Knox Bible

1

Consider this; one who comes into his property while he is still a child has no more liberty than one of the servants, though all the estate is his;

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he is under the control of guardians and trustees, until he reaches the age prescribed by his father.

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So it was with us; in those childish days of ours we toiled away at the schoolroom tasks which the world gave us,✻

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till the appointed time came. Then God sent out his Son on a mission to us. He took birth from a woman, took birth as a subject of the law,

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so as to ransom those who were subject to the law, and make us sons by adoption.

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To prove that you are sons,✻ God has sent out the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying out in us, Abba, Father.

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No longer, then, art thou a slave, thou art a son; and because thou art a son, thou hast, by divine appointment, the son’s right of inheritance.

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Formerly you had no knowledge of God; you lived as the slaves of deities who were in truth no deities at all.

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Now you have recognized the true God, or rather, the true God has recognized you. How is it that you are going back to those old schoolroom tasks of yours, so abject, so ineffectual, eager to begin your drudgery all over again?

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You have begun to observe special days and months, special seasons and years.✻

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I am anxious over you; has all the labour I have spent on you been useless?

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Stand by me; I have taken my stand with you. I appeal to you, brethren. You have never treated me amiss.✻

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Why, when I preached the gospel to you in the first instance, it was, you remember, because of outward circumstances which were humiliating to me.✻ Those outward circumstances of mine were a test for you,

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which you did not meet with contempt or dislike; you welcomed me as God’s angel, as Christ Jesus.✻

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What has become now of the blessing that once was yours? In those days, I assure you, you would have plucked out your eyes, if you had had the chance, and given them to me.

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Have I made enemies of you, then, by telling you the truth?

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Oh, they are jealous over you, but for a dishonourable purpose; their aim is to shut you out from their company, so that you may be jealous of them.

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Your jealousy should be for the honourable gifts you see in a man of honour; always, not only when I am at your side.✻

19

My little children, I am in travail over you afresh, until I can see Christ’s image formed in you!

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I wish I were at your side now, and could speak to you in a different tone; I am bewildered at you.

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Tell me, you who are so eager to have the law for your master, have you never read the law?

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You will find it written there, that Abraham had two sons; one had a slave for his mother, and one a free woman.✻

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The child of the slave was born in the course of nature; the free woman’s, by the power of God’s promise.

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All that is an allegory; the two women stand for the two dispensations. Agar stands for the old dispensation, which brings up its children to bondage, the dispensation which comes to us from mount Sinai.

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Mount Sinai, in Arabia, has the same meaning in the allegory as Jerusalem, the Jerusalem which exists here and now; an enslaved city, whose children are slaves.✻

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Whereas our mother is the heavenly Jerusalem, a city of freedom.

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So it is that we read, Rejoice, thou barren woman that hast never borne child, break out into song and cry aloud, thou that hast never known travail; the deserted one has more children than she whose husband is with her.✻

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It is we, brethren, that are children of the promise, as Isaac was.

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Now, as then, the son who was born in the course of nature persecutes the son whose birth is a spiritual birth.

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But what does our passage in scripture say? Rid thyself of the slave and her son; it cannot be that the son of a slave should divide the inheritance with the son of a free woman.✻

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You see, then, brethren, that we are sons of the free woman, not of the slave; such is the freedom Christ has won for us.