Examine yourselves to see whether you are still in the Christian faith. Test yourselves! Don’t you recognize that you are people in whom Jesus Christ lives? Could it be that you’re failing the test?
You have probed my heart. You have confronted me at night. You have tested me like silver, but you found nothing wrong. I have determined that my mouth will not sin.
Live in me, and I will live in you. A branch cannot produce any fruit by itself. It has to stay attached to the vine. In the same way, you cannot produce fruit unless you live in me.
I am in them, and you are in me. So they are completely united. In this way the world knows that you have sent me and that you have loved them in the same way you have loved me.
Don’t you realize that your bodies are parts of Christ’s body? Should I take the parts of Christ’s body and make them parts of a prostitute’s body? That’s unthinkable!
Don’t you know that your body is a temple that belongs to the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit, whom you received from God, lives in you. You don’t belong to yourselves.
Can God’s temple contain false gods? Clearly, we are the temple of the living God. As God said, “I will live and walk among them. I will be their God, and they will be my people.”
Then Christ will live in you through faith. I also pray that love may be the ground into which you sink your roots and on which you have your foundation.
This is on the condition that you continue in faith without being moved from the solid foundation of the hope that the Good News contains. You’ve heard this Good News of which I, Paul, became a servant. It has been spread throughout all creation under heaven.
He doesn’t hold on to ⌞Christ,⌟ the head. Christ makes the whole body grow as God wants it to, through support and unity given by the joints and ligaments.
You unfaithful people! Don’t you know that love for this ⌞evil⌟ world is hatred toward God? Whoever wants to be a friend of this world is an enemy of God.
Remember how far you have fallen. Return to me and change the way you think and act, and do what you did at first. I will come to you and take your lamp stand from its place if you don’t change.