Stones for the Father’s Temple

I have learned that some people came through from somewhere else carrying a wicked teaching. You did not let them sow it among you. You stopped your ears so that you would not take in what they were sowing — since you are stones of the Father’s temple, made ready for the building God the Father is raising, hoisted up to the heights by the crane of Jesus Christ, which is the cross, with the Holy Spirit for a rope. Your faith is the winch that draws you up, and love is the road that carries you up to God. [a]

So you are all fellow travelers: God-bearers and temple-bearers, Christ-bearers, bearers of what is holy, adorned in every way with the commands of Jesus Christ. I am delighted with you, and I have been counted worthy, by this letter I am writing, to talk with you and to share your gladness — because in the life you live among people you love nothing except God alone.

And pray without stopping for everyone else as well. There is hope of repentance in them; they may yet reach God. So let them become your students — if by no other way, then by what they watch you do. Against their anger, be mild. Against their big talk, be humble. Against their abuse, your prayers. Against their error, stand firm in the faith. Against their savagery, be gentle. Do not be eager to imitate them in return. [e]

Let us be found to be their brothers by treating them considerately. Let us be eager to imitate the Lord: which of us can be wronged more, which of us cheated more, which of us pushed aside more? Then no weed of the devil will be found among you, and you will stay in Jesus Christ in complete purity and self-restraint, in flesh and in spirit.

These are the last times. From here on, let us be ashamed of ourselves. Let us be afraid of God’s patience, in case it turns into a judgment against us. Either we fear the anger that is coming or we love the grace that is here now — one of the two. Only let us be found in Christ Jesus, and so in the life that is real. Apart from him, let nothing seem right to you. It is in him that I carry these chains around with me, my spiritual pearls. May I rise again in them, through your prayer; and may I always have a share in that prayer, so that I may be found in the same lot as the Christians of Ephesus, who have always been of one mind with the apostles by the power of Jesus Christ. [h]

I know who I am and whom I am writing to. I am a condemned man; you have been shown mercy. I am in danger; you have been made secure. You are the road traveled by men who are being killed on their way to God. You are fellow initiates with Paul — Paul who was made holy, who bore his witness, who is worth calling happy. When I reach God, may I be found in his footsteps. In every letter he remembers you in Christ Jesus. [j]

So make a point of coming together more often, for thanksgiving to God and for his glory. When you meet often in the same place, Satan’s forces are pulled down and the ruin he works is undone by the harmony of your faith. Nothing is better than peace: in peace every war is brought to an end, in heaven and on earth. [l]

None of this is hidden from you, if your faith and your love toward Jesus Christ are complete. They are the beginning and the end of life: the beginning is faith, the end is love. And the two, brought together into one, are God; everything else that makes a person good and honorable follows after them. No one who professes faith sins, and no one who has love hates. A tree shows itself by its fruit. In the same way, those who profess to belong to Christ will be seen by what they do. For the work is not a matter of professing something now, but of being found at the end in the power of faith. [n]

It is better to keep quiet and be something than to talk and be nothing. It is good to teach, if the one who speaks also acts. There is one Teacher, then: he spoke, and it happened — and the things he did in silence are worthy of the Father. Whoever really has the word of Jesus can hear his silence too, and so become complete: acting by what he says, and known by what he does not say. Nothing escapes the Lord; even our secrets are close to him. So let us do everything as people who have him living in us, so that we may be his temples and he may be our God within us — as in fact he is, and as he will show himself before our faces. That is why we rightly love him. [p]

Do not be fooled, my brothers. Men who wreck other people’s households will not inherit God’s kingdom. If those who do such things in the flesh have died, how much worse for a man who ruins by wicked teaching the faith of God, the faith for which Jesus Christ was crucified. A man like that, filthy as he has made himself, will go off into the fire that is never put out — and so will everyone who listens to him. [r]

This is why the Lord took perfumed ointment on his head: so that he might breathe immortality onto the church. Do not be anointed with the stench of the teaching of the ruler of this age; do not let him carry you off from the life set in front of you. And why are we not all sensible? We have received the knowledge of God, which is Jesus Christ. Why do we throw ourselves away like fools, taking no notice of the gift the Lord really has sent? [t]

My spirit is the scrapings swept up for the cross — the cross that is a stumbling block to those who do not believe, but to us is salvation and life that lasts forever. Where is the wise man? Where is the debater? Where is the boasting of the men who are called intelligent? For our God, Jesus the Christ, was carried in Mary’s womb according to God’s plan: from the seed of David, but by the Holy Spirit. He was born, and he was baptized, so that by his suffering he might make the water clean. [u]