It was by faith that Rahab the harlot did not perish along with those who were disobedient, as she had welcomed the scouts peaceably.

(men of whom the world was not worthy), wanderers in the desert and among the hills, in caves and gullies.

They all won their record for faith, but the Promise they did not obtain.

God had something better in store for us; he would not have them perfected apart from us.

You have not had to shed blood yet in the struggle against sin.

It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons; for where is the son who is not disciplined by his father?

Discipline is the portion of all; if you get no discipline, then you are not sons but bastards.

Why, we had fathers of our flesh to discipline us, and we yielded to them! Shall we not far more submit to the Father of our spirits, and so live?

Discipline always seems for the time to be a thing of pain, not of joy; but those who are trained by it reap the fruit of it afterwards in the peace of an upright life.

And make straight paths for your feet to walk in. You must not let the lame get dislocated, but rather make them whole.

You have not come to what you can touch, to flames of fire, to mist and gloom and stormy blasts,

(for they could not bear the command, If even a beast touches the mountain, it must be stoned) ??21 indeed, so awful was the sight that Moses said, I am terrified and aghast.

See that you do not refuse to listen to His voice. For if they failed to escape, who refused to listen to their instructor upon earth, much less shall we escape, if we discard Him who speaks from heaven.

So that we can say confidently, The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid. What can men do to me?

Never let yourselves be carried away with a variety of novel doctrines; for the right thing is to have one's heart strengthened by grace, not by the eating of food ??that has never been any use to those who have had recourse to it.

Do not forget beneficence and charity, either; these are the kind of sacrifices that are acceptable to God.

Obey your leaders, submit to them; for they are alive to the interests of your souls, as men who will have to account for their trust. Let their work be a joy to them and not a grief ??which would be a loss to yourselves.

that man need not imagine he will get anything from God,

Be sure of that, my beloved brothers. Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to talk, slow to be angry ??20 for human anger does not promote divine righteousness;

Whoever considers he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue, but deceives his own heart, his religion is futile.

are you not drawing distinctions in your own minds and proving that you judge people with partiality?

Listen, my beloved brothers; has not God chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and to inherit the realm which he has promised to those who love him?

Now you insult the poor. Is it not the rich who lord it over you and drag you to court?

Is it not they who scoff at the noble Name you bear?

He who said, Do not commit adultery, also said, Do not kill. Now if you do not commit adultery but if you kill, you have transgressed the Law.

When our father Abraham offered his son Isaac on the altar, was he not justified by what he did?

You observe it is by what he does that a man is justified, not simply by what he believes.

So too with Rahab the harlot. Was she not justified by what she did, when she entertained the scouts and got them away by a different road?

My brothers, do not swell the ranks of the teachers; remember, we teachers will be judged with special strictness.

blessing and cursing stream from the same lips! My brothers, this ought not to be.

But if you are cherishing bitter jealousy and rivalry in your hearts, do not pride yourselves on that ??and be false to the truth.

That is not the wisdom which comes down from above, it is an earthly wisdom, sensuous, devilish;

Where do conflicts, where do wrangles come from, in your midst? Is it not from these passions of yours that war among your members?

You crave, and miss what you want: you envy and covet, but you cannot acquire: you wrangle and fight ??you miss what you want because you do not ask God for it;

you do ask and you do not get it, because you ask with the wicked intention of spending it on your pleasures.

(Wanton creatures! do you not know that the world's friendship means enmity to God? Whoever, then, chooses to be the world's friend, turns enemy to God.

follow 2:13] Do not defame one another, brothers; he who defames or judges his brother defames and judges the Law; and if you judge the Law, you pass sentence on it instead of obeying it.

[follows 2:26] Whoever, then, knows what is right to do and does not do it, that is a sin for him.

Do not murmur against one another, brothers, lest you are judged; look, the Judge is standing at the very door!

Elijah was a man with a nature just like our own; but he offered prayer that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain;

You will rejoice then, though for the passing moment you may need to suffer various trials;

You never knew him, but you love him; for the moment you do not see him, but you believe in him, and you will thrill with an unspeakable and glorious joy

to them it was revealed that they got this intelligence not for themselves but for you, regarding all that has now been disclosed to you by those who preached the gospel to you through the holy Spirit sent from heaven. The very angels long to get a glimpse of this!

you know it was not by perishable silver or gold that you were ransomed from the futile traditions of your past,

You are born anew of immortal, not of mortal seed, by the living, lasting word of God;

Live like free men, only do not make your freedom a pretext for misconduct; live like servants of God.

Servants, be submissive to your masters with perfect respect, not simply to those who are kind and reasonable but to the surly as well ??19 for it is a merit when from a sense of God one bears the pain of unjust suffering.

In the same way, you wives must be submissive to your husbands, so that even those who will not believe the Word may be won over without a word by the behaviour of their wives,

You are not to adorn yourselves on the outside with braids of hair and ornaments of gold and changes of dress,

In the same way you husbands must be considerate in living with your wives, since they are the weaker sex; you must honour them as heirs equally with yourselves of the grace of Life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.

Even supposing you have to suffer for the sake of what is right, still you are blessed. Have no fear of their threats, do not let that trouble you,

Baptism, the counterpart of that, saves you to-day (not the mere washing of dirt from the flesh but the prayer for a clean conscience before God) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ

and it astonishes them that you will not plunge with them still into the same flood of profligacy. They abuse you,

Be hospitable to each other, and do not grudge it.

Beloved, do not be surprised at the ordeal that has come to test you, as though some foreign experience befell you.

but if a man suffers for being a Christian, he must not be ashamed, he must rather glorify God for that.

be shepherds to your flock of God; take charge of them willingly instead of being pressed to it, not to make a base profit from it but freely,

not by way of lording it over your charges but proving a pattern to the flock.

whereas he who has not these by him is blind, shortsighted, oblivious that he has been cleansed from his erstwhile sins.

For if God did not spare angels who had sinned, but committing them to pits of the nether gloom in Tartarus, reserved them under punishment for doom:

if he did not spare the ancient world but kept Noah, the herald of righteousness, safe with seven others, when he let loose the deluge on the world of impious men:

particularly those who fall in with the polluting appetite of the flesh and despise the Powers celestial. Daring, presumptuous creatures! they are not afraid to scoff at the angelic Glories;

Beloved, you must not ignore this one fact, that with the Lord a single day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a single day.

The Lord is not slow with what he promises, according to certain people's idea of slowness; no, he is longsuffering for your sake, he does not wish any to perish but all to betake them to repentance.

Now, beloved, you are forewarned: mind you are not carried away by the error of the lawless and so lose your proper footing;

If we say, 'We have fellowship with him,' when we live and move in darkness, then we are lying, we are not practising the truth;

If we say, 'We are not guilty,' we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us;

if we say, "We have not sinned," we make him a liar and his word is not within us.

My dear children, I am writing this to you that you may not sin; but if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father in Jesus Christ the just;

he is himself the propitiation for our sins, though not for ours alone but also for the whole world.

He who says, 'I know him,' but does not obey his commands, is a liar and the truth is not in him;

Beloved, I am not writing you any new command, but an old command which you have had from the very beginning: the old command is the word you have heard.

but he who hates his brother is in darkness, he walks in darkness and does not know where he is going, for the darkness has blinded his eyes.

Love not the world, nor yet what is in the world; if anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him.

For all that is in the world, the desire of the flesh and the desire of the eyes and the proud glory of life, belongs not to the Father but to the world;

They withdrew from us, but they did not belong to us; had they belonged to us, they would have remained with us, but they withdrew to make it plain that they are none of us.

I am not writing to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it, and know that no lie has any connexion with the truth.

but the unction you received from him remains within you, and you really need no teaching from anyone; simply remain in him, for his unction teaches you about everything and is true and is no lie ??remain in him, as it has taught you to do.

'Born of him!' Think what a love the Father has for us, in letting us be called 'children of God!' That is what we are. The world does not recognize us? That is simply because it did not recognize him.

We are children of God now, beloved; what we are to be is not apparent yet, but we do know that when he appears, we are to be like him ??for we are to see him as he is.

anyone who remains in him does not sin ??anyone who sins has neither seen nor known him.

Anyone who is born of God does not commit sin, for the offspring of God remain in Him, and they cannot sin, because they are born of God.

Here is how the children of God and the children of the devil are recognized; anyone who does not practise righteousness does not belong to God, and neither does he who has no love for his brother.

we are not to be like Cain, who belonged to the evil One and slew his brother. And why did he slay him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's just.

Do not wonder, brothers, that the world hates you.

But whoever possesses this world's goods, and notices his brother in need, and shuts his heart against him, how can love to God remain in him?

My dear children, let us put our love not into words or into talk but into deeds, and make it real.

If our heart does not condemn us, beloved, then we have confidence in approaching God,

Do not believe every spirit, beloved, but test the spirits to see if they come from God; for many false prophets have emerged in the world.

and every spirit which does not confess Jesus [incarnate] does not come from God. This latter is the spirit of antichrist; you were told it was coming, and here it is already in the world.

we belong to God ??he who knows God listens to us, he who does not belong to God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

he who does not love, does not know God, for God is love.

Love lies in this, not in our love for him but in his love for us ??in the sending of his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Love has no dread in it; no, love in its fulness drives all dread away, for dread has to do with punishment ??anyone who has dread, has not reached the fulness of love.

If anyone declares, 'I love God,' and yet hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who will not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot possibly love the God whom he has never seen.

(for love to God means keeping his commands). And his commands are not irksome,

Jesus Christ, he it is who came by water, blood, and Spirit ??not by the water alone, but by the water and the blood.

He who believes in the Son of God possesses that testimony within himself; he who will not believe God, has made God a liar by refusing to believe the testimony which God has borne to his Son.

He who possesses the Son possesses life: he who does not possess the Son does not possess life.

If anyone notices his brother committing a sin which is not deadly, he will ask and obtain life for him ??for anyone who does not commit a deadly sin. There is such a thing as deadly sin; I do not mean he is to pray for that.