But we all mirror the glory of the Lord with face unveiled, and so we are being transformed into the same likeness as himself, passing from one glory to another ??for this comes of the Lord the Spirit.

I disown those practices which very shame conceals from view; I do not go about it craftily; I do not falsify the word of God; I state the truth openly and so commend myself to every man's conscience before God.

I know that if this earthly tent of mine is taken down, I get a home from God, made by no human hands, eternal in the heavens.

Come what may, then, I am confident; I know that while I reside in the body I am away from the Lord

and in this confidence I would fain get away from the body and reside with the Lord.

Hence also I am eager to satisfy him, whether in the body or away from it;

O Corinthians, I am keeping nothing back from you; my heart is wide open for you.

Therefore come away from them, separate, saith the Lord, touch not what is unclean; then I will receive you,

As these great promises are ours, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from everything that contaminates either flesh or spirit; let us be fully consecrated by reverence for God].

For I got no relief from the strain of things, even when I reached Macedonia; it was trouble at every turn, wrangling all round me, fears in my own mind.

but I am glad now ??not glad that you were pained but glad that your pain induced you to repent. For you were pained as God meant you to be pained, and so you got no harm from what I did;

I aim at being above reproach not only from God but also from men.

I appeal to you myself by the gentleness and consideration of Christ ??the Paul who is 'humble enough to your face when he is with you, but outspoken enough when he gets away from you.'

I wish you would put up with a little 'folly' from me. Do put up with me,

but I am afraid of your thoughts getting seduced from a single devotion to Christ, just as the serpent beguiled Eve with his cunning.

You put up with it all right, when some interloper preaches a second Jesus (not the Jesus I preached), or when you are treated to a Spirit different from the Spirit you once received, and to a different gospel from what I gave you! Why not put up with me?

I made a levy on other churches, I took pay from them so as to minister to you;

even when I ran short, during my stay with you, I was no encumbrance to anybody, for the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied my wants. Thus I kept myself, as I intend to keep myself, from being a burden to you in any way.

Are they Hebrews? so am I. Israelites? so am I. Descended from Abraham? so am I.

five times have I got forty lashes (all but one) from the Jews,

I have been often on my travels, I have been in danger from rivers and robbers, in danger from Jews and Gentiles, through dangers of town and of desert, through dangers on the sea, through dangers among false brothers ??27 through labour and hardship, through many a sleepless night, through hunger and thirst, starving many a time, cold and ill-clad, and all the rest of it.

but I was lowered in a basket from a loophole in the wall, and so managed to escape his clutches.)

(If I did care to boast of other things, I would be no 'fool,' for I would have a true tale to tell; however, I abstain from that ??I want no one to take me for more than he can see in me or make out from me.)

My wealth of visions might have puffed me up, so I was given a thorn in the flesh, an angel of Satan to rack me and keep me from being puffed up;

PAUL an apostle ??not appointed by men nor commissioned by any man but by Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead, ??2 with all the brothers who are beside me, to the churches of Galatia;

grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ

who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil world ??by the will of our God and Father,

Now even though it were myself or some angel from heaven, whoever preaches a gospel that contradicts the gospel I preached to you, God's curse be on him!

But the God who had set me apart from my very birth called me by his grace,

But I saw they were swerving from the true line of the gospel; so I said to Cephas in presence of them all, "If you live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews, though you are a Jew yourself, why do you oblige the Gentiles to become Jews?" ??15 We may be Jews by birth and not 'Gentile sinners,'

Christ ransomed us from the curse of the Law by becoming accursed for us (for it is written, Cursed is everyone who hangs on a gibbet),

To take an illustration from human life, my brothers. Once a man's will is ratified, no one else annuls it or adds a codicil to it.

These men make much of you ??yes, but for dishonest ends; they want to debar you from us, so that you may make much of them.

Now this is an allegory. The women are two covenants. One comes from mount Sinai, bearing children for servitude; that is Hagar,

You were doing splendidly. Who was it that prevented you from obeying the Truth?

That sort of suasion does not come from Him who called you!

he who sows for his flesh will reap destruction from the flesh, and he who sows for the Spirit will reap life eternal from the Spirit.

grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

which he exerted in raising Christ from the dead and seating him at his right hand in the heavenly sphere,

and enlighten all men upon the new order of that divine secret which God the Creator of all concealed from eternity ??10 intending to let the full sweep of the divine wisdom be disclosed now by the church to the angelic Rulers and Authorities in the heavenly sphere,

from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name and nature,

till we should all attain the unity of the faith and knowledge of God's Son, reaching maturity, reaching the full measure of development which belongs to the fulness of Christ ??14 instead of remaining immature, blown from our course and swayed by every passing wind of doctrine, by the adroitness of men who are dexterous in devising error;

their intelligence is darkened, they are estranged from the life of God by the ignorance which their dulness of heart has produced in them ??19 men who have recklessly abandoned themselves to sensuality, with a lust for the business of impurity in every shape and form.

Thus it is said, 'Wake up, O sleeper, and rise from the dead; so Christ will shine upon you.'

instead of merely working when their eye is on you, like those who court human favour, do God's will from the heart like servants of Christ,

Peace and love with faith be to the brothers from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

for what you have contributed to the gospel from the very first day down to this moment;

Some of them, it is true, are actually preaching Christ from envy and rivalry, others from goodwill;

the latter do it from love to me, knowing that I am set here to defend the gospel,

never acting for private ends or from vanity, but humbly considering each other the better man,

And he was ill, nearly dead with illness. But God had mercy on him, and not only on him but on me, to save me from having one sorrow upon another.

to see if I too can attain the resurrection from the dead.

Copy me, brothers, one and all of you, and notice those who live by the example you get from me.

But we are a colony of heaven, and we wait for the Saviour who comes from heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ,

Practise also what you have learned and received from me, what you heard me say and what you saw me do; then the God of peace will be with you.

My God will supply all your own needs from his wealth in Glory in Christ Jesus.

to the consecrated and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae: grace and peace to you from God our Father.

which has reached you as it spreads over all the world with fruit and increase. Such has been your life from the day you learned to know what God's grace really is.

You got that lesson from our beloved fellow-servant Epaphras, a minister of Christ who is faithful to your interests;

Hence, from the day we heard of it, we have never ceased to pray for you, asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and insight,

rescuing us from the power of the Darkness and transferring us to the realm of his beloved Son!

Also, he is the head of the Body, that is, of the church, in virtue of his primacy as the first to be born from the dead ??that gives him pre-eminence over all.

so as to set you consecrated and unblemished and irreproachable in his presence ??23 that is, if you adhere to the foundations and stability of the faith, instead of moving away from the hope you have learned in the gospel, that gospel which has been preached to every creature under heaven, and of which I Paul was made a minister.

for I am a minister of the church by the divine commission which has been granted me in your interests, to make a full presentation of God's message ??26 of that open secret which, though concealed from ages and generations of old, has now been disclosed to the saints of God.

May their hearts be encouraged! May they learn the meaning of love! May they have all the wealth of conviction that comes from insight! May they learn to know that open secret of God, the Father of Christ,

I say this to prevent you from being deluded by plausible arguments from anybody;

in him you have been circumcised with no material circumcision that cuts flesh from the body, but with Christ's own circumcision,

when you were buried with him in your baptism and thereby raised with him as you believed in the power of the God who raised him from the dead.

when he cut away the angelic Rulers and Powers from us, exposing them to all the world and triumphing over them in the cross.

remember, you will receive from the Lord the inheritance which is your due; serve Christ your Lord and Master,

And when this letter has been read to you, see that it is also read in the church of the Laodiceans; also, see that you read the letter that reaches you from Laodicea.

This salutation is in my own hand, from Paul. 'Remember I am in prison. Grace be with you.'

for the word of the Lord has resounded from you not only through Macedonia and Achaia ??no, your faith in God has reached every place. We never need to speak about it.

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

and to wait for the coming of his Son from heaven ??the Son whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who rescues us from the Wrath to come.

For the appeal we make does not spring from any delusion or from impure motives ??it does not work by cunning;

we never sought honour from men, from you or from anybody else, though as apostles of Christ we had the power of claiming to be men of weight;

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,

for you have started, my brothers, to copy the churches of God in Christ Jesus throughout Judaea; you have suffered from your compatriots just as they have suffered from the Jews,

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!

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,

It is God's will that you should be consecrated, that you abstain from sexual vice,

The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a loud summons, when the archangel calls and the trumpet of God sounds; the dead in Christ will rise first;

and abstaining from whatever kind is evil.

grace and peace to you from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

and repay you who are troubled (as well as us) with rest and relief, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven together with the angels of his power

men who will pay the penalty of being destroyed eternally from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might,

not to let your minds get easily unsettled or excited by any spirit of prophecy or any declaration or any letter purporting to come from me, to the effect that the Day of the Lord is already here.

Well, you can recall now what it is that restrains him from being revealed before his appointed time.

Well then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the rules which you have learned from us orally or by letter.

and that we may be delivered from perverse and evil men ??for the faith is not held by all.

However, the Lord is faithful; he will be sure to strengthen you and protect you from the Evil one.

Brothers, we charge you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to shun any brother who is loafing, instead of following the rule you got from us.

we did not take free meals from anyone; no, toiling hard at our trade, we worked night and day, so as not to be a burden to any of you.

to Timotheus his lawful son in the faith: grace, mercy, peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

Whereas the aim of the Christian discipline is the love that springs from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from a sincere faith.

Now I want the men to offer prayer at any meeting of the church; and let the hands they lift to heaven be holy ??they must be free from anger and dissension.

through plausible sophists who are seared in conscience ??3 men who prohibit marriage and insist on abstinence from foods which God created for believing men, who understand the Truth, to partake of with thanksgiving.

Widows who really need it must be supported from the funds.