Paul’s allegory of the two mountains is in fact a multiple allegory, involving two women, two seeds and the two mountains. In introducing the figure he says, “Which things are an allegory”. It is necessary, therefore, to discover what is referred to as “which things”, and by what means he arrives at his conclusions, thus projecting ourselves into the inspired argument.
The letter to the Galatians is, for the most part, an attempt to win back those misguided brethren from the errors and evils of Judaism. Patiently he explains that faith is the operative power in Christianity; and that the law (since it was not of faith) lacked the very ingredient by which a man is commended to God : being “weak through the flesh” !
On the occasion of his first visit to the Galatians, Paul had preached salvation through the crucified Saviour ; and, on acceptance of this doctrine, they had received the confirming gifts of the Spirit. They had received them by faith; therefore their experience had confirmed his doctrine of salvation by faith. The Scriptures also, Paul argued, confirmed his teaching ; and he cited Gen. 15. 6 as evidence that we become righteous by faith and not by law-works. The only human contribution to justification is faith : grace is favour to the faithful, not the merited wages of law-doers. Faith brings blessing ; law brings a curse, because flesh cannot fulfil it : flesh cannot help disobeying it, and is therefore condemned by it. Hence all those under the law required redemption from it. This redemption was provided through faith in Christ in whom all the promises centre, and upon whom they rest. He was the one about whom revolved the whole
The Allegory
purpose of Yahweh, that by the eradication of sin and the bringing in of “a better hope” he might bring all men into one with Himself.
The Apostle showed that the law was part of a preparatory revelation leading to the appearance of the Son of God. He says that it was a “tutor-slave” (which is the more exact translation of the word rendered “schoolmaster”). The service of a tutor-slave came to an end when his charges reached maturity, or when those under his care had reached the status of sons. Thus he describes the process : “Now I say that the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all ; but is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father. Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world : but when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God bath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son ; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.”
. . . Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a tutor-slave. For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus”.
This status of sonship is reached through faith ; and men having attained that status are no longer under the “tutor-governor bondage” of the law. Thus Paul leads the Galatians to see that the law was an early stage in the development of God’s plan, and that the further development of that plan in the attainment of faith makes the law obsolete. And in his exposition of the matter, the personal emphases used by Paul are significant : “But after that faith is come, WE are no longer under a schoolmaster” ; “For YE are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus”. First, the purely negative side of the matter–“We are no longer . . .” ; then the positive side of the argument–“Ye are the children of God . .
The law belonged to childhood ; faith belongs to manhood : and when the Exemplar of faith came, the law ended. So the preaching of the gospel brought an invitation to man to become sons of God.
“If children, then heirs”, he maintains. Heirs of what inheritance ? No doubt, of the promises made to Abraham. Sons of God are also inheritors of Abraham, by faith. The great link between chapters three and four of Galatians is the word “heir”, found in the last and first verses respectively. Thus Paul commences this fourth chapter with an illustration of human law concerning an heir’s temporary submission to servants and governors over whom he would, probably, have later jurisdiction. The purposes of this submission are tuition and discipline, intended to prepare the trainee for the responsibilities of his inheritance. So with the arrangements of God : the law was the servant-tutor-governor to whom the heir was required to submit in order that he might be properly prepared for the responsibilities of his manhood-son status in Christ.
The Apostle is looking at a great sweep of history and comparing it, with all its changing constitutions, to the childhood and adulthood of God’s offsprings.
However, he is not implying that those living during the dispensation of law could not be children of faith unto salvation. The law was national in its dispensational aspect ; faith is always individual. Paul argues against the individual keeping of the law for righteousness ; and is concerned about the way in which individual citizens are embraced by the law in national life.
The allegorical nature of Paul’s argument is revealed when we compare the main subjects of verses one and two (of Gal. 4.) with those in verses three and four :
1 and 2
“Heir as long as he is a child”
“Servant”
“Tutors and governors”
“Time appointed of the Father”
3 and 4
“Children”
“Bondage”
“Elements of the world”
“Fulness of time”.
Thus our minds are prepared for the actual statements of the multiple allegory which is here the subject of our remarks.The child-heir has a status no higher than that of a servant : in fact, is under servants as a trainee, and is in bondage to them, until the time decided on by his Father. This is the position of those under law : the law and its teachers are the tutors and governors ; and the time appointed by the Father is the coming of Jesus. This coming of Jesus is twofold : (1) As an historical occurrence ending the dispensation of law ; (2) As an individual occurrence (“God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son in our hearts”), ending the bondage to sin (which is by the law—Rom. 7. 5.).
Two Seeds
The two seeds are therefore implied before they are plainly introduced by Paul : the child-seed has the status of slave under law ; the adult seed has the status of son and heirship in the power of faith. One is in bondage ; the other is free.
Now Paul drives the point home by an appeal to the Pentateuch, or law-books, itself : “Tell me, ye that desire to be under law, do ye not hear the law ?” Then he states the famous triple allegory : Abraham had two sons, the one by bond-maid, the other by a free-woman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh ; but he of the free-woman was by promise. Which things are an allegory : for these are the two covenants : the one from the Mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Hagar. For this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all”.
Because of the barrenness of Sarah, the true wife and a princess, Hagar, a bond slave, was given to Abraham so that the son of the union (being born a slave, belonging by legal right to Sarah) might be counted as Sarah’s own son, and elevated by adoption to the position of heir. However, both the promise and the allegory required that one born of the free woman should be the heir. By a miracle of divine intervention, the true wife bore a child to Abraham. Absence of faith, and a misunderstanding of the true nature of the promise, prompted Sarah to recommend Hagar as a means for fulfilling the promise : faith in the promise that she herself should bare the seed gave her the necessary physical strength to do so (Heb. 11. 11, 12). Thus Isaac was literally a child of faith.
The bondslave’s son, because of his wild nature (“his hand against every man”) mocked Isaac, the free-woman’s son. As a result of this, both the bondslave and her son were cast out, so that no bondslave son should be heir with the son of Sarah.
Paul draws his argument from these incidents.
The sum of the allegory is this : There are two women (one a bondslave, the other a freewoman, a princess) representative of two covenants delivered from two mountains – Sinai in Arabia (from which was delivered the first covenant, being the ministry of condemnation, bringing forth slaves) and Zion, in the land of promise (from which emanates the Spirit that gives life, bringing forth sons).
The figure concerns two cities : the first mountain-covenant being exemplified by
“Jerusalem which is to come”. The two sons are the offsprings of the respective covenants, and have their citizenship in the Jerusalem of their covenant. The first son was born after the flesh, is a persecutor, is cast out ; the second son was born after the Spirit, is the persecuted, and heir of God.
It is suggested that Abraham may have been conforming to a law at the time when he asked that Ishmael might be the heir, and that the concubine’s son might be counted as the freeborn son of the true wife (Gen. 17. 18-21) . But divine law overstepped human law : “In Isaac shall thy seed be called” ; and Ishmael was not permitted to receive the title.
The flesh being sufficient for the birth of Ishmael, his character conforms to his birth ;
for fleshly ways are evident in his life. In Isaac’s case, however, we are confronted by a divine miracle : “By faith even Sarah her- self received power to conceive seed when she was past age” (Heb. 11 . 11 ). And Paul writes concerning Abraham, “And being not weak in faith he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah’s womb ; he staggered not at the promise through unbelief, but was strong in faith giving glory to God, fully persuaded that what he had promised he was able to perform” (Rom. 4. 19-21).
Regeneration
In this divine work may be seen the regenerative action of God working in Isaac.
Salvation must come by regeneration from God, because man cannot redeem himself.
“By grace ye are saved through faith ; and that not of yourselves : it is the gift of God : not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2. 8-10). The fact is also portrayed by the apostle in these words, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself”.
The spirit of life comes to us, during the period of our sojourn here, by the Word of God ; as James says, ” . . . of his own will begat he us by the word of truth that we might be a kind of first-fruits of his creatures.” Afterwards, at the day of acceptance, beyond the resurrection, we shall be changed by the spirit of his power. So the seed of promise is said to have been “born after the spirit”. And as the case is with God’s dealings with men, that which is first is natural, afterwards that which is spiritual. Ishmael is first ; then, fourteen years later, when all natural hope had receded, Isaac was born.
Isaac’s life is shown to be a parable of the seed through whom the promise should come ; and although Israel may claim that their origin was a miracle of begettal, natural Israelites are not the true seed, because they are the slave-children of Sinai and citizens of “Jerusalem which now is” ; they are the figurative Ishmael, rejectors and persecutors of the anti-typical Isaac.
The Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants are individual and national in their applications : the individual concerning everlasting inheritance of the land, and therefore of the bestowal of everlasting life, whilst the national was concerned with the occupation of the land subject to a continued obedience.
Although the Abrahamic promise was first in order, it is in keeping with the rule that, being spiritual, it should be the last to become effective. The Mosaic mediatorial covenant, being natural, is the first in application ; and having fulfilled its purpose in Christ, is now called the “old” covenant, whilst the Abrahamic is designated the “new”.
The old covenant of Sinai was not able to make the comer thereunto perfect. With all its offerings for the purification of flesh, it was not able to effect a purification of the conscience and forgiveness of sins. But the “new” covenant, seeing it confers a title to everlasting life, establishes conditions for the forgiveness of sins as a fundamental of it : “We are sanctified by the offering of Jesus once for all (Heb. 10. 10). This fundamental of the new covenant is to be kept in constant remembrance ; hence the words of Jesus concerning the memorial wine, “This is the blood of the new covenant shed for many for the remission of sins”.
Israel had broken the first, or Sinaitic, covenant, and their stony hearts are fitly symbolised by the tables of stone upon which the law was written ; but, under the new covenant of Mount Zion, God will write his law upon “fleshly tables of the heart” in the day when he will regather them. In that day, all who enter the land shall “call upon the name of Yahweh”, realizing that in Mount Zion (both literal Mount Zion and Mount Zion as a figure of the new covenant) shall be deliverance. Under this covenant, God will “forgive their iniquity and remember their sins no more”. This proves that conditions of forgiveness must have been established both in the land and in the covenant, through the shed blood of the Lord.
The two mountains are (as we said) Sinai and Zion. They are exemplified, Paul shows, by two Jerusalems— or rather, Jerusalem among the kingdoms of men, and Jerusalem in the Kingdom of God. The first Jerusalem is referred to as “Jerusalem which is now” ; and the second Jerusalem is referred to as “Jerusalem which is above”—above, that is to say, in status, not in geography. The first is “Jerusalem in the wilderness”, so to speak ; the second is, “Jerusalem in the land of promise”. The first, being under bondage of the law, is Hagar, or Sinai, because Jerusalem was the administrative centre of the Sinaitic covenant ; and sacrifices made under the law were offered there. When the law was annulled, the old Jerusalem, administrator of the law, was destroyed and ploughed as a field. In this field are sown the seeds of future glory. Today, since the Roman power has lost its former hold upon the habitable (and the whole globe takes that title), the strategic importance of Jerusalem has been restored.
David says in Psalm 132, “For Yahweh hath chosen Zion ; he hath desired it for his habitation-. And speaking prophetically of the time when the anti-typical ark of the covenant, Jesus the Anointed, shall come to Zion, David also says, “I will clothe her priests with salvation, and her saints shall shout aloud for joy”.
“Written To Life”
Jerusalem is here no longer linked with the bondage of Sinai, but is seen on a new foundation of the Mount Zion covenant. At that time, when the “rod of his strength.. shall go forth, Zion shall have upon its throne a King-Priest after the order of Melchisedec, “made after the power of an endless life”. As says the prophet Isaiah, “In that day shall the branch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious (c.f. Exod. 28. 2, 40) and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely for them that are escaped of Israel”. “And it shall come to pass that he that is left in Zion and he that remaineth in Jerusalem shall be called holy, and every one that is written to life (margin) in Jerusalem”. At that time men shall call her “the city of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel”.
So then Paul, in his allegory of Mountains, Women, Seeds, exemplifies Jerusalem in two stages of her history-as capital of God’s Kingdom based on the old covenant from Sinai, and therefore represented by Sinai ; and as capital of God’s future Kingdom based on the Abrahamic covenant ; when it shall be called the throne of the Lord and shall be ruled by God’s own Son ; and when its citizens because of the covenant of Zion, shall have been given everlasting life.
As with the mountains and cities, the two seeds follow suit, being products of the two covenants. Ishmael is the representative of Jewry enslaved by law, convicted of sin, in need of deliverance from the law and sin. Being bondslaves, they had no permanent residency in the house, but have been cast out so that they should not share the inheritance with the true heir, the son of the freeborn princess.
“What saith the Scripture ?” says Paul. He then quotes the words of Sarah, confirmed by God, that the mocker of Isaac should, with the mother, be cast out. Paul cites this as evidence that flesh and spirit are inevitably in opposition ; and he reasons that their persecution of Christ’s followers identifies the Jews as the bondslave class who are rejected that they should not be heirs with the seed of Christ.
To close his allegory, the apostle contrasts the joy of the children of the free with the rejection of those in bondage, so that the free might appreciate their high calling : “So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman but of the free”, (and we are taken back to verse 26) ” . . . but Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all”.
And Isaiah speaks of this seed when he says, “As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you ; and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem”. Then he speaks of the nation “born at once” to travailing Zion by the power of the spirit at the resurrection from the dead.
Jerusalem, the metropolis of the coming age, is portrayed as a city with a heavenly constitution ; and its citizens are portrayed as those that are “written to life” in Zion.
Psalm 87 pictures this time : “And of Zion it shall be said, This and that man was born in her, and the highest himself shall establish her. The Lord shall count when he writeth up the people that this man was born there”.
So Zion is portrayed as a mother. And Paul draws his argument to a close with the warning that those who are called to be sons of the new covenant, children of freedom from the consequences of sin, should hold fast to the hope that emanates from Mount Zion, lest they should fall again into the bondage of Mount Sinai and be cast out.
MOUNT ZION (From Page 27)
(QUOTATIONS USED)
1-Kings 20. 23, 28 ff.
2-Genesis 22. 2
3-Ex. 17. 9
4-1 Sam. 9. 12 ff ; 1 Chron. 16. 39
5-1 Chron. 21. 29
6-1 Sam. 10. 5 ; 2 Kings 1. 9
7-Mark 6. 46 ; Luke 6. 12
8-Mark 3. 13
9-Matt. 17. 1
10-Matt. 28. 16 ff.
11-Jer. 51. 25; Zech. 4. 7.
12-Isa. 40. 12 ; Mic. 1. 4
13-Ps. 2. 6 ; Isa. 8. 18
14-2 Sam. 5
15-Gen. 14
16-1 Sam. 4
17-1 Sam. 6. 21
18-2 Sam. 7
19-2 Kings 12
20-2 Chron. 35. 36
21-Ps. 132. 13-14 ; Ps. 2. 6
22-Ezek. 40
23-“The Temple of Ezekiel’s Prophecy”, London.
24-Zech. 14. 16
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One