For God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you demonstrated for his name by serving the saints #– #and by continuing to serve them.
Therefore I considered it necessary to urge the brothers to go on ahead to you and arrange in advance the generous gift you promised, so that it will be ready as a gift and not as an extortion.
You did not choose me, but I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce fruit and that your fruit should remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give you.
‘I wish one of you would shut the temple doors, so that you would no longer kindle a useless fire on my altar! I am not pleased with you,’ says the Lord of Armies, ‘and I will accept no offering from your hands.
How sad for me! For I am like one who – when the summer fruit has been gathered after the gleaning of the grape harvest – finds no grape cluster to eat, no early fig, which I crave.
For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and by craving it, some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.