Study Desk

For we never fail to remember your works of faith and labours of love and your persistent and unwavering hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of our God and Father;

knowing as we do, brethren, that you are beloved by God and that He has chosen you.

For it was not only from you that the Master's Message sounded forth throughout Macedonia and Greece; but everywhere your faith in God has become known, so that it is unnecessary for us to say anything about it.

For when others speak of us they report the reception we had from you, and how you turned from your idols to God, to be bondservants of the true and ever-living God,

But, as you will remember, after we had already met with suffering and outrage at Philippi, we summoned up boldness, by the help of our God, to tell you God's Good News amid much opposition.

But as God tested and approved us before entrusting us with His Good News, so in what we say we are seeking not to please men but to please God, who tests and approves our motives.

For, as you are well aware, we have never used the language of flattery nor have we found pretexts for enriching ourselves--God is our witness;

You yourselves are witnesses--and God is witness--how holy and upright and blameless our dealings with you believers were.

and imploring you to live lives worthy of fellowship with God who is inviting you to share His own Kingship and glory.

And for this further reason we render unceasing thanks to God, that when you received God's Message from our lips, it was as no mere message from men that you embraced it, but as--what it really is--God's Message, which also does its work in the hearts of you who believe.

For you, brethren, followed the example of the Churches of God in Christ Jesus which are in Judaea; seeing that you endured the same ill-treatment at the hands of your countrymen, as they did at the hands of the Jews.

Those Jewish persecutors killed both the Lord Jesus and the Prophets, and drove us out of their midst. They are displeasing to God, and are the enemies of all mankind;

For what thanksgiving on your behalf can we possibly offer to God in return for all the joy which fills our souls before our God for you,

But may our God and Father Himself--and our Lord Jesus--guide us on our way to you;

Thus He will build up your characters, so that you will be faultlessly holy in the presence of our God and Father at the Coming of our Lord Jesus with all His holy ones.

Moreover, brethren, as you learnt from our lips the lives which you ought to live, and do live, so as to please God, we beg and exhort you in the name of the Lord Jesus to live them more and more truly.

that you be not overmastered by lustful cravings, like the Gentiles who have no knowledge of God;

God has not called us to an unclean life, but to one of purity.

Therefore a defiant spirit in such a case provokes not man but God, who puts His Holy Spirit into your hearts.

But on the subject of love for the brotherhood it is unnecessary for me to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another;