Whatever you do, do it wholeheartedly, as if you were doing it for the Lord and not for others, since you know that you will receive from the Lord an inheritance as your reward for you are serving the Lord Christ.
Therefore, my beloved brethren, stand firm and immovable, devoting yourselves completely to the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
I understand that man’s greatest happiness is to be glad and do well throughout his life. And when we eat and drink and find satisfaction in all our labors, this is a gift of God.
And God is able to enrich you with an abundance of every grace, so that, with all of your needs provided for, you may be able to produce a surplus of good works.
Make every effort to present yourself before God as one who is worthy of his approval, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, but who imparts the word of truth without any alteration.
Moreover, the one to whom God grants wealth and possessions and the ability to enjoy them and to find contentment in his toil receives a gift from God.
Gaze upon the birds in the sky. They do not sow or reap or store in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of far greater value than they?
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.
For God would not be so unjust as to ignore your work and the love that you have shown for his name by the services you have rendered to the saints and still continue to render.
As for me, I do not regard my life as of any value, only that I finish the race and complete the mission that I received from the Lord Jesus—to bear witness to the gospel of God’s grace.
All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in uprightness, so that the man of God may be proficient and equipped for good work of every kind.
Amen, amen, I say to you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do, and indeed will do even greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father.
Therefore, a Sabbath rest still remains for the people of God, since those who enter into God’s rest also cease from their own labors as God did from his.
Exhort slaves to be submissive to their masters and to give them satisfaction in every respect. They are not to talk back to them, nor are they to steal from them. Rather, they should show themselves to be completely trustworthy so that in every way they may add luster to the doctrine of God our Savior.