Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places . . . He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.
For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
We were by nature children of wrath, even as others.
Brethren, do not become children in sense: but in malice be children, and in sense be perfect.
Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, Jesus himeself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil.
