<\/p>\n
Hey Pastor John!<\/p>\n
I have a quick question.\u00a0 When reading a recent BLOG, I noticed that you said, “[children of] Hagar are attracted to religious ceremonies, in celebration of ‘holy days’, and other such vain religious rites.\u00a0 But Sarah and her children care for none of those things, choosing rather to ‘worship God in spirit and in truth’ than in vain traditions of men.”<\/p>\n
I started having a few questions running through my head.\u00a0 Are there children of Sarah who are attracted to ceremonial rites and traditions, but they don’t have the other features of children of Hagar?\u00a0 I know that I have seen people who seemed to fit the good category of “children of Sarah”, but in the end they proved to be very much as Paul described the children of Hagar.\u00a0 They were not attracted to religious ceremonies, but they didn’t live godly lives in other respects.<\/p>\n
I\u00a0guess my real question comes down to this: I know people in the religious system of Christianity that seem to be good people, “children of Sarah”, but they do not understand God when He calls them to come out of church religion.\u00a0 Instead, they cling to Christianity’s ceremonies and traditions.\u00a0 Would that single factor make them “children of Hagar”?\u00a0 I think I know the answer is no.\u00a0 But is what makes someone a “child of Hagar” fleshly, worldly attitudes, and not just<\/em> participation in ceremonies?\u00a0 And is what makes someone a “child of Sarah”, a morally pure lifestyle and godly attitudes? \ud83d\ude42\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sorry this got wordy… \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n Ashley<\/p>\n ===========<\/p>\n Good question, Ashley.\u00a0 Thanks!<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n You are asking if my definition of a child of Hagar is the only one that applies, and the answer to that question is obviously no.\u00a0 There are many different ways to be foolish, and so, basically, a “child of Hagar” is simply someone who proves to be what Jesus called “a foolish virgin”.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n On the other hand, the only place in the NT that contrasts “the children of Hagar” and “the children of Sarah” is Paul’s letter to the Galatians.\u00a0 And there, Paul speaks only to the issue of <\/span><\/em>faith in the law’s ceremonies <\/span><\/strong>(Hagar) versus<\/span><\/em> walking in the Spirit<\/strong><\/span><\/em> (Sarah).\u00a0 Strictly speaking, then, I could successfully argue that the matter of “ceremonies versus <\/span><\/em>the Spirit<\/strong>“<\/span> is the only biblically based distinction between those two kinds of people in God’s kingdom.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n However, “the letter killeth”, and we must never allow ourselves to be hemmed in by Scripture, when common sense and the Spirit are telling us more than what the Bible says.\u00a0 A child of Hagar is a foolish, disobedient child of God, and a child of Sarah is an obedient and wise child of God, and in Galatians, Paul was just speaking of one aspect of being foolish or wise.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n Pastor John<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hey Pastor John! I have a quick question.\u00a0 When reading a recent BLOG, I noticed that you said, “[children of] Hagar are attracted to religious ceremonies, in celebration of ‘holy days’, and other such vain religious rites.\u00a0 But Sarah and her children care for none of those things, choosing rather to ‘worship God in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-qa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}