+I. Occasioned by the defection of his converts.+--"I stand in
doubt of you."
+II. As to what method he should adopt to restore them.+--"And to
change my voice."
+III. Increased by the difficulty of effecting a personal
interview.+--"I desire to be present with you now."
_"I stand in doubt of you." Doubtful Christians._
+I. Persons whose religion is liable to suspicion.+--1. Those who
have long attended the means of grace, and are very defective in
knowledge. 2. Who profess much knowledge and are puffed up with it.
3. Who contend for doctrinal religion rather than for that which is
practical and experimental. 4. Who waver in their attachment to the
fundamental principles of the Gospel. 5. Who neglect the ordinances
of God's house. 6. Who neglect devotional exercises. 7. Who
co-operate not with the Church to advance the kingdom of Christ in
the world.
+II. The improvement to be made of the subject.+--1. Should lead to
self-examination. 2. Shows the loss and danger of persons so
characterised. 3. Should lead to repentance and faith. 4. While
exercising a godly jealousy over others, let Christians watch with
greater jealousy over themselves.--_Helps._
_MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses_ 21-31.
_The History of Hagar and Sarah allegorical of the Law and the Gospel._
+I. The two women represented two different covenants.+--1. _Hagar
represented Sinai, typical of the law with its slavish exactions and
terrible threatenings_ (vers. 22, 25). Sinai spoke of bondage and
terror. It was a true symbol of the working of the law of Moses,
exhibited in the present condition of Judaism. And round the base of
Sinai Hagar's wild sons had found their dwelling. Jerusalem was no
longer the mother of freemen. Her sons chafed under the Roman yoke.
They were loaded with self-inflicted burdens. The spirit of the
nation was that of rebellious, discontented slaves. They were
Ishmaelite sons of Abraham, with none of the nobleness, the
reverence, the calm and elevated faith of their father. In the
Judaism of the apostle's day the Sinaitic dispensation, uncontrolled
by the higher patriarchal and prophetic faith, had worked out its
natural result. It gendered to bondage. A system of repression and
routine, it had produced men punctual in tithes of mint and anise,
but without justice, mercy, or faith; vaunting their liberty while
they were servants of corruption. The Pharisee was the typical
product of law apart from grace. Under the garb of a freeman he
carried the soul of a slave.
2. _Sarah represented Jerusalem, typical of the Gospel with its
higher freedom and larger spiritual fruitfulness_ (vers.
26-28).--Paul has escaped from the prison of legalism, from the
confines of Sinai; he has left behind the perishing earthly
Jerusalem, and with it the bitterness and gloom of his Pharisaic
days. He is a citizen of the heavenly Zion, breathing the air of a
Divine freedom. The yoke is broken from the neck of the Church of
God; the desolation is gone from her heart. Robbed of all outward
means, mocked and thrust out as she is by Israel after the flesh, her
rejection is a release, an emancipation. Conscious of the spirit of
sonship and freedom, looking out on the boundless conquests lying
before her in the Gentile world, the Church of the new covenant
glories in her tribulations. In Paul is fulfilled the joy of prophet
and psalmist, who sang in former days of gloom concerning Israel's
enlargement and world-wide victories (_Findlay_).
+II. The antagonism of their descendants represented the violent and
incessant opposition of the law to the Gospel.+--"As he that was born
after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even
so it is now. . . . Cast out the bondwoman and her son" (vers. 29,
30). Sooner or later the slave-boy was bound to go. He has no proper
birthright, no permanent footing in the house. One day he exceeds his
licence, he makes himself intolerable; he must be gone. The
Israelitish people showed more than Ishmael's jealousy toward the
infant Church of the Spirit. No weapon of violence or calumny was too
base to be used against it. Year by year they became more hardened
against spiritual truth, more malignant towards Christianity, and
more furious and fanatical in their hatred towards their civil
rulers. Ishmael was in the way of Isaac's safety and prosperity
(_Ibid._).
+III. The Gospel bestows a richer inheritance than the law.+--"The
son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the
freewoman. . . . We are children of the free" (vers. 30, 31). The two
systems were irreconcilable. The law and the Gospel cannot coexist
and inherit together; the law must disappear before the Gospel. The
higher absorbs the lower. The Church of the future, the spiritual
seed of Abraham gathered out of all nations, has no part in legalism.
It embraces blessings of which Mosaism had no conception--"an
inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away"
(1 Pet. i. 4).
+Lessons.+--1. _The law and the Gospel differ fundamentally._ 2. _The
law imposes intolerable burdens._ 3. _The Gospel abrogates the law by
providing a higher spiritual obedience._
_GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES._