God spoke in this way, ‘Your descendants shall be sojourners in a land belonging to others, who will enslave them and mistreat them four hundred years.
And I will judge the nation to whom they will be enslaved,’ said God. ‘After that they shall come out and worship Me in this place.’
knowing this, that our old man has been crucified with Him, so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we should no longer be slaves to sin.
Do you not know that to whom you yield yourselves as slaves to obey, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness?
But thanks be to God, for you were slaves of sin, but you have obeyed from the heart that form of teaching to which you were entrusted,
and having been freed from sin, you became the slaves of righteousness.
I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh, for just as you have yielded your members as slaves to impurity and iniquity leading to more iniquity, even so now yield your members as slaves to righteousness unto holiness.
For you have not received the spirit of slavery again to fear. But you have received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry, “Abba, Father.”