in case I am detained, to let you see how people ought to behave within the household of God; it is the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the Truth.
come and, like living stones yourselves, be built into a spiritual house, to form a consecrated priesthood for the offering of those spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
and when they recognized the grace I had been given, then the so-called 'pillars' of the church, James and Cephas and John, gave myself and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship. Our sphere was to be the Gentiles, theirs the circumcised.
And I saw another angel rise up from the east, with the seal of the living God; he shouted aloud to the four angels who were allowed to injure the earth and sea,
who alone has immortality, who dwells in light that none can approach, whom no man has ever seen or can see. To him be honour and eternal dominion: Amen.
And who does not admit how profound is the divine truth of our religion? — it is He who was "manifest in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by the angels, preached among the nations, believed on throughout the world, taken up to glory."
Well, for the office of a bishop a man must be above reproach; he must be only married once, he must be temperate, master of himself, unruffled, hospitable, a skilled teacher,
What compact can there be between God's temple and idols? For we are the temple of the living God — as God has said, I will dwell and move among them, I will be their God and they shall be my people.
shouting, "Men, what is this you are doing? We are but human, with natures like your own! The gospel we are preaching to you is to turn from such futile ways to the living God who made the heaven, the earth, the sea, and all that in them is.
how much more shall the blood of Christ, who in the spirit of the eternal offered himself as an unblemished sacrifice to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve a living God?
you make it obvious that you are a letter of Christ which I have been employed to inscribe, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of the human heart.
"So you are a king?" said Pilate, "you!" "Certainly," said Jesus, "I am a king. This is why I was born, this is why I came into the world, to bear testimony to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice."
But the solid foundation laid by God remains, and this is its inscription: the Lord knows who are his, and 'let everyone who names the name of the Lord give up evil.'
It is time for the Judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the fate of those who refuse obedience to God's gospel?