to enter your hearts and cry "Abba! our Father!"
004:007 Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son,
then an heir also through God's own act.
004:008 But at one time, you Gentiles, having no knowledge of God,
were slaves to gods which in reality do not exist.
004:009 Now, however, having come to know God--or rather to be known by Him--
how is it you are again turning back to weak and worthless
rudimentary notions to which you are once more willing
to be enslaved?
004:010 You scrupulously observe days and months, special seasons, and years.
004:011 I am alarmed about you, and am afraid that I have perhaps
bestowed labour upon you to no purpose.
004:012 Brethren, become as I am, I beseech you; for I have also become
like you. In no respect did you behave badly to me.
004:013 And you know that in those early days it was on account
of bodily infirmity that I proclaimed the Good News to you,
004:014 and yet the bodily infirmity which was such a trial to you,
you did not regard with contempt or loathing, but you received
me as if I had been an angel of God or Christ Jesus Himself!
004:015 I ask you, then, what has become of your self-congratulations?
For I bear you witness that had it been possible you would
have torn out your own eyes and have given them to me.
004:016 Can it be that I have become your enemy through speaking
the truth to you?
004:017 These men pay court to you, but not with honourable motives.
They want to exclude you, so that you may pay court to them.
004:018 It is always an honourable thing to be courted in an honourable cause;
always, and not only when I am with you, my children--
004:019 you for whom I am again, as it were, undergoing the pains
of childbirth, until Christ is fully formed within you.