Section 4:21–31

Because the Galatians are spiritual sons of Abraham they are free from slavery

In this section, Paul explained why the Galatians should return to freedom and reject the teaching of the false teachers. He contrasted two sons of Abraham: the son of the slave woman and the son of the free woman. The son of the slave woman represented slavery to the law. The son of the free woman represented the freedom of living in the grace of Christ. Living in slavery to the law is in conflict with living in the grace of Christ. Those who live in the grace of Christ must reject slavery to the law.

Some possible headings for this section are:

Hagar and Sarah
-or-
The covenant of the promise is better than the covenant of the law
-or-
Choose grace, not the law

Paragraph 4:21–23

In this paragraph, Paul explained the difference between Abraham’s two sons.

4:21a

Tell me: This is a command. Paul used this command to focus the Galatians’ attention on what he was going to say next.

Another way to translate this command is:

Listen to me (New Living Translation (1996))

you who want to be under the law: The clause want to be under the law means “want to obey the law of Moses.”

Some other ways to translate this clause are:

you who want to live under the law
-or-
those of you who want to obey the law
-or-
you who want to follow the law ?of Moses? ?for your salvation?

4:21b

do you not understand what the law says?: This is a rhetorical question. Paul used this rhetorical question to challenge the Galatians. He used this rhetorical question to tell the Galatians that they did not listen to and understand the law. They did not understand what they were doing.

Some ways to translate this rhetorical question are:

• As a rhetorical question. For example:

do you know what the law really says? (New Living Translation (1996))

• As a tag question. For example:

You do not understand what the law says, do you?

• As a statement. For example:

It must be that you do not understand what the law says.
-or-
You should understand what the law says.

the law: Here the phrase the law refers to the five books that Moses wrote. Some other ways to translate this are:

the ?Jewish? law
-or-
the law ?of Moses?
-or-
the law ?that Moses gave/wrote?

© 2016 by SIL International®
Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0.
All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.