I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you spiritual wisdom and revelation in your growing knowledge of him,

and thus to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

For we are the circumcision, the ones who worship by the Spirit of God, exult in Christ Jesus, and do not rely on human credentials

to the saints, the faithful brothers and sisters in Christ, at Colossae. Grace and peace to you from God our Father!

For every high priest is taken from among the people and appointed to represent them before God, to offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins.

Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and make your hearts pure, you double-minded.

They have testified to your love before the church. You will do well to send them on their way in a manner worthy of God.

so that I may make you solemnly promise by the Lord, the God of heaven and the God of the earth: You must not acquire a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I am living.

And you see and hear that this Paul has persuaded and turned away a large crowd, not only in Ephesus but in practically all of the province of Asia, by saying that gods made by hands are not gods at all.

But as for you who abandon the Lord and forget about worshiping at my holy mountain, who prepare a feast for the god called ‘Fortune,’ and fill up wine jugs for the god called ‘Destiny’ –

But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me, because you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but on man’s.”

Although they fully know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but also approve of those who practice them.

even before they were born or had done anything good or bad (so that God’s purpose in election would stand, not by works but by his calling) –

For though you should in fact be teachers by this time, you need someone to teach you the beginning elements of God’s utterances. You have gone back to needing milk, not solid food.

The following is the message which God revealed to Habakkuk the prophet:

I answered, “Oh, Lord God, I really do not know how to speak well enough for that, for I am too young.”

and I always ask in my prayers, if perhaps now at last I may succeed in visiting you according to the will of God.

For if by my lie the truth of God enhances his glory, why am I still actually being judged as a sinner?

The king ruined the high places east of Jerusalem, south of the Mount of Destruction, that King Solomon of Israel had built for the detestable Sidonian goddess Astarte, the detestable Moabite god Chemosh, and the horrible Ammonite god Milcom.

What I am commanding you today is to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to obey his commandments, his statutes, and his ordinances. Then you will live and become numerous and the Lord your God will bless you in the land which you are about to possess.