The Lord said to Moses, “Climb up to me on the mountain and remain there. I will give you stone tablets with the laws and commandments that I have written for their instruction.”
But Jesus has now received a ministry that is far superior, for he is the mediator of a far better covenant that has been established on better promises.
By these he has given us his precious promises, great beyond all price, so that through them you may escape from the corruption with which evil desires have infected the world and thereby may come to share in the divine nature.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercy and the God of all consolation. He consoles us in all our afflictions and thereby enables us to console others in their tribulations, offering them the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God.
This is the conclusion I have reached: it is fitting for a man to eat and drink and find satisfaction in the results of his labors under the sun during the brief span of life that God has allotted him.
Do not lie to one another, since you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self that is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.
You will not add to what I command you, nor will you take away from it, so that you might observe the commandments of the Lord, your God, that I am giving you.
This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist, about whose coming you have been told, and that it is already in the world.
Recognizing that laws are not designed for the upright. They are for the lawless and insubordinate, for the godless and sinful, for the unholy and irreligious; they are for those who slay their fathers and mothers, for murderers, for those who are fornicators, sodomites, slave traders, liars, perjurers, and for whatever else is contrary to the sound teaching that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which has been entrusted to me.
Instruct those who are rich in this world’s goods that they should not be proud, nor should they trust in the uncertainty of riches but rather in God who richly provides us with everything we need for our enjoyment.
Therefore, brethren, I implore you by the mercies of God to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice that is holy and acceptable to God—a spiritual act of worship.
Now we know that if the earthly tent in which we live is destroyed, we have a dwelling prepared for us by God, a dwelling in the heavens, not made with human hands, that will be eternal.
I want their hearts to be encouraged and united in love so that they may grow rich in their complete understanding as they come to the knowledge of the mystery of God, that is, Christ.
But God is rich in his mercy, and because he had such great love for us, he brought us to life with Christ when we were already dead through sin—it is by grace that you have been saved.
And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and the scrolls were opened. Then another scroll was opened, the book of life, and the dead were judged according to their deeds, as were recorded in the scrolls. The sea gave up all the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them. The dead were judged according to their deeds.
When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all assembled together in one place. Suddenly, there came from heaven a sound similar to that of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were sitting.
Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may show yourselves blameless and beyond reproach, children of God without spot in the midst of an evil and depraved generation, among which you shine like lights in the world as you hold fast tenaciously to the word of life.