Living by Grace: God Rejects Man’s Fleshly Effort to Please Him According to the Law

God promised Abraham a seed and Abraham believed God; this was counted to him as righteousness. However, since both Abraham and Sarah were getting older and nothing was happening, Abraham listened to Sarah’s suggestion to have a seed with the help of her maidservant, Hagar.

It would have been so easy and simple if, based upon the covenant God made with him, Abraham would have waited until “the time of life” and then Isaac would come. God often waits, since His timing is not our timing.

Hagar, the bondwoman, signifies the covenant of law (Gal. 4:25)….When man is ignorant of God’s grace, he will always endeavor to do something to please God, and this brings in the law, of which Hagar, the bondwoman, the improper wife of Abraham, was the symbol. Since she was the improper wife, she should not have come in. What she brought forth could not remain in God’s economy. This signifies that the law should not have come in and that the produce of the law has no position in fulfilling God’s purpose. Hagar brought forth Ishmael, who was rejected by God, by man’s effort, not by God’s grace. The produce of man’s effort through the law has no share in the fulfillment of God’s purpose. (Life-study of Genesis, p. 620, by Witness Lee)

God has a will, He has a way, and He has a timing. In Abraham’s case, he could not wait and he had to do something out of his own effort to bring forth the seed. Hagar signifies the law, and Abraham being united with Hagar signifies that he had an activity of his flesh under the law to do something for God. God’s way is obtaining a seed through Sarah (signifying grace), and His timing is always right – even though for us this means we will have to wait a while.

After we were saved, we began to love the Lord and His word, and there was a desire in us to do something for Him to please Him, live a heavenly life on earth, and bring Him glory.

However, if we are not dealt with in our flesh but do things for God according to our natural man and our disposition, the flesh is active in cooperating with the law and it will produce Ishmael, something that “looks like the seed” but is rejected by God. We may not follow the law of Moses but may have our own self-made laws or even “spiritual laws” by selecting some portions of God’s word and “making them a law”.

But we have another way: we can open to the Lord and let Him deal with the flesh until we have no confidence in the flesh, and then we will have a vision of God’s grace and we will exercise faith to contact the Triune God of grace, open to this grace, and let the Lord work in us and through us whatever He wants us to do.

May the Lord expose our natural efforts to please God and work for God, and may we be people under grace and filled with grace, those who enjoy God and live by grace, not by the law!

The Spiritual Significance of Abraham having Ishmael with Hagar, the Maidservant

In the old times, when a husband did not have children (or sons) with his wife, he would take a concubine and have children with her. According to God’s economy and His plan, man should have only one wife; but when Abraham saw that he has no children with Sarah, he followed her suggestion to have a child with Hagar, their maidservant. This is how Ishmael was produced, and he was not pleasing to God; actually, after the birth of Ishmael God didn’t appear to Abraham for 13 years.

This story is full of spiritual significance. Hagar, the maidservant, signifies the covenant of law (see Gal. 4:24-25); the position of the law is not that of the wife but that of a concubine (Gen. 16:1-3). When a believer doesn’t see God’s grace but desires to please God, he endeavors to do something for God and exercises his flesh under the law.

When grace seems not to be working and God takes His time in doing things, we may be in a hurry to “help God” do something and we may “join ourselves to a concubine”, with the law. In God’s economy the law should not have come in; grace is God’s way of fulfilling His promise and the law is temporary.

Whenever we join ourselves to the law and work in our flesh to produce something for God, we may think that God gets the glory and He is satisfied but actually God rejects it. The covenant of law (symbolized by Hagar) brings us as God’s people into the slavery of the law, making us slaves under law, separated from the grace of God (see Gal. 4:25; 5:1, 4).

We have received the gospel and believed into Christ: we were justified by faith. We were baptized into Christ and became the household of the faith, a new creation. But whenever we read the Bible or hear the word of God, the flesh rises up in us and tries to “keep the law”, taking God’s word as a law and even making some “self-made laws” based on God’s word and the spiritual principles.

The flesh is stirred up whenever we are told to keep God’s word, and the flesh desires to do things under law, being eager to be told what to do and be regulated by law.

We are truly strange people in this sense: on the one hand the flesh is against God and lusts against the things of God (Gal. 5:17), but whenever the law comes in, the flesh is eager to do what the law says – yet not wait on God, contact God, and let God work in us. This is the spiritual significance of Abraham being joined to Hagar to produce Ishmael.

God Rejects Anything Worked out by Our Flesh in Cooperation with the Law

We need to live by grace because God rejects man’s fleshly effort to please Him according to the law

Humanly speaking, Abraham obtained a seed when Ishmael was born of Hagar; in God’s eyes, however, Ishmael was the issue of man’s fleshly effort according to the law and he was rejected by God (see Gen. 17:18-19; 21:10; Gal. 4:30).

We all are just like Abraham: after we were saved, we read the Bible and heard that God wants us to live like Christ, a heavenly and divine life, a life that is victorious and it pleases God to bring glory to Him. This is all true: God wants us to live such a life; however, He wants to work Christ into us so that Christ in us and through us will live a heavenly life on earth, a life pleasing to God and for His glory.

But many times we ignore grace and we consider that enjoying God until He works Himself into us to bring forth Christ out of us takes too long, so we want to “give God a hand”: we do something in ourselves to please God.

First, we rely on “Lot”, something of our natural background – but God removes that from us. Then, we rely on “Eliezer”, our natural ability and capacity. But God rejects our natural capacity and ability: He wants the seed to come out of our own being.

What we do then is use Hagar, the flesh, who is always with us and cooperates with us in doing things, to try to please God and fulfill His purpose. We may not be under the law of Moses, but we may make our own laws based on God’s word, and we will try our best to keep them.

We may diligently and regularly attend meetings, keep a solid Bible-reading schedule, try really hard to control our temper, endeavor to be nice and sweet to the saints, make sure you don’t say evil words, abstain from gossip, etc. All these things are not “bad” in themselves, but as we use our own energy and natural strength to do them, our flesh cooperates with the law and produces Ishmael, something that “came out of us”, “looks spiritual”, and we may even think it is “the seed”.

Sometimes we may succeed and at other times we may not. But whatever we produce out of our own flesh working under and according to the law is rejected by God. It’s not “the intention that counts” and neither is it “the effort that matters”; rather, what matters in God’s eyes is WHO does the work and HOW he does it.

A decision is awaiting each believer before the Lord, in our experience of Him: will we live by the fleshly effort or by God’s grace? Will we go to meetings, read the Bible, do things for God, serve in the church, etc by our fleshly effort or by God’s grace?

We may “want” to live by grace – and this is a good desire to have. But eventually something will happen in us experientially when we will make a strong decision, Lord, I choose to live by Your grace! Keep me enjoying You and waiting on You until You work Yourself into me to produce Christ, bringing Him forth for Your purpose! May our prayer be in this way,

Lord, expose the flesh and all our natural strength in doing things for You yet according to law. Save us from being law-keepers. We want to live a life that is pleasing to You, a heavenly life on earth that is for Your glory. But in living such a life, we let You work Yourself into us until Christ lives in us a life for Your glory. Lord, save us from producing Ishmael and considering him as being Isaac. Work in us and on us until we will live not by our fleshly effort to please You and do things for You but by Your grace!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my Christian experience, bro. Ron Kangas’ sharing in the message for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Genesis (msg. 46), as quoted in, the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of Genesis (2), week 6 / msg 6, The Allegory of Two Women.
• Hymns on this topic:
  # Lord, reveal Thyself to me, / That the flesh I’ll fully know; / May Thy grace so work in me, / That in dust I’ll lowly bow. / How I long for victory, / Yet, thru all my life, how weak! / Evil things I cannot leave, / Nor can do the good I seek. (Hymn #412 by Watchman Nee)
  # Not to ourselves again, / Not to the flesh we live; / Not to the world henceforth shall we / Our strength, our being give. / … Our life is hid with Christ, / With Christ in God above, / Upward our heart would go to Him, / Whom, seeing not, we love. (Hymns #459)
  # We have received Christ the Spirit / Through faith and not our merit; / Having begun by the Spirit, / We learn to live by faith. / We are the sons of the living God, / Enjoy the blessings of our Lord, / Grace to our spirit He doth afford, / From our self-effort freed. (new song on Living by Faith)
  # This grace, which is the living Christ Himself, / Is what we need and must experience; / Lord, may we know this grace and by it live, / Thyself increasingly as grace to sense. (Hymns #497 by Witness Lee)