For we are God's handiwork, created, by our union with Christ Jesus, for the good actions in doing which God had pre-arranged that we should spend our lives.
Then you will live lives worthy of the Master, and so please God in every way. Your lives will be fruitful in every kind of good action, and your characters will grow through a fuller knowledge of God;
Put all this before the Brethren, and you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, sustained by the precepts of the Faith and of that Good Teaching by which you have guided your life.
and be well spoken of for her kind actions. She should have brought up children, have shown hospitality to strangers, have washed the feet of her fellow Christians, have relieved those who were in distress, and devoted herself to every kind of good action.
If, then, a man has escaped from the pollution of such errors as I have mentioned, he will be like a thing kept for better use, set apart, serviceable to its owner, ready for any good purpose.
They profess to know God, but by their actions they disown him. They are degraded and self-willed; and, as far as anything good is concerned, they are utterly worthless.
For he gave himself on our behalf, to deliver us from all wickedness, and to purify for himself a People who should be peculiarly his own and eager to do good.
How true that saying is! And it is on these subjects that I desire you to lay especial stress, so that those who have learned to trust in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing good. Such subjects are excellent in themselves, and of real use to mankind.
may God make you perfect in everything that is good, so that you may be able to do his will. May he bring out in us all that is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be all glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Now I want to remind you--but you already know it all--that, though the Lord delivered the People from Egypt, yet he afterwards destroyed those who refused to believe in him;