No one takes my life from me. I give my life of my own free will. I have the authority to give my life, and I have the authority to take my life back again. This is what my Father ordered me to do.”
Whoever knows and obeys my commandments is the person who loves me. Those who love me will have my Father’s love, and I, too, will love them and show myself to them.”
However, I want the world to know that I love the Father and that I am doing exactly what the Father has commanded me to do. Get up! We have to leave.”
Yet, you haven’t known him. However, I know him. If I would say that I didn’t know him, I would be a liar like all of you. But I do know him, and I do what he says.
Now then, brothers and sisters, because of the Lord Jesus we ask and encourage you to excel in living a God-pleasing life even more than you already do. Do this the way we taught you.
We need a chief priest who is holy, innocent, pure, set apart from sinners, and who holds the honored position—the one next to God the Father on the heavenly throne.
It would have been better for them never to have known the way of life that God approves of than to know it and turn their backs on the holy life God told them to live.