Dear friends, since I am eager to begin a letter to you on the subject of our common salvation, I find myself constrained to write and cheer you on to the vigorous defense of the faith delivered once for all to God's people.

For there have crept in among you certain godless people, whose sentence has long since been pronounced, and who make the mercy of God an excuse for profligacy, and disown our only lord and master, Jesus Christ.

just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.