4:28
We need to understand who we are, we are children of promise! Naturally speaking Isaac should not have been born, he was an impossibility. Naturally speaking there is no way we can be children of God, no way we can be justified before God. But we are children of God’s promise. If we think we have somehow earned it, or deserve it, or our future continuance as children of God is dependent upon us, then our thinking and understanding will go astray.
4:29
So if I am a child of promise, a child of God, why am I suffering, why am I being persecuted? Paul points out that it was always thus. Ishmael mocked Isaac and God told Abraham that he had to send Ishmael away. The slave child will persecute the promise child. In the same way those who are seeking to live by the flesh will persecute those who are living by faith. Why? Well living by the flesh can fall into two camps. There are those who “live by the flesh” in the way we commonly think, ie following lusts of the flesh in the form of drunkenness, sexual immorality, greed, pride etc. Someone living by faith will be a constant rebuke to them, a reminder that there is a better way and that their way is wrong. Then there are those for whom living by the flesh means seeking to earn righteousness. They are not “sinful” in the common sense of the word, but they are still living in pride, living as if they can be good enough. Someone living by faith will be a reminder of the futility of their seeking to be righteous on their own merits.
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