It seems convoluted at the outset, but it is a beautiful aspect of the BCP that the assigned readings finish with the stretch from 3:23 and ends with 4:7. Magnificent!
Today is Christmas Eve, you should go to church tonight. Sing the songs. Hear the lessons. Pray your prayers. Light the candles. Eat the bread and drink from the cup. Worship the Lord in spirit and truth. If you are too busy or too obligated to worship the Lord at Christmas, then you are too busy and too obligated.
3:23. Before faith came, we were held captive under the law, waiting for faith to be revealed.
24. The law became our teacher in Messiah, so that we might be made right by belief.
25. But belief has come. We are no longer under the teacher.
26. For all of you are children of God by belief in Jesus as Messiah.
27. Those who have been baptized into Messiah, they have clothed themselves in Messiah.
28. There is no Jew nor Greek. There is no slave nor free. There is no male nor female. You are all one in Messiah Jesus.
29. And, if you are of Messiah, then you are seed of Abram, inheritors by promise.
4:1. What I say is this, at the time an infant inherits, he or she is practically no different than a slave, although he is the master of everything.
2. He is under a guardian and steward until the time approve by the father.
3. We are, then, when we were infants, enslaved under the elements of this world.
4. But when the right time came, God sent out his own son, born of a woman, born under the law.
5. So that he might ransom those under the law, and we then might receive adoption.
6. Now, you are children to whom God sent out the Spirit of his son, crying out in our hearts, ‘Abba, Father.’
7. You are no longer slaves, but children, and if children, then inheritors through God.
I will resist the urge to preach here, but open your heart two the inclusive nature of the gospel and the marvel that God has sent his son and the Spirit to us. As Jesus was born, so too are we, not physically as he was but through faith, reborn into the kingdom of God as children. It is a thought too beautiful to be expressed in mere words.