It is you who are the Salt of the earth; but, if the salt should lose its strength, what will you use to restore its saltiness? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown away, and trampled underfoot.

Look at the wild birds--they neither sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns; and yet your heavenly Father feeds them! And are not you more precious than they?

And why be anxious about clothing? Study the wild lilies, and how they grow. They neither toil nor spin;

Then he told them many truths in parables. "The sower," he began, "went out to sow; and, As he was sowing, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. read more. Some fell on rocky places, where it had not much soil, and, having no depth of soil, sprang up at once. As soon as the sun had risen, it was scorched, and, having no root, withered away. Some, again, fell into the brambles; but the brambles shot up and choked it. Some, however, fell on good soil, and yielded a return, sometimes one hundred, sometimes sixty, sometimes thirty fold. Let him who has ears hear."

This was another parable which Jesus related-- "The Kingdom of Heaven is like some yeast which a woman took and covered up in three pecks of flour, until the whole had risen."

That, I say, is why God abandoned them to degrading passions. Even the women among them perverted the natural use of their bodies to the unnatural;

When Gentiles, who have no Law, do instinctively what the Law requires, they, though they have no Law, are a Law to themselves;

Indeed, the man who, owing to his birth, remains uncircumcised, and yet scrupulously obeys the Law, will condemn you, who, for all your written Law and your circumcision, are yet a breaker of the Law.

For, if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you.

If you were cut off from your natural stock--a wild olive-- and were grafted, contrary to the course of nature, upon a good olive, much more will they--the natural branches--be grafted back into their parent tree.

Does not nature herself teach us that, while for a man to wear his hair long is degrading to him,

And when you sow, you sow not the body that will be, but a mere grain-perhaps of wheat, or something else. God gives it the body that he pleases-to each seed its special body.

We, though we are Jews by birth and not outcasts of Gentile origin, know that no one is pronounced righteous as the result of obedience to Law, but only through faith in Christ Jesus.

Yet formerly, in your ignorance of God, you became slaves to 'gods' which were no gods.

And it was among them that we all once lived our lives, indulging the cravings of our earthly nature, and carrying out the desires prompted by that earthly nature and by our own thoughts. Our very nature exposed us to the Divine Wrath, like the rest of mankind.

For while all sorts of beasts and birds, and of reptiles and creatures in the sea, are tameable, and actually have been tamed by man,

For it was through this that he gave us what we prize as the greatest of his promises, that through them you might participate in the divine nature, now that you have fled from the corruption in the world, resulting from human passions.

Does not nature herself teach us that, while for a man to wear his hair long is degrading to him,

And it was among them that we all once lived our lives, indulging the cravings of our earthly nature, and carrying out the desires prompted by that earthly nature and by our own thoughts. Our very nature exposed us to the Divine Wrath, like the rest of mankind.

Our fathers disciplined us for only a short time and as seemed best to them; but God disciplines us for our true good, to enable us to share his holiness.

For it was through this that he gave us what we prize as the greatest of his promises, that through them you might participate in the divine nature, now that you have fled from the corruption in the world, resulting from human passions.

If you were cut off from your natural stock--a wild olive-- and were grafted, contrary to the course of nature, upon a good olive, much more will they--the natural branches--be grafted back into their parent tree.

Does not nature herself teach us that, while for a man to wear his hair long is degrading to him,

We, though we are Jews by birth and not outcasts of Gentile origin, know that no one is pronounced righteous as the result of obedience to Law, but only through faith in Christ Jesus.

And it was among them that we all once lived our lives, indulging the cravings of our earthly nature, and carrying out the desires prompted by that earthly nature and by our own thoughts. Our very nature exposed us to the Divine Wrath, like the rest of mankind.