³ Are you so foolish? Having started with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh?^(A)

⁴ You who want to be reckoned as righteous^[a] by the law have cut yourselves off from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.^{(A) 5} For through the Spirit, by faith, we eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.^{(B) 6} For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working^[b] through love.^(C)

⁷ You were running well; who prevented you from obeying the truth?^{(D) 8} Such persuasion does not come from the one who calls you.

⁷ So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir through God.^[a]

Paul Reproves the Galatians

⁸ Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to beings that by nature are not gods.^{(A) 9} Now, however, that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental principles?^[b] How can you want to be enslaved to them again?^{(B) 10} You are observing special days and months and seasons and years.

¹⁶ one who has become a priest, not through a legal requirement concerning physical descent but through the power of an indestructible life.^{(A) 17} For it is attested of him,

¹⁸ There is, on the one hand, the abrogation of an earlier commandment because it was weak and ineffectual^{(C) 19} (for the law made nothing perfect); there is, on the other hand, the introduction of a better hope through which we approach God.^(D)

⁹ This is a symbol^[a] of the present time, indicating that gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper^{(A) 10} but deal only with food and drink and various baptisms, regulations for the body imposed until the time comes to set things right.^(B)