Study Desk

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge;

For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, my brothers and sisters, make every effort to confirm your calling and election. For if you do these things, you will never stumble,

For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.

For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment;

(for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)—

if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment.

They will be paid back with harm for the harm they have done. Their idea of pleasure is to carouse in broad daylight. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their pleasures while they feast with you.

But he was rebuked for his wrongdoing by a donkey—an animal without speech—who spoke with a human voice and restrained the prophet's madness.

These people are springs without water and mists driven by a storm. Blackest darkness is reserved for them.

For they mouth empty, boastful words and, by appealing to the lustful desires of the flesh, they entice people who are just escaping from those who live in error.

They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity—for "people are slaves to whatever has mastered them."

It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them.

By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.

He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.

But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in him:

Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them.

For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world.

They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.