But in giving you this order, there is one thing about which I am not pleased: it is that when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse.
What? have you not houses to take your meals in? or have you no respect for the church of God, putting the poor to shame? What am I to say to you? am I to give you praise? certainly not.
By which you have salvation; that is to say, the form in which it was given to you, if it is fixed in your minds, and if your faith in it is not without effect.
For this cause I have sent Timothy to you, who is my dear and true child in the Lord; he will make clear to you my ways in Christ, even as I am teaching everywhere in every church.
But now that Timothy has come to us from you, and has given us good news of your faith and love, and that you have happy memories of us, desiring greatly to see us, even as we do to see you;
Now we give you orders, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to keep away from all those whose behaviour is not well ordered and in harmony with the teaching which they had from us.