Study Desk

The act of becoming a Jew has nothing to do with us becoming Christians. We worship God through His Spirit and are proud of Jesus Christ. We have no faith in what we ourselves can do.

I want to be as one with Him. I could not be right with God by what the Law said I must do. I was made right with God by faith in Christ.

We give thanks to God for you because we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus. We thank God for your love for all those who belong to Christ.

This is for you if you keep the faith. You must not change from what you believe now. You must not leave the hope of the Good News you received. The Good News was preached to you and to all the world. And I, Paul, am one of Christ's missionaries.

Even if I am far away from you in body, I am with you in spirit. I am happy to learn how well you are getting along. It is good to hear that your faith is so strong in Christ.

Have your roots planted deep in Christ. Grow in Him. Get your strength from Him. Let Him make you strong in the faith as you have been taught. Your life should be full of thanks to Him.

Be careful that no one changes your mind and faith by much learning and big sounding ideas. Those things are what men dream up. They are always trying to make new religions. These leave out Christ.

While praying to God our Father, we always remember your work of faith and your acts of love and your hope that never gives up in our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Word of the Lord has been spoken by you in the countries of Macedonia and Greece. People everywhere know of your faith in God without our telling them.

And we sent Timothy to you. He works with us for God, teaching the Good News of Christ. We sent him to give strength and comfort to your faith.

For this reason, I could wait no longer. I sent Timothy to find out about your faith. I was afraid the devil had tempted you. Then our work with you would be wasted.

But Timothy has come to us from you. He brought good news about your faith and love. It is good to know that you think well of us and that you would like to see us. We would like to see you also.

Christian brothers, word about your faith has made us happy even while we are suffering and are in much trouble.

It is life to us to know that your faith in the Lord is strong.

We keep on praying night and day that we may see you again. We want to help your faith to be complete.

Because we are men of the day, let us keep our minds awake. Let us cover our chests with faith and love. Let us cover our heads with the hope of being saved.

We must give thanks to God for you always, Christian brothers. It is the right thing to do because your faith is growing so much. Your love for each other is stronger all the time.

We are proud of you and tell the other churches about you. We tell them how your faith stays so strong even when people make it hard for you and make you suffer.

For this reason, we always pray for you. We pray that our God will make you worth being chosen. We pray that His power will help you do the good things you want to do. We pray that your work of faith will be complete.

Christian brothers, the Lord loves you. We always thank God for you. It is because God has chosen you from the beginning to save you from the punishment of sin. He chose to make you holy by the Holy Spirit and to give you faith to believe the truth.