1 All who are under the yoke of slavery must esteem their masters to be deserving the highest respect, so that the name of God and our teaching may not be abused.
2 Those who have Christian masters must not pay them less respect because they are brothers; they must serve them all the better, because those who get the benefit of their service are believers and so are dear to them. These are the things that you must continue to teach and urge them to do.
3 If anyone teaches different doctrines and refuses to agree with the wholesome messages of our Lord Jesus Christ, the teaching that is in accordance with true religion,
4 he is a conceited ignoramus with a morbid appetite for discussions and controversies which lead to envy, quarreling, abuse, base suspicions,
5 and perpetual friction between people who are depraved in mind and deprived of truth, who imagine that religion is only a means of gain.
6 Now the fact is, religion with contentment is a means of great gain.
7 For we bring nothing into the world and surely we can take nothing out of it.
8 If we have food and clothes we will be satisfied.
9 But men who keep planning to get rich fall into temptations and snares and many foolish, hurtful desires which plunge people into destruction and ruin.
10 For the love of money is the root of all sorts of evil, and some men in reaching after riches have wandered from the faith and pierced their hearts with many a pang.
11 But you, as a man of God, must be fleeing always from these things; you must constantly strive for uprightness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness.
12 Keep up the good fight for the faith. Keep your hold on eternal life, to which God called you, when before many witnesses you made the good profession of faith.
13 Before God who preserves the life of all His creatures and before Christ Jesus who in testifying before Pontius Pilate made His good profession, I solemnly charge you
14 to keep His command stainless and irreproachable until the appearance of our Lord Jesus Christ,
15 which will be brought about in His own time by the blessed, only Sovereign, the King of kings, the Lord of lords,
16 who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has ever seen or can see. To Him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.
17 Continue charging the rich of this world to stop being haughty and not to fix their hope on a thing so uncertain as riches, but on God who richly and ceaselessly provides us with everything for our enjoyment;
18 charge them to continue doing good and being rich in good deeds, open-handed and generous hearted,
19 in this way amassing for themselves the riches that forever endure in the life to come, so that at last they may grasp the life that is life indeed.