Children of Promise: Freedom Through Supernatural Grace

Galatians 4:31 presents Paul's stunning allegory drawn from Abraham's household. Just as Isaac's birth defied natural law—Sarah was barren, Abraham aged—so Christian conversion transcends fleshly effort. Isaac's miraculous origin mirrors our palingenesia (regeneration through divine power).

The contrast cuts sharply: Hagar represents the Sinai covenant, earthbound Jerusalem, a mother "gendering to bondage" through reliance upon human works. She and Ishmael mocked Isaac precisely because his existence challenged nature's dominion. This animosity echoes perpetually. Skepticism and anti-supernaturalism pride themselves as liberators—"freethought" unshackled from tradition and priestcraft—yet Paul identifies them with Ishmael's spirit: hostility toward Elohim's intervention.

Skepticism claims freedom while peddling slavery. The unbeliever rejecting supernatural grace rejects pardon, Christ, the Holy Spirit itself. Nature offers no redemption: it crushes the penitent backward-gazer; it offers only tentative, vacillating hope to the forward-looker. The natural man attempting self-sanctification becomes the wretched figure crying "O Baal, hear us"—Yahweh's mockery of idolatry.

True freedom demands the Covenant from above. We are children "not of the flesh but of the Spirit," born not through blood nor human will but through supernatural grace. The Church of Christ stands as humanity's sole home of authentic liberty—a voluntary association prepared by forgiveness through Christ and sanctification through the Holy Spirit. Nature must be ejected; grace must reign.