While he was departing as they gazed upward toward the sky, suddenly two men dressed in white robes stood beside them, and they said, “Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking up into the sky? This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will come back in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven.”
They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and offered worship and service to the creature rather than to the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. That is why God abandoned them to their shameful passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural practices. Likewise, men gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameful acts with men and received in their own persons the fitting penalty for their perversion. Furthermore, since these people did not see fit to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their depraved way of thinking and to all types of vile behavior.
He was despised and shunned by others, a man of sorrows who was no stranger to suffering. We loathed him and regarded him as of no account, as one from whom men avert their gaze.
But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or how tall he stands, for the Lord has rejected him. He does not see the way that men see, for men look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
After Jesus had been born in Bethlehem of Judea during the reign of King Herod, wise men traveled from the east and arrived in Jerusalem, inquiring, “Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We saw the rising of his star, and we have come to pay him homage.”
For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, Jews as well as Greeks, slaves as well as free men, and we were all given the same Spirit to drink.
He has made everything suitable for its time, and he has given men a sense of past and future, but they never have the slightest comprehension of what God has wrought from beginning to end.
Does it now appear to you that I am trying to gain the approval of human beings rather than the approval of God? Am I seeking to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.
He is not here. He has been raised. Remember what he told you while he was still in Galilee: that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners and be crucified and rise again on the third day.
Then Peter asked, “Ananias, why has Satan so gained control of your heart that you lied to the Holy Spirit and retained part of the sale price of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not belong to you? And after it was sold, were not the proceeds yours? What caused you to contrive this scheme? You have lied not to men but to God.”
Because in my eyes you are precious, because you are honored and I love you, I will give people in exchange for you and nations in return for your life.
Are you not aware that wrongdoers will never inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, extortioners, drunkards, slanderers, swindlers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.
For just as in one body we have many parts, and the parts do not all have the same function, so we, though many, make up one body in Christ, and individually we are all parts of one another.