Study Desk

So, as a prisoner for the Lord, I beg you to live the way God's people should live, because he chose you to be his.

This work must continue until we are all joined together in what we believe and in what we know about the Son of God. Our goal is to become like a full-grown man—to look just like Christ and have all his perfection.

And don't make the Holy Spirit sad. God gave you his Spirit as proof that you belong to him and that he will keep you safe until the day he makes you free.

A husband is the head of his wife, just as Christ is the head of the church. Christ is the Savior of the church, which is his body.

Husbands, love your wives the same as Christ loved the church and gave his life for it.

And husbands should love their wives like that. They should love their wives as they love their own bodies. The man who loves his wife loves himself,

because no one ever hates his own body, but feeds and takes care of it. And that is what Christ does for the church

because we are parts of his body.

The Scriptures say, "That is why a man will leave his father and mother and join his wife, and the two people will become one."

But each one of you must love his wife as he loves himself. And a wife must respect her husband.

To end my letter I tell you, be strong in the Lord and in his great power.

Think about what we have in Christ: the encouragement he has brought us, the comfort of his love, our sharing in his Spirit, and the mercy and kindness he has shown us. If you enjoy these blessings,

He was like God in every way, but he did not think that his being equal with God was something to use for his own benefit.

Instead, he gave up everything, even his place with God. He accepted the role of a servant, appearing in human form. During his life as a man,

he humbled himself by being fully obedient to God, even when that caused his death—death on a cross.

You know the kind of person Timothy is. He has served with me in telling the Good News like a son with his father.

He should be honored because he almost died for the work of Christ. He put his life in danger so that he could help me. This was help that you could not give me.

But we are the ones who have the true circumcision—we who worship God through his Spirit. We don't trust in ourselves or anything we can do. We take pride only in Christ Jesus.

All I want is to know Christ and the power that raised him from death. I want to share in his sufferings and be like him even in his death.

I don't mean that I am exactly what God wants me to be. I have not yet reached that goal. But I continue trying to reach it and make it mine. That's what Christ Jesus wants me to do. It is the reason he made me his.