The Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 30, 2025
The Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 30, 2025
The situation remains unchanged after two thousand years of preaching. Few preachers have been able to maintain the Apostle Paul’s allegorizing of the law as slavery… of maintaining that the slave woman and her progeny should be cast out (cf. vs. 30) … of declaring categorically that the son of the slave has no inheritance… that he does not belong in the household of God. Those desiring to live under the law… those coveting their submission to the law… those who desire the law but do not listen to the law (cf. vs. 21) … they have no future. They, born according to the flesh (cf. vs. 29), persecute the children of the promise… do away with those who have an inheritance… kill the heir! (Mt. 21:38; Mk. 12:7; Lk. 20:14).
Yet… yet a few preachers have maintained the tradition noted in Paul’s preaching through the centuries. Sometimes known as the “thin tradition,” these preachers get the sequence right, the law until Christ. Paul establishes this when he writes, “So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith” (Gal. 3:24). Paul also asserts, “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes” (Ro. 10:4). The voice of the slave woman and her son is silenced for those who are in Christ Jesus. That silence, however, is only in Christ. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Ro. 8:1). These preachers set you, who have been enslaved under the law, free, a freedom established simply for freedom’s sake (cf. Gal. 5:1). This freedom is of the Jerusalem above (vs. 26) which is ours in faith but not yet ours in sight (cf. Rev. 21:2).
For now, during these days of our baptism, faith’s most abundant work is to keep the law out of our conscience. Only Jesus Christ sits on the conscience’s throne. For now, Paul reminds us that the law restrains the sin of our hands and does not belong where Christ reigns in our conscience (cf. Ro. 7:23). Either we do spontaneously and without consideration what Christ would have us do, or we act with a considered obedience, dethroning Christ and replacing him with the law.
Table Talk: Discuss slave and free and the persecution of the latter by the former.
Pray: Heavenly Father, keep Christ enthroned in my conscience. Amen
Galatians 4:21-31 (ESV)
21 Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? 22 For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. 23 But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. 24 Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. 25 Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. 26 But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. 27 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.
28 Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. 29 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. 30 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. 31 So, brothers, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman.