As it is, some widows have already turned after Satan. ??16 Any believer, man or woman, who has widowed relatives, must give them relief; the church is not to be burdened with them; she has to relieve the widows who really need relief.

Presbyters who are efficient presidents are to be considered worthy of ample remuneration, particularly those who have the task of preaching and teaching:

Those who have Christian believers as their masters must not take liberties with them because they are brothers; they must be all the better servants because those who get the good of their service are believers and beloved. This is what you are to teach and preach.

If we have food and clothes, we must be content with that.

For love of money is the root of all mischief; it is by aspiring to be rich that certain individuals have gone astray from the faith and found themselves pierced with many a pang of remorse.

Certain individuals have failed in the faith by professing that. Grace be with you. [Amen.]

who has saved us and called us to a life of consecration ??not for anything we have done but because he chose to do it himself, by the grace which he gave us ages ago in Christ Jesus

Of that gospel I have been appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher,

and this is why I am suffering. Still, I am not ashamed of it; I know whom I have trusted and I am certain he is able to keep what I have put into his hands till the great Day.

Model yourself on the sound instruction you have had from me in the faith and love of Christ Jesus.

You are aware that all the Asiatics have discarded me, including Phygelus and Hermogenes.

The farmer who has done the work must have the first share of the fruit.

for which I have to suffer imprisonment as if I were a criminal. (But there is no prison for the word of God.)

It is a sure word, that "If we have died with him, we shall live with him,

they have failed in the Truth by arguing that the resurrection has taken place already, and they are undermining some people's faith.

they will be treacherous, reckless and conceited, preferring pleasure to God ??5 for though they keep up a form of religion, they will have nothing to do with it as a force. Avoid all such.

Now you have followed my teaching, my practice, my aims, my faith, my patience, my love, my stedfastness,

but hold you to what you have been taught, hold to your convictions, remember who your teachers were,

remember you have known from childhood the sacred writings that can impart saving wisdom by faith in Christ Jesus.

I have fought in the good fight; I have run my course; I have kept the faith.

Now the crown of a good life awaits me, with which the Lord, that just Judge, will reward me on the great Day ??and not only me but all who have loved and longed for his appearance.

(I have had to send Tychicus to Ephesus.)

for he has been bitterly hostile to anything I have said.

serving in hope of the life eternal which God, who never lies, promised ages ago ??3 he gave effect to his word in due time by a proclamation with which I have been entrusted by command of God our Saviour: ??4 to Titus my lawful son in a faith we hold in common; grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Saviour.

For there are plenty of insubordinate creatures who impose on people with their empty arguments, particularly those who have come over from Judaism;

That is a true statement. So deal sharply with them, to have them sound in the faith

instead of studying Jewish myths and rules laid down by men who have discarded the Truth.

It is a sure saying. I want you to insist on this, that those who have faith in God must profess honest occupations. Such counsels are right and good for men.

After a first and a second warning have no more to do with a factious person;

Whenever I send Artemas or Tychicus to you, do your best to come to me at Nicopolis, for I have decided to winter there.

I pray that by their participation in your loyal faith they may have a vivid sense of how much good we Christians can attain.

I have had great joy and encouragement over your love, my brother, over the way you have refreshed the hearts of the saints.

I would have liked to keep him beside me, that as your deputy he might serve me during my imprisonment for the gospel;

Come, brother, let me have some return from you in the Lord! Refresh my heart in Christ.

For to what angel did God ever say, 'Thou art my son, to-day have I become thy father'? Or again, 'I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me'?

We must therefore pay closer attention to what we have heard, in case we drift away.

For sanctifier and sanctified have all one origin. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers,

Well then, as the promise of entrance into his Rest is still left to us, let us be afraid of anyone being judged to have missed it.

For we have had the good news as well as they; only, the message they heard was of no use to them, because it did not meet with faith in the hearers.

And no created thing is hidden from him; all things lie open and exposed before the eyes of him with whom we have to reckon.

As we have a great high priest, then, who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession;

Similarly Christ was not raised to the glory of the high priesthood by himself but by Him who declared to him, Thou art my son, to-day have I become thy father.

On this point I have a great deal to say, which it is hard to make intelligible to you. For you have grown dull of hearing.

Whereas solid food is for the mature, for those who have their faculties trained by exercise to distinguish good and evil.)

For in the case of people who have been once enlightened, who tasted the heavenly Gift, who participated in the holy Spirit,

God is not unfair; he will not forget what you have done, or the love you have shown for his sake in ministering, as you still do, to the saints.

so that by these two solid facts (the Promise and the Oath), where it is impossible for God to be false, we refugees might have strong encouragement to seize the hope set before us,

The point of all this is, we do have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of Majesty in the heavens,

Now, as every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices, he too must have something to offer.

For if the first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion for a second.

He mediates a new covenant for this reason, that those who have been called may obtain the eternal inheritance they have been promised, now that a death has occurred which redeems them from the transgressions involved in the first covenant.

For Christ has not entered a holy place which human hands have made (a mere type of the reality!); he has entered heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.

Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, like the high priest entering the holy place every year with blood that was not his own: ??26 for in that case he would have had to suffer repeatedly, ever since the world was founded. Nay, once for all, at the end of the world, he has appeared with his self-sacrifice to abolish sin.

Otherwise, they would surely have ceased to be offered; for the worshippers, once cleansed, would no longer be conscious of sins!

Besides, we have the testimony of the holy Spirit; for after saying,

Brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy Presence in virtue of the blood of Jesus,

and since we have a great Priest over the house of God,

Steady patience is what you need, so that after doing the will of God you may get what you have been promised.

We are not the men to shrink back and be lost, but to have faith and so to win our souls.

If they thought of the land they have left behind, they would have time to go back,

God had something better in store for us; he would not have them perfected apart from us.

You have not had to shed blood yet in the struggle against sin.

And have you forgotten the word of appeal that reasons with you as sons? ??My son, never make light of the Lord's discipline, never faint under his reproofs;

It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons; for where is the son who is not disciplined by his father?

You have not come to what you can touch, to flames of fire, to mist and gloom and stormy blasts,

You have come to mount Sion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to myriads of angels in festal gathering,

Never forget to be hospitable, for by hospitality some have entertained angels unawares.

Keep your life free from the love of money; be content with what you have, for He has said, Never will I fail you, never will I forsake you.

Never let yourselves be carried away with a variety of novel doctrines; for the right thing is to have one's heart strengthened by grace, not by the eating of food ??that has never been any use to those who have had recourse to it.

Our altar is one of which the worshippers have no right to eat.

(for we have no lasting city here below, we seek the City to come).

Obey your leaders, submit to them; for they are alive to the interests of your souls, as men who will have to account for their trust. Let their work be a joy to them and not a grief ??which would be a loss to yourselves.

Pray for me, for I am sure I have a clean conscience; my desire is in every way to lead an honest life.

He who said, Do not commit adultery, also said, Do not kill. Now if you do not commit adultery but if you kill, you have transgressed the Law.

Someone will object, 'And you claim to have faith!' Yes, and I claim to have deeds as well; you show me your faith without any deeds, and I will show you by my deeds what faith is!

your gold and silver lie rusted over, and their rust will be evidence against you, it will devour your flesh like fire. [Moved to the end of 5:1] You have been storing up treasure in the very last days;

See, the wages of which you have defrauded the workmen who mowed your fields call out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of Hosts.

You have revelled on earth and plunged into dissipation; you have fattened yourselves as for the Day of slaughter;

you have condemned, you have murdered the righteous ??unresisting.

have patience yourselves, strengthen your hearts, for the arrival of the Lord is at hand.

As an example of fortitude and endurance, brothers, take the prophets who have spoken in the name of the Lord.

See, we call the stedfast happy; you have heard of the stedfastness of Job, and you have seen the end of the Lord with him, seen that the Lord is very compassionate and pitiful.

So confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed; the prayers of the righteous have a powerful effect.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy we have been born anew to a life of hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,

Even prophets have searched and inquired about that salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that was meant for you;

You have had a taste of the kindness of the Lord:

come to him then ??come to that living Stone which men have rejected and God holds choice and precious,

he bore our sins in his own body on the gibbet, that we might break with sin and live for righteousness; and by his wounds you have been healed.

You were astray like sheep, but you have come back now to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls.

Lastly, you must all be united, you must have sympathy, brotherly love, compassion, and humility,

Yet who will wrong you if you have a passion for goodness?

Even supposing you have to suffer for the sake of what is right, still you are blessed. Have no fear of their threats, do not let that trouble you,

see that you have a clean conscience, so that, for all their slander of you, these libellers of your good Christian behaviour may be ashamed.

It is quite enough to have done as pagans choose to do, during the time gone by! You used to lead lives of sensuality, lust, carousing, revelry, dissipation and illicit idolatry,

but they will have to answer for that to Him who is prepared to judge the living and the dead

Once you have suffered for a little, the God of all grace who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ Jesus, will repair and recruit and strengthen you.

By the hand of Silvanus, a faithful brother (in my opinion), I have written you these few lines of encouragement, to testify that this is what the true grace of God means. Stand in that grace.

Symeon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have been allotted a faith of equal privilege with ours, by the equity of our God and saviour Jesus Christ:

and thus we have gained fresh confirmation of the prophetic word. Pray attend to that word; it shines like a lamp within a darksome spot, till the Day dawns and the daystar rises within your hearts ??20 understanding this, at the outset, that no prophetic scripture allows a man to interpret it by himself;

they have gone wrong by leaving the straight road, by following the road of Balaam son of Bosor, who liked the profits of evil-doing ??16 but he got reproved for his malpractice: a dumb ass spoke with human voice and checked the prophet's infatuation.