Study Desk

For the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith toward God has gone forth, so that we have no need to say anything.

For they themselves report about us what kind of an entrance we had with you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God,

but after we had already suffered and been mistreated in Philippi, as you know, we had the boldness in our God to speak to you the gospel of God amid much struggle.

but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not as pleasing men, but God who examines our hearts.

For we never came with a flattering word, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed—God is witness—

In this way, having fond affection for you, we were pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God but also our own lives, because you had become beloved to us.

For you remember, brothers, our labor and hardship, how working night and day so as not to be a burden to any of you, we proclaimed to you the gospel of God.

You are witnesses, and so is God, of how devoutly and righteously and blamelessly we behaved toward you believers;

so that you would walk in a manner worthy of the God who calls you into His own kingdom and glory.

And for this reason we also thank God without ceasing that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which also is at work in you who believe.

For you, brothers, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea, for you also suffered the same things at the hands of your own countrymen, even as they did from the Jews,

who both killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out, and do not please God, and are hostile to all men,

For what thanks can we render to God for you in return for all the joy with which we rejoice before our God because of you,

Now may our God and Father Himself and Jesus our Lord direct our way to you,

so that He may strengthen your hearts blameless in holiness, before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His saints.

Finally then, brothers, we ask and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us as to how you ought to walk and please God (just as you actually do walk), that you excel still more.

For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality;

not in lustful passion, like the Gentiles who do not know God;

For God did not call us to impurity, but in sanctification.

Consequently, he who sets this aside is not setting aside man but the God who gives His Holy Spirit to you.