A Great Lineage

Galatians 4:21-31

Introduction

A number of years ago, I was able to track down who my birth father was. For many people, that might be a traumatic event, but I found it to be a great adventure. Although he was dead, I was able to at least know who my birth family were. The highlight was meeting some of my half-siblings. But also interesting was doing some research into my genealogy. Thankfully, one of my extended cousins had already done a lot of work in that area. For whatever reason, I was especially interested in any notable figures in the lineage. I was pleased to find out that I am related to a number of people whose background overlaps with my personal interests. One of my direct ancestors was a United Empire Loyalist who fought with the Butlers Rangers against the Americans during the Revolution. This explains how my branch of the family came to Canada. A more recent but more distant relation was the Captain of the USS Arizona who was killed and whose ship was sunk during the attack on Pearl Harbour. As a fan of classic rock, I was pleased to find out that I was related to David Crosby of CSNY and Kurt Cobain of Nirvana. Finally, as a huge Star Trek fan, I was excited to find out that I was related to Jane Wyatt, who played Spock’s mom on the original Star Trek series. I like to think of myself as Spock’s half-cousin.

Have you done any work on your lineage? Not necessarily looking for famous people, but tracing where your family came from and where they settled along the way. If so, did you find any interesting characters? I can definitely see why some people immerse themselves in genealogy.

Not surprisingly, the Bible is very interested in genealogies. It has been estimated that there are approximately twenty-five genealogies in the Bible. Some people dread the so-called “begats” in their Bible reading and yet the Bible writers seem very interested in describing where people came from and who they came from.

Paul is interested in that as well, although not necessarily the literal genealogies, but more looking to our spiritual ancestors. Already in Galatians, Paul has described people of faith as being descendants of Abraham, even if we are not related to him by blood. But Paul is not done with this image yet. As you may remember from your Old Testament readings, Abraham had a son with Hagar and also a son with Sarah. Which lineage do we belong to as Christians? Paul uses a very imaginative way to tell us.

Hagar and Sarah

Before going too far into what Paul says, I would like to take a moment to discuss how Paul says it. There have been different ways for people to interpret Scripture over the centuries. One is the historical method, which sometimes called literal interpretation, in which one looks at a passage and interprets it in a plain sense matter. An example of this would be looking at the story of Jesus’ resurrection as being a description of actual events, that Jesus really died on one day and then on the third day, he walked out of the tomb alive. This would be the way we normally interpret the Bible, understanding that historical descriptions also use figures of speech.

Another way people have interpreted Scripture is the allegorical method. In this case, each aspect of the story is seen as a symbol of a deeper truth. This would understand the point of the story as not to describe events but to illustrate a spiritual truth. These are not mutually exclusive as numerous interpreters have seen a story being about both real events and being symbolic of something more. 

So in the case of Hagar and Sarah, this could be about Abraham anticipating the birth of a son promised by God and having relations with Hagar, from which Ishmael was born, and then later getting Sarah, his actual wife, pregnant and Issac being born. I am very confident that Paul understood this historically as describing real events and Abraham’s relationship between two different women. 

But that does not stop Paul from also interpreting this allegorically. Paul wants to discuss two concepts of the Christian life: a life in obedience to the Law and a life lived by faith. And look, Abraham was linked with two different women: Hagar and Sarah. Paul is contrasting living by purely human effort and living by trusting in God’s promise. The child born to Hagar was by human effort and the child born by Sarah was because of the promise of God. Paul wants to contrast being enslaved to the Law with the freedom that comes through faith in Christ. Once more, we see in the story that Hagar was a slave and Sarah was a free woman. 

I want to state clearly again that Paul believed that Hagar and Sarah were real people that had real babies. But Paul also sees them as images for these two ways. He basically is saying, no matter what our ethnic background, we are either of the line of Hagar or the line of Sarah. We can choose the background of slavery and human striving or the background of freedom and trusting in the promises of God. It is clear which one Paul is hoping the Galatians will choose.

The Way of Freedom

It is good that we are children of Abraham but it is important that we be children of Sarah as well. It is through that lineage that we find freedom.

Of course Paul makes it sound so easy. Just choose freedom and trust. But even as we look back to the actual story of Abraham, Hagar, and Sarah, we see that reality is much more complicated. God promised Abraham a son and Abraham believed. But after some time, no son was appearing, and so Abraham decided to help the situation along with Hagar. He fathered Ishmael by Hagar because in the moment, the promise did not seem to be enough. We can probably identify with that. We are told that salvation is by faith in Jesus alone. And we believe that. But we might also wonder if there is something to be added. Maybe some rules would make things work better. Surely just letting Christ live through us is not enough? 

The other concern might be in the idea of freedom. Is freedom a good thing? Imagine if the police disbanded and laws would no longer would be enforced. We would hope that people would follow the law based on the honour system but they would have the freedom to obey or disobey. Would that be good for society? We might feel the same about spiritual freedom. To get rid of the rules would be to invite Christians to live any way they wanted with no fear of consequences. But that is not the point that Paul is making. Paul is talking about the line of Sarah giving us the freedom to live as children of God and the expectation is that children take on the characteristics of their parents. There should be a family resemblance. If we are free, we are free not live any way imaginable but to live as children of God that is true freedom. That is the blessing of being of the lineage of Sarah. We have that freedom. We are free to be children of God and that means we get to live like children of God.

Conclusion

There are people who have impressive lineages, some that also include royalty and other famous figures. In some cases, their role actually depends their lineage, and this is why the ability to trace that family ancestry was so important.

We have an important lineage. We are of the line of Abraham, not by blood but by faith. We believe as Abraham believed. But from Abraham, the line divided. One way went along the line of Hagar and the other along the line of Sarah. Paul uses this image of Sarah as a way to remind us that we can trust in the promises of God and live as free people. This is where things differ from a literal lineage. We cannot choose who our ancestors were. We get what we get. But we do get to choose our spiritual lineage. We can choose slavery to the Law or freedom in faith. So what choice will we make?