“Whoever listens to you listens to me; whoever does not accept you does not accept me. But whoever does not accept me does not accept the one who sent me.”
If anyone leaves the teaching of Christ behind and doesn’t remain in it, that person doesn’t have God. But whoever remains in the teaching about Christ has both the Father and the Son.
“My Father has given everything to me. No one knows the Son except the Father. No one knows the Father except the Son—and anyone the Son chooses to show the Father to.
If the Spirit of God truly does live in you, you’re not ruled by your desires—you’re ruled by the Spirit. Anyone who doesn’t have the Spirit of Christ doesn’t belong to Christ.
But you’ve been set free from sin, and you’ve become slaves of God. You’re gaining a great benefit from that: You’re living in the right way, and the end result will be eternal life.
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;
That’s why I’m suffering the way I am. But I’m not ashamed, because I know the one I’ve believed in and I’m certain that he’s able to protect what I’ve given him. I can trust him with it until the day he returns.
God was bringing the world back to himself through Christ and not holding people’s sins against them. God has trusted us with this message about how people can be brought back to him.
In fact, we felt as if we’d actually been sentenced of death. But that happened so that we wouldn’t depend on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead to life.
From Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ. To you who have received a faith as precious as ours and who have been made right with our God and Savior Jesus Christ.