8 But then, not knowing God, you served gods who are not gods in essence. 9 But now, having come to know God, or rather having received knowledge from God, why do you return again to weak and poor material principles, and want to enslave yourselves to them again? 10 You observe the days, the months, the seasons, and the years. 11 I fear for your sake, lest I have labored among you in vain. 12 I beseech you, brethren, to be as I am, for I also am like you. You have done me no wrong: 13 you know that, although in the weakness of the flesh I preached the gospel to you the first time, 14 yet you did not despise my temptation in my flesh, nor did you abhor it, but received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus. 15 How blessed you were! I testify of you that, if it were possible, you would pluck out your eyes and give them to me [the apostle recalls with peculiar feeling with what delight the Galatians listened to his preaching, and with what readiness they were glad to help him in some way in his physical ailments: evidently some of Paul's eye diseases are meant]. 16 Have I therefore become your enemy, speaking the truth to you? 17 They are jealous of you uncleanly, but they want to separate you, that you may be jealous for them. 18 It is good to be zealous in good things always, and not only in my presence with you. 19 My children, for whom I am again in the pangs of childbirth, until Christ is formed in you! 20 I would now like to be with you, and change my voice, for I am perplexed about you. 21 Tell me ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law? (Gal. 4:8-21)

Paul then again turns to the example of Abraham, this time using an allegorical method of interpreting Scripture:

22 For it is written, Abraham had two sons, one by a slave, and the other by a free woman. 23 But he who is of a servant is born according to the flesh; but he who is free is according to the promise. 24 There is an allegory in this. These are two covenants: one from Mount Sinai, which gives birth to slavery, which is Hagar, 25 for Hagar signifies Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, because he is in bondage with his children; 26 but Jerusalem above is free: she is the mother of us all. 27 For it is written, 'Rejoice, you barren, you who do not give birth; cry out and cry out, not tormented by childbirth; for she who is forsaken has many more children than she who has a husband. 28 We, brethren, are the children of the promise according to Isaac. 29 But as then he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also now. 30 What then does the Scripture say? Cast out the servant and her son, for the son of the slave shall not be heir with the son of the free woman. 31 Therefore, brethren, we are not the children of slaves, but of freedom (Gal. 4:22-31).

The comparison of the Law and grace with Hagar and Sarah, who were Abraham's slave concubine and the wife (i.e., free wife) of Abraham, seems a little artificial at first glance. But this is quite in the spirit of the allegorical interpretation that spread in Hellenistic Judaism. Here Paul "pays tribute to his rabbinic past and takes into account the Jewish polemics" (427). By-laws. Paul compares them to the son of the slave, and those who are under grace (according to the promise) to the son of the freewoman.

The Difficulty of Living by Faith, Not by the Law

Summing up some intermediate results, we can repeat that an adequate response to the gift of God in Christ is the faith of man. A person has a chance to perceive the desired justification (here it would not even be quite appropriate to use the word "receive", immediately associated with receiving for payment or some merit) only if, knowing and seeing his sins as crimes against God's Law, he believes that God will grant justification. There is no doubt that such reasoning of Paul is related to the preaching of Christ (compare, for example, the parables of the publican and the Pharisee, Luke 18:10-14, or of the prodigal son, Luke 15:11-32):

Go and learn what it means: I desire mercy, and not sacrifice? (Matt. 9:13)

It is noteworthy that Christ also quotes words from the Old Testament (Hosea 6:6), and thus does not abolish it, but insists on rejecting its perverse (Pharisaic-legalistic) understanding and returning to its original meaning.

The demands to live according to faith, according to grace, and not under the yoke of slavish observance of the Law of St. Paul. Paul passionately and earnestly declares in Gal. as the only possible way of life in the New Testament. But these demands turn out to be extremely unusual and difficult, unless, of course, we perceive them as worn-out slogans or in some perverse, shallow, truncated understanding (there is even an expression "to act not according to the Law, but according to grace", which justifies everything). They are eternally new.

In fact, this is the novelty of the New Testament, which for this very reason does not cease to be New (i.e., unaccustomed, difficult to fulfill), but for two thousand years has been set as the only task by God in Christ. There is not a single other thing in the world that, being called new, would correspond in essence to its name for such a long period of time (otherwise it is perceived as an established historical name - for example, Novgorod, one of the oldest Russian cities).

In the New Testament we can live not by virtue of the historical chance of being born after the birth of Christ (A.D.), but only as a result of the striving to live in the spiritual state offered by St. Paul. Paul in Gal.

The New Testament is the unnatural, supernatural religious state of man who is born into the world with a natural pagan religious feeling. The Old Testament is the "zero" level where false gods and false religious and generally false human values (in correlation with the true God) are cut off and prohibited. The New Testament is the creation of a positive, father-son relationship between God and man, which rises above all that is former and natural. (Incidentally, the Old Testament contains many New Testament requirements and meanings in anticipation and anticipation: for example, in fact, the New Testament understanding of the Law is filled with its exposition in Deuteronomy 30:11-14, etc., or the prophecy of Jeremiah Jeremiah 31:31-34[429]).

The New Testament requires constant effort, constant dynamics, constant "leaps upwards," overcoming the "gravity" that pulls man down into the darkness of paganism (both religious and moral). The salvation obstacle in the fall can again be the Old Testament with its simple lawful truth. Creation, creativity, can be fully in the state of sonship, in freedom. But it is more difficult than keeping the Law.

From the Law through Faith to Freedom