If belonging to Christ helps you, if his love comforts you, if you share anything in common because of the Holy Spirit, if Christ has been gentle and loving toward you,
My goal is that they will all be encouraged in their hearts and joined together in love. Then their understanding will be rich and complete, and they will know the mystery of God, which is Christ.
We were all baptized by one Spirit into one body. It didn’t matter whether we were Jews or Gentiles, slaves or free people. We were all given the same Spirit to drink.
The one who obeys God’s commands lives in him, and he lives in them. Here’s how we know that God lives in us: We know it by the Holy Spirit he gave us.
We’re the ones who have truly been circumcised: We serve God by his Spirit, we boast in Christ Jesus, and we don’t put our trust in who we are or what we can do—although I myself could do that for many reasons.
In the same way, the Holy Spirit helps us when we are weak. We don’t know what we should pray for, but the Spirit himself prays for us with groans that are too deep for words.
God the Father knew you ahead of time, and he chose to make you pure and holy through the Spirit’s work. Then you would obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with his blood to make you holy. May more and more grace and peace be given to you.
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.
But thanks be to God, who always leads us as if we were prisoners in Christ’s victory parade. He uses us to spread the knowledge of Christ everywhere like perfume.
Peace I leave with you; I give my peace to you. I don’t give to you the way the world does. So don’t let your hearts be distressed, and don’t be afraid.