Galatians 4:30,31 teach that Christians are not children of the bondwoman, identified as the covenant from Mount Sinai. Doesn’t this suggest that the law given at Mount Sinai has been done away?

Galatians 4:24,25 reads: “which things are symbolic. For these [the “bondwoman” and the “freewoman”] are the two covenants: the one from the Mount Sinai, which gives birth to bondage, which is Hagar—for this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children.”

Notice that Paul was comparing the “bondwoman” and “freewoman” with “the two covenants” i.e., the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. Remember, a covenant is a binding agreement between two parties. The law, in and of itself, was not the covenant; therefore, we should not assume that the law was abolished when the covenant was terminated.

God, through the prophet Jeremiah, tells us why the Old Covenant was dissolved, and makes it clear that the termination of the former covenant does not entail abolition of the law. Notice: “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah—not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. But this is the covenant [i.e., a new covenant, which will replace the old one—the one they broke] that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more” (Jeremiah 31:31–34).

The reason the Old Covenant “gives birth to bondage” is that the people broke God’s law, thus placing themselves under bondage. The New Covenant is different in that it involves having the law written on the heart, which is another way of speaking of a heart of obedience (compare Deuteronomy 5:29). Sin is the source of bondage. Under the New Covenant, the source of bondage is completely remitted, thus producing freedom—not “freedom” to break the law, but freedom from the bondage of sin.