How can the temple of the true God get along with idols? We are the temple of the living God, as God has said, “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God and they will be my people.”
You’re also like living stones. As you come to Christ, you’re being built into a house for worship. There you will be holy priests and offer spiritual sacrifices that God will accept because of what Jesus Christ has done.
Don’t you know that together you are a body, which is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you? You have received the Spirit from God. You don’t belong to yourselves;
so that if I have to put off my visit, you’ll know how people should act in God’s family, the church of the living God, which is the pillar and foundation of the truth.
But you must keep your faith steady and firm and not move away from the hope that the good news is offering you. This is the good news that you heard. It has been preached to every creature under heaven and I, Paul, am its servant.
“Write this to the angel of the church in Thyatira: These are the words of the Son of God, whose eyes are like blazing fire and whose feet are like polished bronze.
May our Lord Jesus Christ and God our Father encourage your hearts and make you strong in every good thing that you do and say. God loved us and by his grace he has given us good hope and encouragement that will last forever.
Even though you’ve never seen Jesus, you love him. Though you don’t see him now, you believe in him and you’re filled with a glorious joy that can’t be put into words.
Think about how kind God is! But also think about how strict he is! He was strict with those who stopped following him, but he has been kind to you. So you must continue to live in his kindness. If you don’t, you too will be cut off.
That’s why he swore an oath. Then there were two things that guaranteed God was telling the truth: his promise and his oath. He gave us those two things so that we’d be very encouraged as we run to take hold of the hope that has been set before us.