ガラテヤの信徒への手紙4:28-5:1 Galatians 4:28-5:1,

ところで、兄弟たち、あなたがたは、イサクの場合のように、約束の子です。（ガラテヤ4:28）

神様の約束によって生まれたサラの子どもイサクは、「人はキリストを信じることによって救われる」という神様の約束によって救われようとしている人たちを表しています。ですから、「人はキリストを信じることによって救われる」というパウロの伝道によって神様の約束を信じたガラテヤの諸教会の信徒たちは、イサクと同じような「約束の子」であると言うことができるのです。そして、「キリストを信じるだけでなく、旧約聖書の律法で定められた割礼の儀式を受けなければ完全な救いは得られない」と教えたユダヤ教的な伝道者たちは、人間的な思いと手段によって生まれたハガルの子どもイシュマエルと同じような者である、とパウロは考えています。

そこで、29節でパウロは「けれども、あのとき、肉によって生まれた者が、“霊”によって生まれた者を迫害したように、今も同じようなことが行われています」と述べています。「あのとき」とは、旧約聖書の創世記の時代ということです。そして、パウロは、ハガルの子どもイシュマエルを「肉によって生まれた者」と言い、サラの子どもイサクを「“霊”によって生まれた者」と言っています。それでは、創世記の記述の中でイシュマエルはイサクを迫害したと書かれているのでしょうか？それに近い記述があるとすれば、それは創世記の21章9節の「サラは、エジプトの女ハガルがアブラハムとの間に産んだ子が、イサクをからかっているのを見て」という箇所でしょう。「からかっている」と翻訳されているのは、「笑う」という意味のツァーハクというヘブライ語の動詞の強意形（意味を強めた形）です。この言葉は創世記の19章14節では「冗談を言う」という意味で翻訳されています。ですから、イシュマエルは幼いイサクをからかうようなふるまいをしたのでしょうが、いじめたり虐待したりしたわけではありません。ところが、パウロはイシュマエルのしたことを「迫害した」と解釈しています。これは、キリストを信じている信徒たちに、「キリストを信じるだけでなく、旧約聖書の律法で定められた割礼の儀式を受けなければ完全な救いは得られない」と教えて信徒たちを困らせている伝道者たちとイシュマエルのしたことを同じことだ、と言うためでしょう。それだけでなく、もっと広く考えれば、クリスチャンを迫害しているユダヤ教の指導者や過激派の人たちとイシュマエルのしたことを同じことだ、と言うためでもあるのかもしれません。　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　（3月10日の説教より）

There is a rational and an emotional part of our human mind. For example, suppose a person becomes ill. The rational part of the mind thinks rationally about the cause of the illness and decides that it is because he worked too hard, drank too much alcohol, or was too old. The emotional part of the mind, however, irrationally ponders the cause of the illness, wondering if it is because of this or that. It then assumes, for example, that the illness was caused by the curse of ancestors. Then, followers of cults may then skillfully elicit information about people’s misfortunes, explain the misfortunes with stories of ancestral cursing and other causal factors, and sell expensive works of art, seals, prayer beads and other items. This is so-called “fortune telling fraud.” The human mind is obsessed with irrational beliefs, and the “fortune telling fraud” takes advantage of this. Even if they don’t fall for “fortune telling fraud,” many people may believe that they have bad luck and try to change their bad luck to good luck by changing their name, changing their place of residence or having a kind of exorcism. People can lose their mental freedom by being caught up in irrational beliefs.

Not only that, but even rational thinking may actually be bound by a kind of stereotype. For example, suppose someone thinks that “everything ends when we die, so let’s enjoy it while we are alive.” The idea that “everything ends when we die” seems very rational. And the idea of ‘let’s enjoy it while we are alive’ also seems reasonable. So, at first glance, a person who lives with the thought, “everything ends when we die, so let’s enjoy it while we are alive,” seems to be a person who is living freely. However, if you think deeply about whether this is really a free way of life in the light of biblical teachings, you will find that it is not. Firstly, the idea that “everything ends when we die” is an idea derived from normal human experience. The Bible teaches otherwise, that there are blessings and judgments after death. Secondly, the idea of “let’s enjoy it while we are alive,” is based on the assumption that enjoyment is a good thing. However, the Bible, unlike that, teaches that suffering builds us up and gives us hope. In this sense, suffering is also good. The idea that death is not the end of human beings and that suffering is a good thing, creates a truly free way of life. This is because that way of thinking frees human beings from the stereotypes that death is the end of everything and that enjoyment is good.

The Christian faith frees a person from assumptions and stereotypes and sets him/her free. In the first half of 5:1 of today’s Bible passage, Paul makes the exalted declaration that “for freedom Christ has set us free.” This declaration is the conclusion of what Paul has been writing about up to 4:31 of this letter. It is also the foundation for the lifestyle exhortation Paul writes in chapter 5:1 and below of this letter.

Paul began his first missionary journey in 47 AD, when he and Barnabas preached the gospel of Christ throughout the Mediterranean island of Cyprus and what is now Turkey. This is described in the Acts of the Apostles 13:4 to the end of chapter 14. In particular, the evangelisation of various parts of Turkey is described in detail, with the birth of believers in Christ in Antioch in Pisidia, Iconium and Lystra. However, after Paul and Barnabas left, other evangelists entered these churches. These evangelists taught the believers differently from Paul. They taught that Christians must not only believe in Christ, but also keep the Old Testament law. The evangelists particularly emphasised the need to undergo the ritual of circumcision, which is commanded in the Old Testament law. In other words, they taught that “not only must one believe in Christ, but one must also undergo the ritual of circumcision as prescribed by the Old Testament law to attain full salvation.”

This teaching was very confusing to Gentile believers, i.e., non-Jewish believers who had come to the Christian faith. Gentile believers then came to believe that they too had to undergo the ritual of circumcision. Not only that, but they even began to think that they had to observe the Sabbath, the various festivals and years of rest as prescribed in the Old Testament law, or they would not be able to attain full salvation. Therefore, Paul says in 4:10-11: “You observe days and months and seasons and years! I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain.” If the believers in the Galatian churches believe that they must keep the Old Testament law in order to attain full salvation, then Paul’s efforts to have taken pains to teach them that “one can be saved by believing in Christ,” seem to have been in vain.

Paul therefore tries to bring the Galatian believers back to the grace of Christ by taking up the Old Testament account of Abraham in Genesis, the ancestor of the Israelites, who had a son Ishmael, born to a female slave Hagar, and a son Isaac, born to his wife Sarah. Paul writes in verses 22 and 23 before today’s passage as follows.

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.

Abraham was probably a Middle Bronze Age man of the 18th to 16th centuries BC. Abraham and his wife Sarah were an elderly childless couple. By common sense, they were long past the age when they could have children. However, God showed Abraham stars in the night sky and said, “So shall your offspring be,” promising him a child. And Abraham believed it and was counted by God as righteous (Gen. 15).

If this was the case, then Abraham and Sarah’s marriage should have waited quietly for the birth of their child. However, Sarah, the wife, could not wait and became numb. Sarah assigned her female slave Hagar to her husband Abraham and tried to impregnate Hagar to have a child. The result was Ishmael, the son of Abraham and Hagar. Later, after the angel of God again told Sarah of the promise that she would have a child, she also had a child, just as God had promised. She gave birth to a son called Isaac. However, Sarah was not at peace. She feared that in the future Ishmael might succeed her husband Abraham with their son Isaac and rule over Isaac as the elder brother. She then pressed her husband Abraham to “cast out this slave woman with her son.”

Abraham was very distressed. Ishmael was also a son of his own blood. God then said to Abraham: “Be not displeased because of the boy and because of your slave woman. Whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for through Isaac shall your offspring be named. And I will make a nation of the son of the slave woman also, because he is your offspring” (Gen. 21:12-13). Thus, it was Sarah’s son Isaac who succeeded Abraham. However, Hagar and her son Ishmael, who were driven out of Abraham’s house, were also protected by God and lived a strong life in the wilderness, and their descendants became a numerous nation.

When Paul says in verse 23 that the son of the female slave was born of the flesh, he means that the child of the female slave Hagar was born through a natural human process. This means that he was born of a woman who was young and capable of bearing children. On the other hand, “the son of the free woman was born through promise” means that the son of the free woman Sarah was born through God’s special promise. In other words, he was born through God’s special promise to give birth to a son, even though Sarah was too old to bear children under normal circumstances.

What is Paul trying to say by quoting the story of Hagar’s and Sarah’s sons? First, the son of Hagar, born of human thoughts and means, represents those who are trying to be saved by human thoughts and means: “one cannot attain full salvation unless one not only believes in Christ but also undergoes the ritual of circumcision as prescribed by the Old Testament law.” And Sarah’s son, born of God’s promise, represents those who are trying to be saved by God’s promise that “one can be saved by believing in Christ.” In other words, God’s promise is sufficient to be saved, and no human thoughts or means need be added. To be more precise, it means that no human thoughts or means must be added in order to be saved.

Following this story of the two children of Abraham, Paul says in verse 28 of today’s passage, “Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise.” As I mentioned earlier, Isaac, the child of Sarah, born of God’s promise, represents those who are being saved by God’s promise that “one can be saved by believing in Christ.” So we can say that the believers in the churches of Galatia, who believed God’s promise through Paul’s evangelism that “one can be saved by believing in Christ,” are “children of promise” like Isaac. And Paul believes that the Jewish evangelists who taught that “not only must one believe in Christ, but one must also undergo the ritual of circumcision as prescribed by the Old Testament law to attain full salvation,” were like Ishmael, the child of Hagar, born through human thoughts and means.

So in verse 29 Paul says, “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.” “That time” refers to the time of Genesis in the Old Testament. Paul then refers to Ishmael, the child of Hagar, as “born according to the flesh” and to Isaac, the child of Sarah, as “born according to the Spirit.” Then, does the Genesis account say that Ishmael persecuted Isaac? If there is a close parallel, it is in Genesis 21:9, where “But Sarah saw that the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham was mocking” (NIV 2011). The word translated “mocking” is the intensified form of the Hebrew verb tsāhaq (צחק), which means “to laugh.” The word is translated in Genesis 19:14 as “joking” (NIV 2011). Ishmael may have behaved in a mocking way towards the young Isaac, but he did not bully or abuse him. However, Paul interprets what Ishmael did as “to persecute.” This is probably to say that what Ishmael did was the same as what the Jewish evangelists do to believers in Christ. The evangelists annoy them by telling them that they must not only believe in Christ but also undergo the ritual of circumcision as prescribed by the Old Testament law in order to attain full salvation. But also, and perhaps more broadly, to say that Ishmael was doing the same thing as the Jewish leaders and extremists who persecute Christians.

So, Paul quotes that Sarah, Abraham’s wife, said to Abraham, “Cast out this slave woman with her son, for the son of this slave woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac” (Gen. 21:10), and in verse 30 he says, “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.’” This quotation is quoted as a word of truth, as in “what does the Scripture say?” to get rid of the evangelists who annoy Gentile believers in the Galatian churches by teaching that they must not only believe in Christ but also undergo the ritual of circumcision as prescribed by the Old Testament law in order to attain full salvation. This seems to be a forceful way of quoting. However, Paul is probably trying to say that just as Ishmael did not become the heir of Abraham’s blessing, so the evangelists who teach that “full salvation cannot be attained without the ritual of circumcision as prescribed by the Old Testament law,” are not heirs of God’s blessing.

In verse 31, Paul ends his quotation of the story of Ishmael, the son of Hagar, the female slave, and Isaac, the son of Sarah, Abraham’s wife, by saying, “So, brothers, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman.” The quotation of this story may be difficult for us today to understand. However, the opponents Paul was confronting through the Galatian believers were Jewish evangelists who valued the Old Testament words. To refute the claims of those evangelists, he needed an argument based on the Old Testament. Paul probably quotes the story of Ishmael and Isaac to show that the claim of those evangelists who taught that “full salvation cannot be attained without the ritual of circumcision as prescribed by the Old Testament law,” was denied by the Old Testament itself on which they were based.

In this way, Paul is able to show the powerful declaration in the first half of chapter 5:1, “For freedom Christ has set us free.” and the fervent exhortation, “stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” By believing in Christ, we have been freed from slavery to sin and death. We no longer need to be bound by the fear of the curse that comes because of our sin. Nor do we need to be bound by stereotypes such as “everything ends when we die,” and “so let’s enjoy it while we are alive.” Those who believe in Christ are not bound by anything and can live with God. We can live one day at a time without fear of sin or death. We can live one day at a time with the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit.