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"Thou art no more a servant, but a son" (4: 7).
"When ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods" (4: 8).
"How turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to
be in bondage?" (4: 9).
"Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman. But he
who was of the bondwoman, was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by
promise. Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from
mount Sinai which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. For this Agar 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" (4: 22-26).
"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. So then, brethren, we are
not children of the bondwoman, but of the free. Stand fast therefore in the liberty
wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of
bondage" (4: 30 - 5: 1).
"Brethren, ye have been called unto liberty: only use not liberty for an occasion to the
flesh, but by love serve (as bondslaves) one another" (5: 13).
Here is a wealth of teaching to which we may have to return, but for the moment we
are still considering the relation for the truth of the gospel with liberty. The passages that
call for attention are as follows:--
"To whom we gave place by subjection, no not for an hour; that the truth of the
gospel might continue with you" (Gal. 2: 5).
"When I saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, I said
unto Peter before them all, If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of the Gentiles,
and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews?"
(Gal. 2: 14).
Quite apart from their contexts, the citation of these verses is enough to indicate that
here is recorded a conflict for the truth. But in order to understand the nature of that
conflict, the one, yet glorious, stand of the apostle, the close association of our liberty
with the recognition of his distinctive apostleship and gospel, and the triumph of the truth
over error and its bondage, we must see these two passages in their place in the chapter.
In other words, we must ascertain the scope of the section, and that we discover most
surely by laying bare its literary structure. And here we would say that we feel it to be of
service to our readers to draw attention to the fact that the following structure, which is
based upon a careful evaluation of all the literary correspondences of the passage, is not
found in any other publications than those associated with The Berean Expositor.