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| That Sarah’s Barrenness was Made Productive by God’s Grace.
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Chapter 3.—That Sarah’s
Barrenness was Made Productive by God’s Grace.
Sarah, in fact, was barren; and,
despairing of offspring, and being resolved that she would have at
least through her handmaid that blessing she saw she could not in
her own person
procure, she gave her handmaid
to her husband, to whom she herself had been unable to bear
children. From him she required this conjugal duty, exercising
her own right in another’s womb. And thus Ishmael was born
according to the common law of human generation, by sexual
intercourse. Therefore it is said that he was born “according
to the flesh,”—not because such births are not the gifts of
God, nor His handiwork, whose creative wisdom “reaches,” as it
is written, “from one end to another mightily, and sweetly doth
she order all things,”773
but because, in a case in which the
gift of God, which was not due to men and was the gratuitous
largess of grace, was to be conspicuous, it was requisite that a
son be given in a way which no effort of nature could compass.
Nature denies children to persons of the age which Abraham and
Sarah had now reached; besides that, in Sarah’s case, she was
barren even in her prime. This nature, so constituted that
offspring could not be looked for, symbolized the nature of the
human race vitiated by sin and by just consequence condemned, which
deserves no future felicity. Fitly, therefore, does Isaac, the
child of promise, typify the children of grace, the citizens of the
free city, who dwell together in everlasting peace, in which
self-love and self-will have no place, but a ministering love that
rejoices in the common joy of all, of many hearts makes one, that
is to say, secures a perfect concord.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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