The Immediate Point of Paul’s Argument

In Galatians 4:24, the apostle says of Hagar and Sarah, “these women are two covenants,” or, as many render the sense, these things are being used in a figurative or symbolic way. Paul was not denying the historical reality of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael, or Isaac. He was not turning Genesis into a mere parable. He was taking real redemptive history and, by divine inspiration, showing its covenant significance for the churches of Galatia. The question is not whether the history happened. It did happen. The question is what that history signified in Paul’s argument against false teaching. The answer is that Paul set the covenant from Mount Sinai, that is, the Mosaic Covenant, over against the line of promise rooted in the Abrahamic covenant. His purpose was pastoral, theological, and urgent. He was exposing the fatal error of seeking right standing before God through Law-works after Christ had already come.

This entire section must be read in light of Galatians 3 and 4, not in isolation. Earlier Paul had already argued that Abraham was counted righteous by faith before the Law existed (Gal. 3:6; Gen. 15:6). He also stated plainly that the Law, which came 430 years later, did not annul the promise previously ratified by God (Gal. 3:17). That chronological point is decisive. Paul’s contrast in Galatians is not merely between bad Jews and good Gentiles, or between old customs and new customs. It is between two covenantal principles as they relate to inheritance: the principle of Sinai, which exposes sin and brings bondage to those who seek righteousness through it, and the principle of promise, which rests on Jehovah’s word and is fulfilled in Christ. Therefore, when Paul speaks of “two covenants,” the historical and theological backdrop makes clear that one is the Law covenant from Sinai, and the other is the covenant of promise associated with Abraham and fulfilled in the Messiah.

Why Paul Used This Symbolic Drama

Paul used this symbolic drama because the crisis in Galatia demanded a clear and forceful demonstration. Certain Judaizers were troubling the congregations by insisting that Gentile believers should receive circumcision and place themselves under the Mosaic Law as a condition of full covenant standing (Gal. 2:3-5; 5:2-4; 6:12-13). Paul knew that this was not a minor ceremonial dispute. It was a corruption of the gospel itself. To submit to circumcision as a covenant obligation was to place oneself under the yoke of the whole Law and, therefore, under its condemning structure as a system of covenant obligation (Gal. 5:3). That would not produce liberty. It would produce slavery.

By turning to the account of Sarah and Hagar, Paul showed that the error of the false teachers was already illustrated in Abraham’s household. Ishmael came by ordinary human planning through the slave woman, whereas Isaac came through divine promise through the free woman (Gen. 16; 17:15-21; 21:1-3). Paul’s point was not that Abraham acted outside history or that Genesis was secretly written as an allegory. His point was that the historical distinction between slave woman and free woman, flesh and promise, bondage and inheritance, provided an inspired covenant illustration. Those who insisted on covenant identity through Sinai resembled the line of Hagar, not because the Law was evil, but because the Law, when treated as the basis of righteousness and inheritance, leaves sinners in servitude. Those who embraced Christ belonged to the line of promise, as Isaac did, because Christ is the promised offspring through whom the blessing of Abraham comes to both Jew and Gentile (Gal. 3:16, 26-29).

The First Covenant: Sinai and the Bondage of the Law

Paul is explicit about the first covenant in the comparison. Hagar corresponds to Mount Sinai in Arabia and bears children for slavery (Gal. 4:24-25). There is no ambiguity here. This is the covenant made at Sinai through Moses after the Exodus. It was holy, righteous, and good in what it revealed about Jehovah’s will (Rom. 7:12). It was not sinful, defective in moral content, or a mistake in redemptive history. Yet it was never given as the final means by which sinners would obtain justification and inheritance. It revealed sin, intensified transgression, shut people up under sin’s condemnation, and functioned as a guardian until Christ came (Gal. 3:19-25; Rom. 3:20; 5:20).

That is why Paul can speak of slavery in connection with Sinai. The slavery is not because Jehovah’s Law was unjust. The slavery lies in the condition of fallen humans under a covenant that commands righteousness but does not grant sinners a righteous standing through their own performance. The Law demands obedience and pronounces a curse on all who do not continue in everything written in it (Gal. 3:10; Deut. 27:26). Since all humans are sinners, those who seek life through Law-observance place themselves under a ministry that exposes guilt rather than removes it. The sacrifices under that covenant pointed beyond themselves. The priesthood pointed beyond itself. The entire structure pointed forward to the One who would bear the curse and secure the promised blessing (Gal. 3:13-14; Heb. 10:1-4). Thus, when first-century Jews clung to the Mosaic arrangement as though it were the path to final righteousness, and when Gentiles in Galatia were tempted to submit to it for covenant acceptance, they were embracing not freedom but bondage.

This is why Paul’s warning is so sharp in Galatians 5:1. Christ set believers free, and they must not submit again to a yoke of slavery. The Galatians had not formerly been under the Sinai covenant as Gentiles, but if they accepted circumcision as a covenant necessity, they would be choosing to enter a system whose purpose had already reached its terminus in Christ. They would not be becoming more spiritual. They would be abandoning the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice and returning to a covenant order that could diagnose sin but not finally remove condemnation by their own obedience.

The Second Covenant: The Abrahamic Promise and the Freewoman

The second covenant in Paul’s contrast is best understood as the Abrahamic promise-covenant, not because Sarah is directly equated in one simple line with every later covenantal development, but because the whole argument of Galatians has already established that inheritance comes through the promise given to Abraham and his offspring, not through the Law that came later (Gal. 3:16-18, 29). Sarah, the free woman, represents the line of promise. Isaac was not born by human scheming, covenant performance, or fleshly effort. He was born because Jehovah fulfilled what He had promised. That is the pattern Paul is drawing out. The children of God are children of promise.

This is why Paul says, “Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise” (Gal. 4:28). That sentence is decisive. He does not say, “You are children of Sinai rightly improved.” He says they are like Isaac, the child whose existence and inheritance rested on divine promise. The theological movement in Galatians runs from Abraham to Christ. The promise given to Abraham finds its goal in the Messiah, the singular offspring through whom the nations are blessed (Gal. 3:8, 16). Therefore, Sarah stands on the side of freedom because she is bound to the promise, and the promise is fulfilled in Christ. Paul’s point is not that the Abrahamic covenant and the new covenant are identical in every formal respect. His point is that the liberty believers possess in Christ belongs to the promise line that began with Abraham and reaches its fulfillment in the gospel.

Galatians 4:26 strengthens this. Paul says that “the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother.” He thus carries the Sarah line upward and forward into the heavenly and eschatological reality that belongs to Christ’s people. The freewoman does not merely represent a biological mother in ancient history. She represents the covenant sphere of promise, inheritance, and freedom, now realized for believers in union with Christ. This does not cancel the Abrahamic covenant. It shows its fulfillment. The promised blessing was never meant to terminate in circumcision, ethnic privilege, or Sinai regulations as ends in themselves. It was always moving toward the Messiah and the worldwide family of faith.

How Paul’s Chronology Settles the Question

Paul’s chronology in Galatians 3 settles the matter with extraordinary clarity. Jehovah made promises to Abraham. Abraham believed Jehovah, and it was counted to him as righteousness (Gen. 15:6; Gal. 3:6). Only later did the Sinai covenant come. Paul insists that the later covenant did not invalidate the earlier promise (Gal. 3:17). That means the inheritance was never ultimately designed to come through the Mosaic covenant. If inheritance were based on Law, it would no longer rest on promise; but God graciously gave it to Abraham by promise (Gal. 3:18). Paul is not speaking carelessly. He is constructing a chronological and theological argument that rules out the Judaizers’ whole position.

The Law had a temporary, subordinate, and preparatory role. It was added because of transgressions until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made (Gal. 3:19). It served as a tutor leading to Christ, so that people might be justified by faith (Gal. 3:24). Once faith in Christ has come, believers are no longer under that tutor in the same covenantal sense (Gal. 3:25). This does not mean the Old Testament loses value. It means the specific covenant administration given at Sinai has completed its role in the progress of redemption. Therefore, when Paul speaks in Galatians 4:24 of two covenants, the entire letter has already prepared the reader to identify the contrast as Sinai versus promise, Law versus Abrahamic inheritance, bondage versus freedom in Christ.

That is why the The Apostle Paul could speak so strongly against returning to the Law as a covenant yoke. He had already shown that the Law itself points beyond itself. To seek life through Sinai after the coming of Christ is to misunderstand both Sinai and Abraham. It is to miss the very purpose of the Law, which was to lead to the Messiah. Those who refuse Christ do not preserve the Law’s true role; they empty it of its God-given function. Those who embrace Christ do not despise the Law; they recognize its fulfillment in the redemptive plan of Jehovah.

What This Meant for Jewish Hearers and Gentile Believers

For Jewish hearers, Paul’s symbolic drama exposed a devastating irony. Many prided themselves on descent from Abraham and attachment to the Law, but if they rejected Jesus Christ, they were aligning themselves not with the freewoman in the matter of inheritance, but with the slave line in terms of covenant bondage. Natural descent from Abraham was never enough. John the Baptist had already warned that Jehovah could raise up children to Abraham from stones (Matt. 3:9). Jesus said that true freedom comes through the Son and that everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin (John 8:32-36). Therefore, to reject the Messiah while boasting in Mosaic distinctives was not fidelity. It was bondage under a covenant that condemned the sinner and pointed beyond itself to the Christ they refused.

For Gentile believers, the warning was equally urgent. They had never lived under the Sinai covenant as national Israelites. Why, then, should they now submit to circumcision and Mosaic observances as though Christ were insufficient? Paul asks in Galatians 4:9 why they would turn back to weak and beggarly elemental things after coming to know God. His language is sharp because the danger was real. They had begun by the Spirit and were being tempted to seek completion by the flesh (Gal. 3:3). But covenant membership does not come through ethnic incorporation into Israel under Sinai. It comes through faith in Christ, who brings the blessing of Abraham to the nations (Gal. 3:14). The issue was not cultural preference. It was the gospel itself.

This same truth stood behind the Jerusalem Council, which rejected the claim that Gentiles must be circumcised and keep the Law of Moses in order to be saved. The apostles and elders recognized from Scripture and from Jehovah’s work among the nations that salvation is through the grace of the Lord Jesus, not through the Mosaic code as a covenant requirement for justification and inheritance (Acts 15:1-11). Paul’s argument in Galatians is therefore not eccentric or detached from apostolic teaching elsewhere. It is a direct defense of the same gospel truth.

Freedom in Christ Is the Fulfillment of the Promise

Paul’s burden in Galatians 4 is not merely to identify two covenants in an abstract doctrinal scheme. His burden is to show that believers in Christ have real freedom because they stand in the line of promise, not in the bondage of Sinai as a covenantal means of inheritance. That freedom is not lawlessness. It is freedom from the curse, freedom from condemnation, freedom from fleshly confidence, and freedom from the impossible burden of seeking justification by works of Law (Gal. 3:13; 5:1, 13-14). It is the liberty of sons rather than slaves, heirs rather than servants, those who cry out to God as Father because they belong to Christ (Gal. 4:4-7).

That is why Paul cites Genesis 21:10, “Cast out the slave woman and her son,” in Galatians 4:30. He is not promoting personal cruelty; he is teaching covenant exclusion. The inheritance does not pass through the slave line. Those who insist on justification through Sinai have no share in the inheritance as long as they remain in that posture of unbelief. Only the children of promise inherit. Only those united to Christ are Abraham’s offspring in the saving sense and heirs according to promise (Gal. 3:29). The Law prepared the way, guarded the people, exposed sin, and pointed to the need for redemption, but it never replaced the promise given to Abraham. Nor did it create a second and equal path to life. Christ is the fulfillment. He is the promised offspring. In Him the blessing promised to Abraham reaches Jew and Gentile alike.

Therefore, the two covenants Paul referred to in Galatians 4:24 are the Law covenant from Sinai and the Abrahamic promise-covenant in its fulfillment through Christ. Hagar corresponds to Sinai, earthly Jerusalem, and slavery. Sarah corresponds to the promise line, the Jerusalem above, and freedom. Paul used this symbolic drama to show that those who seek righteousness through the Law remain in bondage, while those who receive Christ by faith stand as children of promise and heirs of the inheritance Jehovah pledged long before Sinai. That is the force of the passage, and that is why returning to the Law after Christ is not progress but regression. The Law’s purpose was to lead sinners to the Messiah. To accept the Messiah is freedom. To reject Him and cling to the Law as covenant ground of righteousness is to remain a slave.

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