“ ‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.
But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’
But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ ”
Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever.
I ask then: Did God reject his people? By no means! I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin.
“Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them?”
the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises.