For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman (Galatians 4:22 ESV).

God’s promises are often not realized in a way that is expected. Israel was looking for a deliverer in Messiah. He came as a middle class teacher who offered deliverance by dying. The surprise, of course, was that he rose from the dead. About 2000 years earlier Abraham received a promise. God told him, “I will make you a great nation” (Gen 12:2). When Abraham began to doubt God’s promise because he had no children, God said, “Your very own son shall be your heir” (Gen 15:4).

Imagine the distress of Abraham and Sarah as year after year they got older, yet they remained childless. Maybe God needed their help. Maybe he meant for them to use alternate means. Finally, Sarah came up with a plan. Culturally, if her handmaid had a child, and if that child was born on Sarah’s lap, then the child would be considered Sarah’s. Maybe that’s how God would fulfill his promise. Sure enough, it worked. Abraham had a son. He slept with a woman; she got pregnant; he had a son. Thirteen years later, when Abraham was ninety-nine years old, God visited him again. God changed Abram’s name to Abraham. He changed Sarai’s name to Sarah and said, “I will give you a son by her.…Sarah your wife shall bear you a son” (Gen 17:16-19).

For thirteen years they thought they had helped God. Now, he said that he would do something impossible. At ninety-nine, with a wife at ninety, God said he would give them a child. Four chapters later Isaac was born. God kept his word. Paul uses this story in Galatians to illustrate the Christian life. Often we live as though we need to somehow help God. Rules help. There’s nothing wrong with rules. Accountability helps. There is nothing wrong with accountability. Safeguards help. There is nothing wrong with setting up safeguards in our lives. Yet, ultimately these all amount to self-effort. If we act as though these are the means to holiness, then we are no different than Abraham and Sarah trying to help God by using Hagar. God promised holiness, but self-effort will never produce holiness.

It is the Spirit of God that produces holiness in us, not our self-effort. The promise of holiness from God is fulfilled in us as we believe him, not as we add rules upon rules to guarantee purity. 

Galatians 4:30 (ESV)

But what does the Scripture say? “Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman.” So, brothers, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman. For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery (Gal 4:30-5:1 ESV).

But how does that work? “For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love” (Gal 5:5-6). Holiness works out in our lives “through the Spirit.” What is our part? “By faith.” Law, rules, self-effort, count for nothing. Following Christ is all about the Spirit of God working out the life of Christ in us by his grace, through faith. For Abraham the only thing that counted was the child received by faith, not the child received by human effort. For us the only thing that counts is faith as it works its way out in us through love. All of that is by the promise of God, in the power of the Holy Spirit, by means of faith. Why then would we go back to self-effort to try and accomplish what only God can do? It is “for freedom Christ has set us free.” Never move away from that truth.