Galatians 4:26 - Exposition

But Jerusalem which is above is free ( ἡ δὲ ἄνω ἱερουσαλήμ ἐλευθέρα ἐστίν ); but the Jerusalem that is above is free. The mystic Jerusalem in which Christ reigns, the Son of David, who is at the right hand of God. For the word "above," ἄνω , comp. Colossians 3:1 , Colossians 3:2 , "Seek the things that are above ( τὰ ἄνω ) where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God: set your mind on the things that are above; your life is hid with Christ in God;" and Philippians 3:20 , "Our citizenship ( πολίτευμα ) is in heaven." This is identical with the "heavenly Jerusalem" of Hebrews 12:22 , which, standing in contrast with the "mount that might be touched and that burned with fire," Sinai with its soul-crushing terrors, appears associated with the pacifying blood of Jesus, and with communion with all that is holiest and most glorious. The essential identity of the contrast in the two passages, which are mutually illustrative, bespeaks a common origin in one and the same mind. The supernal Jerusalem is not chiefly contrasted with the Jerusalem "that now is," in point of time: she is not the future only, though in the future to be manifested— the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down (as St. John writes) from God out of heaven ( Revelation 21:2 ); but she is there now , with God. It would be in harmony with St. Paul's representation to suppose that he conceives of her having been there with God in heaven of old, her citizens upon earth being the true servants of God in all ages. In former ages, however, she was comparatively barren; it needed that the enthronization of the God-Man, "the Mediator of the new covenant'' ( Hebrews 12:24 ), on "God's holy hill of Zion," should take place before she could become the prolific mother here shown to us. Commentators refer to rabbinical speculations relative to a Jerusalem which was conceived of as existing in heaven, as illustrated by Schottgen's 'Dissertatio de Hierosol. Caelesti' ('Hor. Hebr.,' vol. 1. diss. 5.), and also by Wetstein both here and on Revelation 21:1-27 . It would be interesting if we could determine when those rabbinical speculations first arose, and how far it may be judged probable that they or some earlier form of them out of which these sprang suggested anything to St. Paul for the form in which he clothed his own conception of this idea; there may have been such. Meanwhile, we cannot but be struck by the purely ideal and spiritual character in which the apostle here exhibits his conception of it; though something like a terrene manifestation in the future seems indicated in Romans 8:21 . "Is free;" the counterpart of Sarah, as mentioned in Romans 8:22 , Romans 8:23 . That this Jerusalem is free, the apostle feels it needless to state; she to his very consciousness is the very home and bosom of God's love, having her very existence, as well as her outward-acting power, in his pervading, actuating Spirit. Bondage, constraint, there cannot be; for all volitions are there harmonized, absorbed, by the Spirit of love uniting her component elements both with each other and with God. Which is the mother of us all ( ἥτις ἐστὶ μήτηρ ἡμῶν [Receptus, πάντων ἡμῶν ]) which is our mother. Here again, as in Romans 8:24 , ἥτις means " which , being such as she is , is our mother." We look at the Jerusalem that is above, and in her princely freedom we recognize what we her children are. The πάντων , which the Textus Receptus has before ἡμῶν , and which is by the general consent of critics rejected, is with much probability supposed to have come into the text by the copyist's recollection of the similar sentence in Romans 4:16 , Romans 4:17 , ἀβραάμ , ὅς ἐστι πατὴρ πάντων ἡμῶν . But πάντων , which there belongs to the essential thought of the context that God had made Abraham "the father of many nations," is unnecessary here, where the apostle is chiefly concerned with the freedom which characterizes the family of promise. If documentary evidence proved it to be genuine, it would find its justification in the notion of the fruitfulness which now at length, as the apostle presently shows, is given to the supernal Jerusalem.