for our gospel came to you not with mere words but also with power and with the holy Spirit, with ample conviction on our part (you know what we were to you, for your own good),

People tell us of their own accord about the visit we paid to you, and how you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and a real God

But you remember yourselves, brothers, that our visit to you was no failure.

At Philippi, as you know, we had been ill-treated and insulted, but we took courage and confidence in our God to tell you the gospel of God in spite of all the strain.

no, God has attested our fitness to be entrusted with the gospel, and so we tell the gospel not to satisfy men but to satisfy the God who tests our hearts.

fain, in our yearning affection for you, to impart not only the gospel of God to you but our very souls as well ??you had so won our love.

We thank God constantly for this too, that when you received the word of the divine message from us, you took it not as a human word but for what it really is, the word of God. It proves effective in you believers,

by hindering us from speaking words of salvation to the Gentiles. So they would fill up the measure of their sins to the last drop! But the Wrath is on them to the bitter end!

(We did want to reach you ??I did, I Paul, more than once ??but Satan stopped us.)

For who is our hope, our joy, our crown of pride (who but you?) in the presence of our Lord Jesus on his arrival?

But when Timotheus reached me a moment ago, on his return from you, bringing me the good news of your faith and love and of how you always remember me kindly, longing to see me as I long to see you,

Finally, brothers, we beg and beseech you in the Lord Jesus to follow our instructions about the way you are to live so as to satisfy God; you are leading that life, but you are to excel in it still further.

God did not call us to be impure but to be consecrated;

hence, he who disregards this, disregards not man but the God who gave you his holy Spirit.

But, brothers, you are not in the darkness for the Day to surprise you like thieves;

Well then, we must not sleep like the rest of men, but be wakeful and sober;

but we must be sober, we who belong to the day, clad in faith and love as our coat of mail, with the hope of salvation as our helmet ??9 for God destined us not for Wrath but to gain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ,

see that none of you pays back evil for evil, but always aim at what is kind to one another and to all the world;

but test them all, retaining what is good