have” Herodias, the wife of Herod’s brother Philip, that was too much (Mt 14.4).  Herod “seized John and bound him and put him in prison” (v3).

It’s not that there was no one else who would have liked to silence John—but isn’t it a slightly amusing situation?  Large groups of people were willing to put up with John convicting them of broad, generic, sinful habits.  Yet, one man, upon being alerted to the very obvious fact God had prohibited adultery (Ex 20.14 et al.), and even more specifically adultery with one’s sister-in-law (Le 18.16), was unwilling either to accept the reproof and repent of his blatant and grotesque sin, or even to simply ignore the man who brought it up!  No, John had dared to level accusations against someone powerful, and what’s worse, they were obviously true!  Perhaps Herod worried that shining a light on his misbehavior could turn the public, the priesthood, and the council against him, thus weakening his hold on what power he possessed in Judea.  But really, he just didn't like being measured against a standard he failed to reach, and was unwilling to repent of the sin and repair his relationship with God, who set the standard in the first place.  His solution?  Silence God’s prophet!

Herod was content with this arrangement—no more public embarrassment!—but his unlawfully wedded wife, Herodias, saw things differently.  She “had a grudge against [John] and wanted to put him to death” (Mk 6.19), although Herod “feared John” and “kept him safe” (v20).  But Herod gave in and had John executed when Herodias told her daughter to request it.  Why would he grant such a request?  Because he had “promised with an oath to give her whatever she might ask” (Mt 14.7), and didn’t want to be embarrassed in front of his guests by going back on his word.  Alright then, why did he make such a vow to young Salome?  Because she “danced before the company and pleased Herod” (v6).  It is often supposed that the dance was lewd, which would add yet another dimension to this awful picture—Salome would have been roughly 13 years old at the time, and was Herod’s niece, not to mention his step-daughter—but the Bible doesn’t make this detail clear.

In any case, what we see here is a long list of sinful behaviors and attitudes, tied together with rash and foolish choices, leading to even greater sin.  Sure, at the end of the day everyone involved got what they wanted: the prophet who accused them of sin can no longer speak.  But what did they have to embrace and do, in order to get there?  Sin often begets further sin, undertaken either to cover up the first one, or to entrench ourselves in the denial of wrongdoing.  When we do this, it’s ultimately because we don’t like our faults and shortcomings being exposed and put on display.  For most people it doesn’t lead to a place where a young girl cheerfully carries a freshly disembodied head on a platter to her mother, who implicated the girl in the man’s unjust killing; that’s both an extreme example, and the consequence of finding oneself close to political power.  But how often do we use whatever means are reasonably within our grasp to hide from the light?

Jesus is that light—he called himself “the light of the world” (Jn 8.12) and told Nicodemus how the world responds to the light:

“the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.” (John 3.19-21)

This is why Herod and Herodias wanted John silenced.  They didn’t like the light, because their works were evil.  We’ve all committed evil acts—not just in the abstract sense that we’re imperfect beings in an imperfect world, but we made deliberate decisions to do things that we knew were wrong.  Maybe you’re years removed from the works done in darkness.  Maybe you were wicked last month.  It’s more likely that you sinned yesterday, or even an hour ago.  Will you follow the example of Herod and burrow deeper into the mire in a fruitless attempt to remain hidden?  Or will you welcome the light, examine yourself—including all your flaws—and start doing what is true, instead?

Jeremy Nettles