You shall obey his statutes and the commandments that I give you today, so that all may go well with you and your children after you, and that you may live long in the land that the Lord, your God, has given you for all time.
You shall not hate your brother in your heart, nor shall you rebuke your brother in any way, lest you bear sin because of him. You shall not seek vengeance nor bear a grudge against the children of your people. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.
The Lord commanded us to observe all of these statutes and to fear the Lord, our God, so that we might always prosper and be kept alive, even as we are today.
But I have had help from God to this very day, and I stand here and testify to both the lowly and the great. I assert nothing more than what the Prophets and Moses said would occur: that the Christ must suffer, and that, by being the first to rise from the dead, he would proclaim light to the people and to the Gentiles.
He then called the people and his disciples to him and said to them, “Anyone who wishes to follow me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”
Though he was in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. Being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient to death, even death on a cross.
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.
He is the reflection of God’s glory and the perfect expression of his very being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. Achieving purification from sins, he took his seat at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
The Lord, your God, is in your midst, a warrior and a savior. He will rejoice over you with gladness and renew you through his love. He will exult over you with shouts of joy.