Bible Reading Plan — M'Cheyne One Year

Called from Slaves to Sons

¹My point is this – as long as the heir is under age, there is no difference between him and a slave, though he is master of the whole estate.

²He is subject to the control of guardians and stewards, during the period for which his father has power to appoint them.

³It was the same way with us. When we were under age, as it were, we were slaves to the puerile teaching of this world;

⁴but, when the full time came, God sent his Son – born a woman’s child, born subject to Law –

⁵to ransom those who were subject to Law, so that we might take our position as sons.

⁶And it is because you are sons that God sent into our hearts the Spirit of his Son, with the cry – ‘Abba, our Father.’

⁷You, therefore, are no longer a slave, but a son; and, if a son, then an heir also, by God’s appointment.

Do Not Turn Back to Weak Elemental Principles

⁸Yet formerly, in your ignorance of God, you became slaves to ‘gods’ which were no gods.

⁹But now that you have found God – or, rather, have been found by him – how is it that you are turning back to that poor and feeble puerile teaching, to which yet once again you are wanting to become slaves?

¹⁰You are scrupulous in keeping days and months and seasons and years!

¹¹You make me fear that the labor which I have spent on you may have been wasted.

Paul's Heartfelt Appeal to the Galatians

¹²I entreat you, friends, to become like me, as I became like you. You have never done me any wrong.

¹³You remember that it was owing to bodily infirmity that on the first occasion I told you the good news.

¹⁴And as for what must have tried you in my condition, it did not inspire you with scorn or disgust, but you welcomed me as if I had been an angel of God – or Christ Jesus himself!

¹⁵What has become then, of your blessings? For I can bear witness that, had it been possible, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me!

¹⁶Am I to think, then, that I have become your enemy by telling you the truth?

¹⁷Certain people are seeking your favor, but with no honorable object. No, indeed, they want to isolate you, so that you will have to seek their favor.

¹⁸It is always honorable to have your favor sought in an honorable cause, and not only when I am with you, my dear children –

¹⁹you for whom I am again enduring a mother’s pains, until a likeness to Christ will have been formed in you.

²⁰But I could wish to be with you now and speak in a different tone, for I am perplexed about you.

Hagar and Sarah, an Allegory of Two Covenants

²¹Tell me, you who want to be still subject to Law – Why don’t you listen to the Law?

²²Scripture says that Abraham had two sons, one the child of the slave-woman and the other the child of the free woman.

²³But the child of the slave-woman was born in the course of nature, while the child of the free woman was born in fulfillment of a promise.

²⁴This story may be taken as an allegory. The women stand for two covenants. One covenant, given from Mount Sinai, produces a race of slaves and is represented by Hagar.

²⁵Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia, and represents the Jerusalem of today, for she and her children are in slavery.

²⁶But the Jerusalem above is free, and she it is who is our mother.

²⁷For scripture says –

²⁸As for ourselves, friends, we, like Isaac, are children born in fulfillment of a promise.

²⁹Yet at that time the child born in the course of nature persecuted the child born by the power of the Spirit; and it is the same now.

³⁰But what does the passage of scripture say?

³¹And so, friends, we are not children of a slave, but of her who is free.

A Lament over the Defiled Temple

¹Heathen, O God, have come into your land,

²They have given the bodies of your dead servants

³Round about Jerusalem

⁴On every side our neighbors

⁵How long will you be angry, O Lord?

⁶Pour out your wrath on the nations that don’t know you,

⁷For Jacob they devoured,

⁸Do not remember against us our ancestors’ sins;

⁹Help us, O God our savior,

¹⁰Why should the nations say,

¹¹May the groans of the prisoner come before you;

¹²Pay our neighbors back sevenfold

¹³Then we, your people, the flock of your pasture,