which has reached you as it spreads over all the world with fruit and increase. Such has been your life from the day you learned to know what God's grace really is.
You have not chosen me, it is I who have chosen you, appointing you to go and bear fruit — fruit that lasts, so that the Father may grant you whatever you ask in my name.
By the hand of Silvanus, a faithful brother (in my opinion), I have written you these few lines of encouragement, to testify that this is what the true grace of God means. Stand in that grace.
that is, if you adhere to the foundations and stability of the faith, instead of moving away from the hope you have learned in the gospel, that gospel which has been preached to every creature under heaven, and of which I Paul was made a minister.
has now been disclosed and made known on the basis of the prophetic scriptures (by command of the eternal God) to all the Gentiles for their obedience to the faith —
Brothers, I would like you to understand that I have often purposed to come to you (though up till now I have been prevented) so as to have some results among you as well as among the rest of the Gentiles.
But the time is coming, it has come already, when the real worshippers will worship the Father in Spirit and in reality; for these are the worshippers that the Father wants.
Now we are bound always to thank God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God has chosen you as the first to be reaped for salvation, by the consecration of your spirit and by faith in the Truth;
We thank God constantly for this too, that when you received the word of the divine message from us, you took it not as a human word but for what it really is, the word of God. It proves effective in you believers,
for our gospel came to you not with mere words but also with power and with the holy Spirit, with ample conviction on our part (you know what we were to you, for your own good),
so that you may lead a life that is worthy of the Lord and give him entire satisfaction. May you be fruitful and increase in the doing of all good, as you thus know God!
by the force of miracles and marvels, by the power of the Spirit of God. Thus from Jerusalem right round to Illyricum, I have been able to complete the preaching of the gospel of Christ —
that their eyes may be opened and that they may turn from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God, to get remission of their sins and an inheritance among those who are consecrated by faith in me.'
Among the listeners there was a woman called Lydia, a dealer in purple who belonged to the town of Thyatira. She reverenced God, and the Lord opened her heart to attend to what Paul said.