The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Abraham Had Two Sons

In Galatians 4:21-31, Paul uses Abraham’s two sons as an allegory that will help us a great deal in understanding Biblical prophecy. Here we find important keys, ideas and concepts that will help us make sense of the information we are given. Paul gives us a working demonstration of the new understanding Christ brought to the interpretation of prophecy. Paul himself writes, “For all the promises of God in him are Yes, and in him Amen, to the glory of God through us” (2 Cor. 1:20). Jesus is important not only to our salvation, but to our study of interpretation or hermeneutics.

It is appealing, and seems simple enough, just to take the Bible literally whenever possible, and a great number of Bible teachers advocate just such a method. One well-known rule of thumb is to take a passage literally unless it is obvious that the usage is figurative.

This system has a lot to commend it, but it overlooks an important fact: there is a considerable language and cultural barrier between the New Testament and the contemporary reader. Discerning between figurative and literal language is not always so easy. And it really doesn’t help our dilemma any: one person may say, Christ has obviously not returned, so we must take the time statements figuratively; another may say, Christ said his return would be signaled by the destruction of Jerusalem, so we can’t take the descriptions literally.

The proof of any system of interpretation is in its consistency:

Can it be consistently applied, and does it make sense?

Like a hypothesis in scientific method, we are trying to make sense of all the available data. We have already seen that there is biblical precedent for understanding descriptive language figuratively.

In addition to literal vs. figurative, there is another fault line involving temporal and spiritual. What Paul gives us in Galatians 4 is a picture of how we can understand the difference between these concepts:

In his effort to show the essential difference between the Law and the Gospel, and to keep believers from turning away from their faith, Paul turns to an allegorical argument from the Old Testament. He urges the Galatians to consider a story well-known to them from Jewish history. Paul allegorizes this story in order to reach beyond its plain, historical meaning, and draw out a second meaning that God intended for them to have. In other words, he takes a literal story and draws a figurative application from it.

Paul, writing under the influence of the Holy Spirit, did not simply choose an apt metaphor, but his choice gives us a glimpse into the rich imagery that God invested in the history of Old Testament. We might think of God as an epic poet, using the history of the Hebrew people as His medium. What appears to be simply a story in the life of Abraham turns out to have great spiritual significance in the unfolding of God’s redemptive plan.

First, Paul tells us that Abraham had two sons. They were born into the same household, but of different mothers. Each mother represents a different covenant, and each son represents a different covenant people. Hagar was an Egyptian bondwoman in the household of Abraham, representing the Old Covenant given on Mt. Sinai. The Sinaitic covenant was also represented by the literal Jerusalem that was standing at the time of Paul’s writing. Ishmael represents the people of that covenant, the nation of Israel, who were under the bondage of sin and death (Galatians 5:1).

Sarah, the freewoman, represents the New Covenant that went forth from Mt. Zion, which is also represented by the New Jerusalem, or the heavenly Jerusalem, which is free with her children (Hebrews 12:22). Isaac, the son of the freewoman, represents the people of the New Covenant.

The purpose of Paul in this allegory was threefold: First, to show that Abraham had two sons, which existed side by side for a time in the same household. We must not miss this point of the story. These two sons are types of the two Israels of God, one born after the flesh (Old Covenant), and the other born after the Spirit (New Covenant). The spiritual follows the temporal. Ishmael was the first born and, as such, stood to receive the inheritance. Without Ishmael’s being disinherited, Isaac could not receive the firstborn’s portion. This was the meaning and strength of Sarah’s words when she said, “Cast out this bondwoman and her son; for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, namely with Isaac” (Gen. 21:10).

As long as Ishmael and Isaac coexisted, neither received the inheritance. In order for Isaac to receive full inheritance, it was necessary to cast out Ishmael. Paul’s purpose, therefore, was to motivate all to become and remain children of the freewoman, for the inheritance was not going to be shared by the children of the bondwoman. Fleshly and spiritual Israel coexisted from Pentecost (the time of Isaac’s birth) until the destruction of Jerusalem (the time of Ishmael’s casting out). Part of Paul’s mission was to encourage the children of the freewoman to be faithful while exhorting the children of the bondwoman to change direction.

There was a bitter struggle between temporal and spiritual Israel while they coexisted, as typified in Ishmael’s persecution of Isaac.

Much of the New Testament was written to encourage the Christians to hold fast under religious persecution, for deliverance would come soon. Ishmael was going to be cast out, and then Isaac would be delivered from mockery, and be in a position to receive the promised inheritance.

Those who teach that the inheritance of spiritual Israel is yet future have not given careful consideration to this allegory, nor to the time element involved in prophecies and Scriptures that deal with the giving of this inheritance. They have Isaac still waiting (nearly 2,000 years) to receive what would be his when Ishmael was cast out. Either Isaac has received the adoption, or Ishmael has not yet been cast out – there is no in-between position for us today.

The persecutors typified by Ishmael were the Judaizers, Jews who were trying to persuade the early church that Gentile converts must be circumcised and follow Jewish law. These were Jews by birth who sought for the inheritance, or blessings of the covenant, through the temporal ordinances of the Old Covenant. Frequent reference is made in New Testament Scripture to the severe persecution directed against first-century Christians by these groups,

It is in view of this persecution that Paul asks the question,

Without giving any hint of the nearness of the destruction of Jerusalem, Paul, by adopting these words of Sarah addressed to Abraham, emphasizes the need for the Galatians to stand clear of a system doomed for destruction. Just as there could be no joint inheritance between Ishmael and Isaac, so there could be no fusion or amalgamation of the Old and New Covenants. Temporal Israel could not be combined with spiritual Israel.

This article above is found HERE.

This part 2 below is found HERE.

Paul allegorized the story of Abraham’s two sons, Ishmael and Isaac, to give us a paradigm for understanding the symbolic nature of prophetic language’s fulfillment in an all-inclusive spiritual Israel, fulfilling the Abrahamic covenant to bless all people.

A related purpose of Paul’s was to show the essential difference between Old Covenant and New, and the difference between the temporal and the spiritual, or flesh and spirit. Ishmael was born after the flesh (Galatians 4:23) and Isaac was born after the Spirit (Galatians 4:29). This contrast of flesh and spirit with respect to the birth of these two sons is based upon the manner that each came into being. Ishmael was born after the flesh in that his birth was according to the common course of nature, his parents being of a reasonable age; there was nothing uncommon or supernatural in his birth. The birth of Isaac to the elderly Sarah was above and beyond the ordinary course of nature, involving the promise of God, and calling forth from Abraham and Sarah an act of faith. In response to this act of faith in the purpose and power of God, God gave them Isaac, miraculously allowing barren Sarah to conceive (Romans 4:17-21; Hebrews 11:11). Both were physically born, but the power by which they were born was different.

The birth of Ishmael of a bondwoman, according to the natural course of nature, became a fitting representation of Abraham’s temporal descendants, and the state of their bondage under the Old Covenant. By contrast, the birth of Isaac to a freewoman was symbolic of Abraham’s spiritual seed born of faith through Christ, and their freedom under the New Covenant.

Bondage and death were the states of the nation of Israel under the Law, “Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world” (Galatians 4:3). In contrast to this was freedom and life for those born of Christ, the spiritual seed of Abraham. “Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free,” Paul writes in Galatians 5:1, “and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.” Flesh and spirit are, therefore, contrasting terms for the Old and New covenants. It is common for us to apply these terms to the physical and spiritual aspects of humanity, but this is not how Paul uses these terms. An example is Galatians 3:3, “Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit [New Covenant], are you now being made perfect by the flesh [Old Covenant]?” Terms used in a similar way are “letter” and “spirit” – “who also made us sufficient as ministers of the New Covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit, for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor. 3:6; see also Romans 7:6).

Leaving the Old Covenant and coming into the new, then, is a matter of rebirth, “having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever” (1 Pet. 1:23).

Another aspect of this story that might have some application to our study is that the barren Sarah would have more children than Hagar. Both Hagar and Sarah were to have a large number of descendants, but according to prophecy, Sarah was to have the larger family. This is implied in the original promise of Genesis 12:3, “And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” The prophet Isaiah sets forth this fact more explicitly in Isaiah,

The more numerous children of the desolate, the spiritual seed of Abraham, were to include both Jews and Gentiles, a fact that was shrouded in mystery until the coming of Christ. Paul was an apostle of this mystery,

As Paul tells the story, we can see that Ishmael is the nation of Israel at the time of Paul’s writing. Isaac was the infant church, now made up of Jews and Gentiles both, waiting to be vindicated. Isaac’s mother would bear the greater fruit, the greater number of descendants. It remained only for Ishmael to be cast out. Ishmael and Isaac could not continue to coexist. The son of the bondwoman could not inherit with the son of the freewoman.

In the same way, the early church awaited the putting away of the Old Covenant system. This was not some macabre joy at the loss of life for their Jewish brothers and sisters, but the sign of the coming of the kingdom was clear: Jerusalem and the temple would be destroyed. The center and heart of prophecy is not Pentecost (the birth of Isaac) so much so as the fall of Jerusalem (the casting out of Ishmael).