Today's Devotion

Thursday, July 16, 2026 - Gal 4:12-31

In the name of + Jesus. Amen.

For St. Paul, the troubles in the Galatian churches is not just an academic exercise in theology. For him, it is personal. Paul calls to mind his first visits to these various cities, and how he was warmly received by the people in spite of his unnamed “bodily ailment” that he was suffering with at the time. Those who received Paul’s teaching were so committed to him that they “would have gouged out [their] own eyes and given them” to him (suggesting that his “condition” was something to do with his eyes). There is a sense of hurt that now the same people are rejecting Paul’s teaching and turning to that of others – essentially making Paul their “enemy.” Paul is “perplexed” and sees his work of once more re-establishing the churches in Galatia as a kind of “anguish of childbirth.”

Picking up on the theme of freedom vs. slavery, Paul calls to mind the contrast between the two kinds of offspring of Abraham: the one born of the promise (Isaac), whose mother was the free Sarah, versus the one born of the slave woman Hagar (Ishmael). There is irony here, as the Galatian Christians, by emphasizing Jewish Law, are making themselves to be like the descendants of Ishmael instead of like the sons of Isaac and Jacob.

Hagar is symbolically “Mt Sinai,” where Moses was given the Law, corresponding to the world’s “Jerusalem.” But we, as children of the promise, are like the children of Sarah, children of the “Jerusalem from above.” We are free.

Paul bids those in Galatia who want to go back to the Law’s slavery to “Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman” (Gen 21:10). Paul speaks gently to the Galatians – and to us – entreating us: “Brothers, we are not children of the slave, but of the free woman.”

Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.