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The Letter to the Galatians 4

4 Now, I will further discuss children and heirs. An heir is a person who will later possess and control all that his father has. But as long as that heir is a child, others control him, with the result that he is just like a slave. 2 Until the day that his father has previously determined, other persons supervise the child and manage his property. 3 Likewise, when we were spiritually immature because we did not yet believe in the Messiah, we submitted to the rules that everyone in this world lives by. Those rules controlled us like masters control their slaves. 4 But exactly at the time that God had previously determined, he sent Jesus his Son, into the world. (Jesus was born to a human mother, and he had to obey the laws that God gave to Moses. 5 God sent Jesus to rescue us who had to obey God’s laws he gave to Moses from being condemned for not obeying these laws. God did this so that we might all receive from him the status of being his children. 6 Furthermore, God sent the Spirit to live in our inner beings because we are now in such a close relationship with God it is as though we are his children. It is his Spirit who enables us to fervently call out to God, “Father, Father!” 7 So, because of what God has done, no longer is each of you like a slave. Instead, each of you is like a child of God. Furthermore, since each of you is now like God’s child, God has also made each of you his heir, one to whom he will give all that he has promised.

8 When you did not have a relationship with God, you served gods that really did not exist. You were like slaves at that time, because you were in spiritual bondage. 9 But now you have come to intimately know God. Perhaps it would be better to say that now God intimately knows each of you. So now you are acting foolishly! You are again believing that by obeying rules and rites you will benefit spiritually! Those rules are ineffective and inadequate! You are wanting to obey them again like slaves obey their masters. 10 You non-Jews are carefully practicing Jewish rules and rituals regarding what you should do on Jewish special days and at special times in certain months, seasons, and years. 11 I am concerned about your mistaken ideas! I do not want to have so strenuously served you in vain. 12 My fellow believers, I strongly urge you that you do as I do. Stop thinking that you have to obey the Jewish rules and ceremonial laws prescribed by the law of Moses. When I was with you, I did not obey all the Jewish rules and ceremonial laws, just like you did not obey them. At that time you treated me entirely as you should have.

13 You remember that I originally told you the good news because I was physically weak and was recovering. Because of the opportunity which that sickness provided I was able to tell you the good news. 14 Although you might have treated me contemptuously because of my physical malady, you did not treat me contemptuously or reject me. Instead, you welcomed me like you would welcome an angel that came from God. You welcomed me like you would welcome the Messiah Jesus himself! 15 I am disappointed that you have forgotten that then you declared that you were pleased with me. I know for certain that you would have done anything to help me. 16 So I am very disappointed that you now act as though I have become hostile to you because I have kept speaking the true message about the Messiah to you. 17 Those who are insisting on obeying the Jewish laws are eagerly showing interest in you, but they are not doing this because they have good motives. They are doing this because they want you not to associate with me and others who teach what is true about the Messiah. They desire that instead of you associating with us, you will eagerly show interest in them, not in us. 18 But, it is an honorable thing to eagerly desire to do the right things at all times. I would like you to eagerly desire to do the right things, both when I am with you and when I am absent. 19 You who are like my children, once again I am very concerned about you, and I will continue to be concerned about you until you become like the Messiah in your thinking and in your conduct. 20 But I do wish that I could be with you now and that I might talk more gently with you, because right now I do not know what to do about you.

21 Some of you desire to obey all the laws that God gave Moses. I say that you should consider the implications of what Moses wrote in the Scriptures. 22 He wrote that Abraham became the father of two sons. His female slave, Hagar, bore one son, and his wife Sarah, who was not a slave, bore the other. 23 Also, the sons differed. Ishmael, the son born by Hagar, the female slave, was conceived naturally. But Isaac, the son born by Sarah, his wife who was not a slave, was conceived miraculously because God intervened in order to fulfill what he had promised Abraham. 24 I am telling you this as an illustration. These two women symbolize two agreements. God made the first agreement, which involved obeying the laws that God gave to Moses at Mount Sinai. Because that agreement forces those who accept it to keep obeying all its rules, it is like a slave mother who gives birth to slaves. So Hagar, the female slave, symbolizes this agreement. 25 Also Hagar symbolizes the agreement, with its laws and rituals, that God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai, in the land of Arabia. Hagar also symbolizes the Jewish religion. The Jewish religion is like a slave mother, and those who practice the Jewish religion are like slave children because they all must obey the laws that God gave to Moses. 26 But there is a heavenly Jerusalem, and because we belong to the heavenly Jerusalem, it is like a mother to all of us who believe in the Messiah. Those who belong to the heavenly Jerusalem are free from having to obey the laws of Moses and free from being condemned for failing to obey those laws. 27 Our new city will have more people than those who live in Jerusalem now. It will be just like Isaiah foretold about the people whom he expected would come back to Jerusalem from exile. He expected that they would be more numerous than those who were taken into exile. He wrote: You who live in Jerusalem, you will rejoice! Now you have no children, like a barren woman who does not give birth to children! But some day you will shout joyfully, as loudly as you can, even though now you are few in number, like a woman who cannot give birth to children, and you feel deserted. You will be very happy because you will have many children who will come to you. Those children will be more than the children any woman with a husband could have borne. 28 Now, my fellow believers, you have become children of God because God has fulfilled what he promised to Abraham. You are like Isaac, who was born because God fulfilled what he promised to give Abraham. 29 Also, long ago Abraham’s son Ishmael, the one who was conceived naturally, caused trouble for Abraham’s son Isaac, who was conceived supernaturally. Similarly, now those who think that we must obey the laws that God gave to Moses in order that God will save us are causing trouble for those who are trusting Abraham’s descendant, the Messiah. 30 But Moses wrote these words in a scripture passage in Genesis: “The son of the woman who was not a slave will inherit what his father owns. The female slave’s son will certainly not inherit those things. So send away from this place the female slave and her son!” 31 My fellow believers, Hagar symbolizes the laws that God gave to Moses. But we are not those who must obey all the laws that God gave to Moses. So we are not the female slave Hagar’s spiritual descendants. But Sarah’s descendants are those who were born as a result of God fulfilling what he promised to Abraham. So we are the spiritual descendants of Sarah, the woman who was not a slave.

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