Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters! Let every person be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works? Can this kind of faith save him?

For we all stumble in many ways. If someone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect individual, able to control the entire body as well.

Think of how we regard as blessed those who have endured. You have heard of Job’s endurance and you have seen the Lord’s purpose, that the Lord is full of compassion and mercy.

Elijah was a human being like us, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain and there was no rain on the land for three years and six months!

For it says in scripture, “Look, I lay in Zion a stone, a chosen and priceless cornerstone, and whoever believes in him will never be put to shame.”

So as your fellow elder and a witness of Christ’s sufferings and as one who shares in the glory that will be revealed, I urge the elders among you:

For if these things are really yours and are continually increasing, they will keep you from becoming ineffective and unproductive in your pursuit of knowing our Lord Jesus Christ more intimately.

But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the honor both now and on that eternal day.

The one who says “I have come to know God” and yet does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in such a person.

Children, it is the last hour, and just as you heard that the antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have appeared. We know from this that it is the last hour.

I have not written to you that you do not know the truth, but that you do know it, and that no lie is of the truth.

And the commandment we have from him is this: that the one who loves God should love his fellow Christian too.

For this is the love of God: that we keep his commandments. And his commandments do not weigh us down,

And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.

I have written these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.

Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us from God the Father and from Jesus Christ the Son of the Father, in truth and love.

Now I desire to remind you (even though you have been fully informed of these facts once for all) that Jesus, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, later destroyed those who did not believe.

and has appointed us as a kingdom, as priests serving his God and Father – to him be the glory and the power for ever and ever! Amen.

Look! I am throwing her onto a bed of violent illness, and those who commit adultery with her into terrible suffering, unless they repent of her deeds.