Instead, we have renounced shameful secret things, not walking in deceit or distorting God’s message, but commending ourselves to every person’s conscience in God’s sight by an open display of the truth.

I am not saying this as a command. Rather, by means of the diligence of others, I am testing the genuineness of your love.

Speaking the truth

“How can you say, ‘I love you,’” she told him, “when your heart is not with me? This is the third time you have mocked me and not told me what makes your strength so great!”

How joyful is the man
the Lord does not charge with sin
and in whose spirit is no deceit!

Then Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward Him and said about him, “Here is a true Israelite; no deceit is in him.”

Love must be without hypocrisy. Detest evil; cling to what is good.

If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food

By obedience to the truth, having purified yourselves for sincere love of the brothers, love one another earnestly from a pure heart,

Little children, we must not love with word or speech, but with truth and action.

May

The whole building, being put together by Him, grows into a holy sanctuary in the Lord.

I will be like the dew to Israel;
he will blossom like the lily
and take root like the cedars of Lebanon.

But for you who fear My name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings, and you will go out and playfully jump like calves from the stall.

Like newborn infants, desire the pure spiritual milk, so that you may grow by it for your salvation,

But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity.

Amen.

General references

They will never follow a stranger; instead they will run away from him, because they don’t recognize the voice of strangers.”

Now as we have many parts in one body, and all the parts do not have the same function,