Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

If you're doing our new testament plan, today we finished our sixth book, and if you're doing the whole Bible, we finished our 45th book.

This book in particular is the first of Paul's letters.

When we're talking about the books of the Bible that are letters, we call them

epistles because that's the Greek word for letters.

When we left off yesterday, Paul was telling us that we are heirs according to the promise God

made to the offspring of

Abraham which includes everyone who has been adopted into God's family regardless of

race, gender, or status. Today he opens by telling us that as sons of God we are fellow heirs with Christ and as

co-ears we inherit everything that is bonkers but even better than that we

inherit the spirit of the Sun or the spirit of Jesus which is just another way of saying

God the spirit or the Holy Spirit. He goes by lots of different names in scripture, but you probably have

one way of addressing him that you're most comfortable or familiar with. The presence of the spirit in us is what

enables us to call God our father. Those without the spirit do not have God as their

father. Paul says that when we have that status as a child of God and dwelled by God, it's ridiculous

to go back to being a slave.

And that's what happens when we try to rely on the law.

It enslaves.

He implores them not to turn back to their old ways, but remember these are

Gentiles he's writing to. Their past doesn't include the law, but it does include

other things that enslave them. Specifically, Paul points out that they worship things that aren't God.

For many of them, this was the sun, moon, stars, and planets and a culture of astrology.

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