Religion has taught us the lie that our acceptance by God is based on our behavior. We feel close to God when our behavior is just right and far from Him when we’ve missed it. Are you hoping you make it to heaven? Maybe you did enough righteous acts that they will somehow cancel out your sins? You were probably taught this rewards based system as a child and became a cringing Christian adult as a result.
Cast out the bondwoman and her son! The bondwoman represents the law. That is old covenant. The freewoman represents grace, the new covenant. Religion mixes them up and you end up with some false works based system. Instead of having a relationship with your Father, Abba, you fear the Old Testament God of righteous indignation, fire and brimstone.
The Old Covenant/Testament has a list of rules to follow which when broken resulted in punishment. If you do this, I will bless you. If you don’t do this, I will punish you. Actually, it pointed us to a need for a Savior, for we could never meet His holy requirements.
The New Covenant/Testament says, don’t you see? You can never follow the rules and be holy enough to come into My presence, much less be holy enough for Me to come and live in you! You don’t have the spiritual capital to purchase your freedom from your master, Satan. So, here’s what I’ll do: I love you so much that I will send my only Son to earth as a man. He will walk a sinless, spotless life and show you what I AM like. He will fulfill all of the requirements of the law on your behalf. He will pay sin’s penalty with a perfect Blood sacrifice. His very own Blood. He will become sin with your sin, become sick with your pains and sicknesses. And when My full anger against sin is accomplished, Jesus will utter, “It is finished”.
Everything you need has been done at the cross.
God cannot lie. “IT IS FINISHED”, means the penalty has been paid, the punishment has been met. You cannot add one thing. The debt has been cancelled. It’s stamped, “Paid in Full”. Rejoice in the law of double jeopardy!
When you received Jesus as your Lord and Savior, He gave you a new heart. You became a new man. Angels rejoice over this new creation. The Holy Spirit actually takes up residence in you. You are marked for God. He is your Father. Your name is engraved on His hand! He is not now, nor will He ever be angry with you again. He will never leave you or forsake you. I know this is true.
If you miss it, run to Him, not from Him. For He is good and His mercy endures forever. His grace, unmerited favor, is always there for you.
Galatians 4:21-31
Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not hear the law? 22 For it is written that Abraham had two sons: the one by a bondwoman, the other by a freewoman. 23 But he who was of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and he of the freewoman through promise, 24 which things are symbolic. For these are the two covenants: the one from Mount Sinai which gives birth to bondage, which is Hagar— 25 for this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children— 26 but the Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of us all. 27 For it is written:
“Rejoice, O barren,
You who do not bear!
Break forth and shout,
You who are not in labor!
For the desolate has many more children
Than she who has a husband.”
28 Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise. 29 But, as he who was born according to the flesh then persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, even so it is now. 30 Nevertheless what does the Scripture say? “Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman.” 31 So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman but of the free.
Deuteronomy 28:15
“But it shall come to pass, if you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments and His statutes which I command you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you:
Romans 3:20
Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.
For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh,
Hebrews 9:12
Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.
Romans 10:4-10
The Message
4-10 The earlier revelation was intended simply to get us ready for the Messiah, who then puts everything right for those who trust him to do it. Moses wrote that anyone who insists on using the law code to live right before God soon discovers it’s not so easy—every detail of life regulated by fine print! But trusting God to shape the right living in us is a different story—no precarious climb up to heaven to recruit the Messiah, no dangerous descent into hell to rescue the Messiah. So what exactly was Moses saying?
The word that saves is right here,
as near as the tongue in your mouth,
as close as the heart in your chest.
It’s the word of faith that welcomes God to go to work and set things right for us. This is the core of our preaching. Say the welcoming word to God—“Jesus is my Master”—embracing, body and soul, God’s work of doing in us what he did in raising Jesus from the dead. That’s it. You’re not “doing” anything; you’re simply calling out to God, trusting him to do it for you. That’s salvation. With your whole being you embrace God setting things right, and then you say it, right out loud: “God has set everything right between him and me!”
John 3:16
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
Isaiah 53:4-6
Surely He has borne our griefs
And carried our sorrows;
Yet we esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 But He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,
And by His stripes we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray;
We have turned, every one, to his own way;
And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
So when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” And bowing His head, He gave up His spirit.
Then I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within them, and take the stony heart out of their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh,
Hebrews 8:8-12
Because finding fault with them, He says: “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— 9 not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they did not continue in My covenant, and I disregarded them, says the Lord. 10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 11 None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. 12 For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.”
Let your conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have. For He Himself has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”