Study Desk

Your conduct among the heathen should be so good that when they accuse you of being evildoers, they will have to recognize your good deeds and so praise God on the Day of his coming.

because they will see how pure and reverent your conduct is.

but do it with gentleness and respect. Keep your conscience clear, so that when you are insulted, those who speak evil of your good conduct as followers of Christ will become ashamed of what they say.

And now the heathen are surprised when you do not join them in the same wild and reckless living, and so they insult you.

But they will have to give an account of themselves to God, who is ready to judge the living and the dead.

These are the qualities you need, and if you have them in abundance, they will make you active and effective in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

False prophets appeared in the past among the people, and in the same way false teachers will appear among you. They will bring in destructive, untrue doctrines, and will deny the Master who redeemed them, and so they will bring upon themselves sudden destruction.

Even so, many will follow their immoral ways; and because of what they do, others will speak evil of the Way of truth.

especially those who follow their filthy bodily lusts and despise God's authority. These false teachers are bold and arrogant, and show no respect for the glorious beings above; instead, they insult them.

But these people act by instinct, like wild animals born to be captured and killed; they attack with insults anything they do not understand. They will be destroyed like wild animals,

and they will be paid with suffering for the suffering they have caused. Pleasure for them is to do anything in broad daylight that will satisfy their bodily appetites; they are a shame and a disgrace as they join you in your meals, all the while enjoying their deceitful ways!

They have left the straight path and have lost their way; they have followed the path taken by Balaam son of Beor, who loved the money he would get for doing wrong

They make proud and stupid statements, and use immoral bodily lusts to trap those who are just beginning to escape from among people who live in error.

If people have escaped from the corrupting forces of the world through their knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and then are again caught and conquered by them, such people are in worse condition at the end than they were at the beginning.

They purposely ignore the fact that long ago God gave a command, and the heavens and earth were created. The earth was formed out of water and by water,

But the heavens and the earth that now exist are being preserved by the same command of God, in order to be destroyed by fire. They are being kept for the day when godless people will be judged and destroyed.

This is what he says in all his letters when he writes on the subject. There are some difficult things in his letters which ignorant and unstable people explain falsely, as they do with other passages of the Scriptures. So they bring on their own destruction.

These people really did not belong to our fellowship, and that is why they left us; if they had belonged to our fellowship, they would have stayed with us. But they left so that it might be clear that none of them really belonged to us.

Who, then, is the liar? It is those who say that Jesus is not the Messiah. Such people are the Enemy of Christ—they reject both the Father and the Son.

Those who are children of God do not continue to sin, for God's very nature is in them; and because God is their Father, they cannot continue to sin.