Heavy and cumbrous burdens they bind together and load men's shoulders with them, while as for themselves, not with one finger do they choose to lift them.
Now, therefore, why try an experiment upon God, by laying on the necks of these disciples a yoke which neither our forefathers nor we have been able to bear?
This accounts for the fact that if during her husband's life she lives with another man, she will be stigmatized as an adulteress; but that if her husband is dead she is no longer under the old prohibition, and even though she marries again, she is not an adulteress.
But seeing that we have died to that which once held us in bondage, the Law has now no hold over us, so that we render a service which, instead of being old and formal, is new and spiritual.
You have not for the second time acquired the consciousness of being –a consciousness which fills you with terror. But you have acquired a deep inward conviction of having been adopted as sons– a conviction which prompts us to cry aloud, »Abba! our Father!«
Therefore, my dear brethren, be firm, unmovable, busily occupied at all times in the Lord's work, knowing that your toil is not fruitless in the Lord.
Yet there was danger of this through the false brethren secretly introduced into the Church, who had stolen in to spy out the freedom which is ours in Christ Jesus, in order to rob us of it.
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?
You however, brethren, were called to freedom. Only do not turn your freedom into an excuse for giving way to your lower natures; but become bondservants to one another in a spirit of love.
Only let the lives you live be worthy of the Good News of the Christ, in order that, whether I come and see you or, being absent, only hear of you, I may know that you are standing fast in one spirit and with one mind, fighting shoulder to shoulder for the faith of the Good News.
but Christ was faithful as a Son having authority over God's house, and we are that house, if we hold firm to the End the boldness and the hope which we boast of as ours.
Inasmuch, then, as we have in Jesus, the Son of God, a great High Priest who has passed into Heaven itself, let us hold firmly to our profession of faith.
And they promise them freedom, although they are themselves the slaves of what is corrupt. For a man is the slave of any one by whom he has been worsted in fight.
Dear friends, since I am eager to begin a letter to you on the subject of our common salvation, I find myself constrained to write and cheer you on to the vigorous defense of the faith delivered once for all to God's people.
Be mindful, therefore, of the lessons you have received and heard. Continually lay them to heart, and repent. If, however, you fail to rouse yourself and keep awake, I shall come upon you suddenly like a thief, and you will certainly not know the hour at which I shall come to judge you.