Galatians 4King James Version
When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law. We are no more servants but sons. Then the allegory of Sarah and Hagar.
Paul extends the heir metaphor: an heir under age is no different from a slave until the appointed time. So it was with humanity under the law. But when the time was fully right, God sent his Son, born under the law, to redeem those under it and bring full adoption. Paul then makes a personal appeal, reminding the Galatians how warmly they received him during his illness and how they once would have given him their own eyes. He closes the chapter with the allegory of Hagar and Sarah: two covenants, one producing slaves and one producing free heirs.
The incarnation was timed precisely. God entered through the law to buy out those trapped under it, so that slave-children could become heirs who call God Father.
"And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father." (4:6) Abba is the intimate Aramaic address a child uses for a father, and Paul says this cry comes from the Spirit within the believer, not from a believer's own effort to relate to a distant God.
Paul mentions preaching to the Galatians because of an infirmity of the flesh, suggesting the initial visit was unplanned, perhaps a detour forced by illness while traveling. The Galatians' response was extraordinary: they received him as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus. The contrast between that original reception and their current drift toward the agitators' teaching is Paul's emotional leverage throughout the letter.
Paul shifts to personal autobiography here, recalling his first arrival in Galatia with some physical ailment, possibly an eye condition, and the warmth with which the Galatians received him. The unnamed agitators appear again, described as people who want the Galatians dependent on them rather than free. Hagar and Sarah are read as figures of the two covenants: the Sinai covenant producing bondage, the promise producing freedom.
The Hagar-Sarah allegory would have been provocative to Jewish readers: Paul assigns Sinai, the mountain of the law, to the slave-woman's line, while the free Jerusalem above corresponds to the promised inheritance. This is not anti-Jewish polemic but a reframing of what the law's own narrative points toward. The exodus imagery runs beneath the surface: Paul is arguing that clinging to the law after Christ is like Israel choosing to return to Egypt after the crossing.
The middle of chapter 4 is unusually tender. Paul asks plainly: have I become your enemy for telling you the truth? He says he is in labor pains for them again, wanting Christ to be formed in them. The frustration is still there but it is the frustration of someone who loves these people and cannot understand why they are walking back into a smaller life than the one available to them.
1Now I say, That the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all;
2But is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father.
3Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world:
4But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law,
5To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.
6And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.
7Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.
8Howbeit then, when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods.
9But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage?
10Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years.
11I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain.
12Brethren, I beseech you, be as I am; for I am as ye are: ye have not injured me at all.
13Ye know how through infirmity of the flesh I preached the gospel unto you at the first.
14And my temptation which was in my flesh ye despised not, nor rejected; but received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus.
15Where is then the blessedness ye spake of? for I bear you record, that, if it had been possible, ye would have plucked out your own eyes, and have given them to me.
16Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?
17They zealously affect you, but not well; yea, they would exclude you, that ye might affect them.
18But it is good to be zealously affected always in a good thing, and not only when I am present with you.
19My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you,
20I desire to be present with you now, and to change my voice; for I stand in doubt of you.
21Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law?
22For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman.
23But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise.
24Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar.
25For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children.
26But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.
27For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband.
28Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise.
29But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now.
30Nevertheless what saith the scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman.
31So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free.