Obey your leaders and submit to them, since they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account, so that they can do this with joy and not with grief, for that would be unprofitable for you.
Yes, they were pleased, and indeed are indebted to them. For if the Gentiles have shared in their spiritual benefits, then they are bound to minister to them in material needs.
Yes, I also ask you, true partner, to help these women who have contended for the gospel at my side, along with Clement and the rest of my co-workers whose names are in the book of life.
When they had crossed over, Elijah said to Elisha, ‘Tell me what I can do for you before I am taken from you.’ So Elisha answered, ‘Please, let me inherit two shares of your spirit.’
For this reason we labour and strive, because we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Saviour of all people, especially of those who believe.
But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace towards me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.
In every way I’ve shown you that it is necessary to help the weak by labouring like this and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, because he said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” ’
The Lord said, ‘Who then is the faithful and sensible manager his master will put in charge of his household servants to give them their allotted food at the proper time?
Let my persecutors be put to shame, but don’t let me be put to shame. Let them be terrified, but don’t let me be terrified. Bring on them the day of disaster; shatter them with total destruction.
I will first repay them double for their iniquity and sin because they have polluted my land. They have filled my inheritance with the carcasses of their abhorrent and detestable idols.’
‘Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and announce to her that her time of hard service is over, her iniquity has been pardoned, and she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.’
If you point these things out to the brothers and sisters, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, nourished by the words of the faith and the good teaching that you have followed.