Study Desk

Look, I am ready to come to you this third time. I will not burden you, since I am not seeking what is yours, but you. For children ought not save up for their parents, but parents for their children.

In the same way we also, when we were children, were in slavery under the elements of the world.

My children, I am again suffering labor pains for you until Christ is formed in you.

These things are being taken figuratively, for the women represent two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai and bears children into slavery—this is Hagar.

Now Hagar represents Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children.

Now you too, brothers and sisters, like Isaac, are children of promise.

Therefore, brothers and sisters, we are not children of a slave but of the free woman.

We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and we were by nature children under wrath as the others were also.

Then we will no longer be little children, tossed by the waves and blown around by every wind of teaching, by human cunning with cleverness in the techniques of deceit.

Therefore, be imitators of God, as dearly loved children,

For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light—

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, because this is right.

Fathers, don’t stir up anger in your children, but bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

so that you may be blameless and pure, children of God who are faultless in a crooked and perverted generation, among whom you shine like stars in the world,

Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.

Fathers, do not exasperate your children, so that they won’t become discouraged.

Although we could have been a burden as Christ’s apostles, instead we were gentle among you, as a nurse nurtures her own children.

As you know, like a father with his own children,

For you are all children of light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or the darkness.

He must manage his own household competently and have his children under control with all dignity.