When John saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming to him to be baptized, he said to them, "You snakes---who told you that you could escape from the punishment God is about to send?

And don't think you can escape punishment by saying that Abraham is your ancestor. I tell you that God can take these rocks and make descendants for Abraham!

They answered him, "Our father is Abraham." "If you really were Abraham's children," Jesus replied, "you would do the same things that he did.

You are doing what your father did." "God himself is the only Father we have," they answered, "and we are his true children."

And so the promise was based on faith, in order that the promise should be guaranteed as God's free gift to all of Abraham's descendants---not just to those who obey the Law, but also to those who believe as Abraham did. For Abraham is the spiritual father of us all;

Actually all of us were like them and lived according to our natural desires, doing whatever suited the wishes of our own bodies and minds. In our natural condition we, like everyone else, were destined to suffer God's anger.

Some Pharisees saw this and asked his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with such people?"

The woman was a Gentile, born in the region of Phoenicia in Syria. She begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter.

"Sir," she answered, "even the dogs under the table eat the children's leftovers!"

'Go,' the Lord said to me, 'for I will send you far away to the Gentiles.' "

Well then, are we Jews in any better condition than the Gentiles? Not at all! I have already shown that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin.

You Gentiles by birth---called "the uncircumcised" by the Jews, who call themselves the circumcised (which refers to what men do to their bodies)---remember what you were in the past.

At that time you were apart from Christ. You were foreigners and did not belong to God's chosen people. You had no part in the covenants, which were based on God's promises to his people, and you lived in this world without hope and without God.

For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, and wrong. We were slaves to passions and pleasures of all kinds. We spent our lives in malice and envy; others hated us and we hated them.