Untitled Sermon (2)
7:14 For we know that the law is spiritual—but I am unspiritual, [sold] into slavery to sin. 7:15 For I don’t understand what I am doing. For I do not do what I want—instead, I do what I hate. 7:16 But if I do what I don’t want, I agree that the law is good. 7:17 But now it is no longer me doing it, but sin that [lives] in me. 7:18 For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh. For I want to do the good, but I cannot do it. 7:19 For I do not do the good I want, but I do the very evil I do not want! 7:20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer me doing it but sin that [lives] in me.
7:21 So, I find the law that when I [want] to do good, evil is present with me. 7:22 For I delight in the law of God in my inner being. 7:23 But I see a different law in my members [waging] war against the law of my mind and [making] me captive to the law of sin that [is] in my members. 7:24 Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 7:25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
8:31 What then shall we say about these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 8:32 Indeed, he who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, freely give us all things? 8:33 Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who [justifies]. 8:34 Who is the one who will [condemn]? Christ is the one who [died] (and more than that, he was [raised]), who is at the right hand of God, and who also is interceding for us. 8:35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will trouble, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 8:36 As it is written, “For your sake we encounter death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” 8:37 No, in all these things we have complete victory through him who [loved] us! 8:38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor heavenly rulers, nor things that are [present], nor things to [come], nor powers, 8:39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
13:1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but I do not have love, I am a [noisy] gong or a [clanging] cymbal. 13:2 And if I have prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so that I can remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 13:3 If I give away everything I [own], and if I give over my body in order to boast, but do not have love, I receive no benefit.
13:4 Love is patient, love is kind, it is not envious. Love does not brag, it is not puffed up. 13:5 It is not rude, it is not self-serving, it is not easily angered or resentful. 13:6 It is not glad about injustice, but rejoices in the truth. 13:7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
13:8 Love never ends. But if there are prophecies, they will be set aside; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be set aside. 13:9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part, 13:10 but when what is perfect comes, the partial will be set aside. 13:11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. But when I became an adult, I set aside childish ways. 13:12 For now we see in a mirror indirectly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, just as I have been fully known. 13:13 And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.
3:19 And by this we will know that we are of the truth and will convince our conscience in his presence, 3:20 that if our conscience condemns us, that God is greater than our conscience and knows all things. 3:21 Dear friends, if our conscience does not condemn us, we have confidence in the presence of God, 3:22 and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do the things that are pleasing to him.
This is the conquering power that has [conquered] the world: our faith.
5:13 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.
4:1 Now the Spirit explicitly says that in the later times some will desert the faith and [occupy] themselves with deceiving spirits and demonic teachings, 4:2 influenced by the hypocrisy of liars whose consciences are [seared]. 4:3 They will [prohibit] marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and [know] the truth. 4:4 For every creation of God is good and no food is to be rejected if it is [received] with thanksgiving. 4:5 For it is sanctified by God’s word and by prayer.
4:6 By [pointing] out such things to the brothers and sisters, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, having [nourished] yourself on the words of the faith and of the good teaching that you have followed.