Galatians 4

¹ Let me put this another way: an heir, even if he has actually inherited everything, is no different from a slave for as long as he remains a child.

² He is under the control of guardians and administrators until he reaches the age fixed by his father.

³ Now before we came of age we were as good as slaves to the elemental principles of this world,[*a]

⁴ but when the appointed time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born a subject of the Law,

⁵ to redeem the subjects of the Law and to enable us to be adopted as sons.

⁶ The proof that you are sons is that God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts: the Spirit that cries, ‘Abba, Father’,

⁷ and it is this that makes you a son, you are not a slave any more; and if God has made you son, then he has made you heir.

⁸ Once you were ignorant of God, and enslaved to ‘gods’ who are not really gods at all;

⁹ but now that you have come to acknowledge God – or rather, now that God has acknowledged you – how can you want to go back to elemental things like these, that can do nothing and give nothing, and be their slaves?

¹⁰ You and your special days and months and seasons and years!

¹¹ You make me feel I have wasted my time with you.

¹² Brothers, all I ask is that you should copy me as I copied you. You have never treated me in an unfriendly way before;

¹³ even at the beginning, when that illness gave me the opportunity to preach the Good News to you,

¹⁴ you never showed the least sign of being revolted or disgusted by my disease that was such a trial to you; instead you welcomed me as an angel of God, as if I were Christ Jesus himself.

¹⁵ What has become of this enthusiasm you had? I swear that you would even have gone so far as to pluck out your eyes and give them to me.

¹⁶ Is it telling you the truth that has made me your enemy?

¹⁷ The blame lies in the way they have tried to win you over: by separating you from me, they want to win you over to themselves.

¹⁸ It is always a good thing to win people over – and I do not have to be there with you – but it must be for a good purpose,

¹⁹ my children! I must go through the pain of giving birth to you all over again, until Christ is formed in you.

²⁰ I wish I were with you now so that I could know exactly what to say; as it is, I have no idea what to do for the best.

²¹ You want to be subject to the Law? Then listen to what the Law says.

²² It says, if you remember, that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave-girl, and one by his free-born wife.

²³ The child of the slave-girl was born in the ordinary way; the child of the free woman was born as the result of a promise.

²⁴ This can be regarded as an allegory: the women stand for the two covenants. The first who comes from Mount Sinai, and whose children are slaves, is Hagar –

²⁵ since Sinai is in Arabia – and she corresponds to the present Jerusalem that is a slave like her children.

²⁶ The Jerusalem above, however, is free and is our mother, since scripture says: Shout for joy, you barren women who bore no children! Break into shouts of joy and gladness, you who were never in labour. For there are more sons of the forsaken one than sons of the wedded wife.[*b]

²⁸ Now you, my brothers, like Isaac, are children of the promise,

²⁹ and as at that time the child born in the ordinary way persecuted the child born in the Spirit’s way, so also now.

³⁰ Does not scripture say: Drive away that slave-girl and her son; this slave-girl’s son is not to share the inheritance with the son[*c] of the free woman?

³¹ So, my brothers, we are the children, not of the slave-girl, but of the free-born wife.