and you must not offer the parts of your bodies to sin as the instruments of wrong, but offer yourselves to God as men brought back from death to life, and offer the parts of your bodies to him as instruments of uprightness.

For this is what the promise said: "When I come back at this time next year, Sarah will have a son."

On the contrary, who are you, my friend, to answer back to God? Can something a man shapes say to the man who shaped it, "Why did you make me like this?"

Do not pay anyone back with evil for evil. See that you are above reproach in the eyes of everyone.

Do not take your revenge, dear friends, but leave room for God's anger, for the Scripture says, "Vengeance belongs to me; I will pay them back, says the Lord."

I beg you, brothers, for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the love that the Spirit inspires, join me in most earnest prayer to God for me.

I beg you, brothers, to be on the watch for those who introduce divisions and difficulties, in opposition to the instruction that you were given, and to avoid them.

To him who can make you strong by the good news I bring and the preaching about Jesus Christ, through the disclosure of the secret kept back for long ages but now revealed,