They had listened to him until he said that, but then they shouted, "Kill him and get him out of the world! A creature like that ought not to be allowed to live!"

But when they had strapped him up, Paul said to the officer who was standing near, "Is it legal for you to flog a Roman citizen, and without giving him a trial?"

Upon hearing this, the officer went to the colonel and reported it. "What do you propose to do?" he said. "This man is a Roman citizen."

Then the colonel came to Paul and said, "Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?" "Yes," he said.

"I had to pay a large sum for my citizenship," said the colonel. "But I am a citizen by birth," said Paul.

Paul looked steadily at the council and said, "Brothers, I have done my duty to God with a perfectly clear conscience up to this very day."

Then Paul said to him, "God will strike you, you white-washed wall! Do you sit there to try me by the Law, and order them to strike me in violation of the Law?"

But the people who stood near him said, "Do you mean to insult God's high priest?"

"I did not know, brothers," said Paul, "that he was high priest, for the Scripture says, 'You shall not say anything against any ruler of your people.' "

When he said that, a dispute arose between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the meeting was divided.

On the following night the Lord stood beside him and said, "Courage! For just as you have testified for me in Jerusalem, you must testify in Rome also."

and they went to the high priests and elders and said to them, "We have taken a solemn oath not to touch anything to eat till we have killed Paul.

Paul called one of the officers and said to him, "Take this young man to the colonel, for he has something to tell him."

So he took him to the colonel, and said, "The prisoner Paul called me to him and asked me to bring this young man to you, as he has something to say to you."

Then he called in two of his officers and said to them, "Get two hundred men ready to march to Caesarea, with seventy mounted men and two hundred spear-men, by nine o'clock tonight."

he said, "I will hear your case as soon as your accusers arrive." And he gave orders that he should be kept in Herod's palace.

When Paul had been summoned, Tertullus began the prosecution. "Your Excellency Felix," he said, "since through your efforts we enjoy perfect peace, and through your foresight this nation is securing needed reforms,

The Jews also joined in these charges, and said that the statement was true.

But as he talked of uprightness, self-control, and the coming judgment, Felix became alarmed, and said, "You may go for the present. I will find time later to send for you."

"So have your principal men go down with me," he said, "and present charges against the man, if there is anything wrong with him."

Paul said in his own defense, "I have committed no offense against the Jewish Law or the Temple or the emperor."

Then Festus, wishing to gratify the Jews, said to Paul, "Will you go up to Jerusalem and be tried there before me on these charges?"

But Paul said, "I am standing before the emperor's court, where I ought to be tried. I have done the Jews no wrong, as you can easily see.

and as they stayed there several days, Festus laid Paul's case before the king. "There is a man here," he said, "who was left in prison by Felix,

Their differences with him were about their own religion and about a certain Jesus who had died but who Paul said was alive.

"I should like to hear the man myself," Agrippa said to Festus. "You shall hear him tomorrow," Festus answered.

Then Festus said, "King Agrippa and all who are present, you see here the man about whom the whole Jewish people have applied to me both at Jerusalem and here, clamoring that he ought not to live any longer.

Then Agrippa said to Paul, "You are at liberty to speak in your own defense." So Paul stretched out his hand and began his defense.

"I think myself fortunate, King Agrippa," said he, "that it is before you that I am to defend myself today against all the things the Jews charge me with,

'Who are you, sir?' said I. The Lord said, 'I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.

As he said this in his defense, Festus called out, "You are raving, Paul! Your great learning is driving you mad!"

"I am not raving, your Excellency Festus," said Paul, "I am telling the sober truth.

"You are in a hurry to persuade me and make a Christian of me!" Agrippa said to Paul.

"In a hurry or not," said Paul, "I would to God that not only you, but all who hear me today, might be what I am??xcept for these chains!"

Then the king rose, with the governor and Bernice and those who had sat with them,

and after leaving the room, in talking the matter over together, they said, "This man has not done anything to deserve death or imprisonment."

"He might have been set at liberty," said Agrippa to Festus, "if he had not appealed to the emperor."

"Gentlemen," he said, "I see that this voyage is likely to end in disaster and heavy loss, not only to ship and cargo but to our own lives also."

Then, when they had gone a long time without food, Paul got up among them, and said, "Gentlemen, you ought to have listened to me and not to have sailed from Crete and incurred this disaster and loss.

and said, 'Do not be afraid, Paul! You must stand before the emperor, and see! God has given you the lives of all the people who are on the ship with you.'

but Paul said to the officers and the soldiers, "You cannot be saved unless these men stay on board."

Until daybreak Paul kept urging them all to take something to eat. "For fourteen days," he said, "you have been constantly on the watch, without taking anything to eat.

When the natives saw the creature hanging from his hand, they said to one another, "This man is undoubtedly a murderer, for though he has been saved from the sea, justice will not let him live."

They expected to see him swell up or suddenly fall dead, but after waiting a long time and seeing nothing unusual happen to him, they changed their minds and said that he was a god.

Three days later, he invited the leading Jews to come to see him, and when they came he said to them, "Brothers, I have done nothing against our people, or the customs of our forefathers, yet I was turned over to the Romans as a prisoner at Jerusalem.

"We have had no letters about you from Judea," they answered, "and none of the brothers who have come here has reported or said anything against you.

Some of them were convinced by what he said, but others would not believe.

As they could not agree among themselves, they started to leave, when Paul added one last word. "The holy Spirit put it finely," he said, "when it said to your forefathers through the prophet Isaiah,

Paul, a slave of Jesus Christ, called as an apostle, set apart to declare God's good news,

Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, if you pose as a judge, for when you pass judgment on someone else, you are condemning yourself, for you, who sit in judgment, do the very same things yourself.

And do you suppose, when you sit in judgment upon those who do such things and yet do them yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God?

For merely hearing the Law read does not make a man upright in the sight of God; men must obey the Law to be made upright.

For no human being can be made upright in the sight of God by observing the Law. All that the Law can do is to make man conscious of sin.

as the Scripture says, "I have made you the father of many nations." The promise is guaranteed in the very sight of God in whom he had faith, who can bring the dead to life and call into being what does not exist.

Then what shall we conclude? That the Law is sin? Certainly not! Yet, if it had not been for the Law, I should never have learned what sin was; I should not have known what it was to covet if the Law had not said, "You must not covet."

that creation itself would be set free from its bondage to decay, and have the glorious freedom of the children of God.

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

He said to Moses, "I will have mercy on the man on whom I choose to have mercy, and take pity on the man on whom I choose to take pity."

For in their ignorance of God's way of uprightness and in the attempt to set up one of their own, they refused to conform to God's way of uprightness.

Moses said that anyone who carried out the uprightness the Law prescribed would find life through it.

But I ask again, did Israel fail to understand? Why, to begin with, Moses said, "I will make you jealous of what is no nation at all, I will exasperate you at a senseless nation."

Then Isaiah broke out boldly and said, "I have been found by men who were not looking for me, I have shown myself to men who were not asking what my will was."

But of Israel he said, "All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people."

And David said, "Let their feasting prove a snare and a trap to them, Their ruin and their retribution.

It is the duty of us who are strong to put up with the weaknesses of those who are immature, and not just suit ourselves.

Again Isaiah says, "The descendant of Jesse will come, The one who is to rise to rule the heathen; The heathen will set their hopes on him."

These disclosures we impart, not in the set phrases of human philosophy, but in words the Spirit teaches, giving spiritual truth a spiritual form.

If it was we who sowed the spiritual seed among you, is it too much if we reap material benefits from you?

You must not become idolaters, like some of them, for the Scripture says, "The people sat down to eat and drink and got up to dance."

And let two or three who are inspired to preach speak, while the rest weigh what is said;

So, my brothers, set your hearts on being inspired to preach, and yet do not hinder people from speaking ecstatically.

You foolish man, the very seed you sow never comes to life without dying first;

and God gives it just such a form as he pleases, so that each kind of seed has a form of its own.

and I will probably stay some time with you, or even pass the winter, so that you may start me off for wherever I may be going.

But I shall stay in Ephesus until the Harvest Festival,

So deadly was the peril from which he saved me, as he will save me again! It is on him that I have set my hope that he will save me again.

This is what I said in my letter, so that I might avoid coming and having my feelings hurt by the very people who might have been expected to make me happy, for I felt sure about you all, that what made me happy would make you all happy.

but my mind could not rest because I did not find my brother Titus there. So I said goodbye to them and went on to Macedonia.

I disown disgraceful, underhanded ways. I refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's message. It is by the open statement of the truth that I would commend myself to every human conscience in the sight of God.

For God who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," has shone in my heart, to give me the light of the knowledge of God's glory, that is on the face of Christ.

I am hard pressed on every side, but never cut off: perplexed, but not driven to despair;

In the same spirit of faith as his who said, "I believed, and so I spoke," I too believe, and so I speak,

sure that he who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will raise me also like Jesus, and bring me side by side with you into his presence.

What bargain can a temple of God make with idols? For we are a temple of the living God, just as God said, "I will live in them and move among them, And I will be their God and they will be my people."

I do not mean this as a reflection upon you, for as I said before, you will always have a place in my heart whether I live or die.

So although I did write to you, it was not on account of the offender, nor of the injured man, but in the sight of God to reveal to you your devotion to me.

That is why I am so comforted. With all my own comfort, I was still more overjoyed at the gladness of Titus, for his mind has been set at rest by you all.

If I did express some pride in you to him, I have had no reason to be ashamed of it, but just as all I said to you was true, my boasting before Titus has also proved true.

I intend to do what is right not only in the Lord's sight but in the eyes of men.

He who supplies the sower with seed and so with bread to eat will supply you with seed, and multiply it and enlarge the harvest of your uprightness.

and he said to me, "My favor is enough for you, for only where there is weakness is perfect strength developed." So I am perfectly willing to boast of all my weakness, so that the strength of Christ may shelter me.

Have you been supposing all along that it is before you I have been defending myself? It is in the sight of God and as a follower of Christ that I have been speaking. But it is all to do you good, dear friends,

We have said it before, and I repeat it now??f anyone is preaching to you good news that contradicts the good news you have already received, a curse upon him!

Is that appealing to men's weaknesses, or to God? Is that trying to suit men? If I were still doing that, I would be no slave of Christ.

And when God, who had set me apart from my birth and had called me in his mercy, saw fit

But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the good news, I said to Cephas, right before them all, "If you live like a heathen, and not like a Jew, though you are a Jew yourself, why should you try to make the heathen live like Jews?"

But if a man is caught doing something wrong, brothers, you are spiritual, and you must set him right, in a spirit of gentleness. Think of yourself, for you may be tempted too.

Through him he chose us out before the creation of the world, to be consecrated and above reproach in his sight in love.

And he raised us with Christ, and through our union with Christ Jesus made us sit down with him in heaven,

and yet your needs make it very necessary for me to stay on here.