All who are led by God’s Spirit are God’s sons and daughters. 15 You didn’t receive a spirit of slavery to lead you back again into fear, but you received a Spirit that shows you are adopted as his children. With this Spirit, we cry, “ Abba, Father. ” 16 The same Spirit agrees with our spirit, that we are God’s children. 17 But if we are children, we are also heirs. We are God’s heirs and fellow heirs with Christ, if we really suffer with him so that we can also be glorified with him.
Celia Brewer Sinclair is a lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and adjunct faculty at Queens University. She holds degrees from Duke University and Yale Divinity School and is author of three books: A Guide Through the Old Testament, A Guide Through the New Testament, and Genesis. Sinclair is a writer of curricula for The United Methodist Publishing House and is the author of the Disciple Short-Term Bible Study on the Old Testament.