through which also you are obtaining salvation, if you bear in mind the words in which I proclaimed it–unless indeed your faith has been unreal from the very first.
Those on the rock are the people who on hearing the Message receive it joyfully; but they have no root: for a time they believe, but when trial comes they fall away.
Simon himself also believed, and after being baptized remained in close attendance on Philip, and was full of amazement at seeing such signs and such great miracles performed.
For I am not ashamed of the Good News. It is God's power which is at work for the salvation of every one who believes–the Jew first, and then the Gentile.
Notice therefore God's kindness and God's severity. On those who have fallen His severity has descended, but upon you His kindness has come, provided that you do not cease to respond to that kindness. Otherwise you will be cut off also.
For after the world by its wisdom –as God in His wisdom had ordained– had failed to gain the knowledge of God, God was pleased, by the apparent foolishness of the Message which we preach, to save those who accepted it.
if, indeed, you are still firmly holding to faith as your foundation, without ever shifting from your hope that rests on the Good News that you have heard, which has been proclaimed in the whole creation under Heaven, and in which I Paul have been appointed to serve.
For He saved us and called us with a holy call, not in accordance with our desserts, but in accordance with His own purpose and the free grace which He bestowed on us in Christ Jesus before the commencement of the Ages,
but Christ was faithful as a Son having authority over God's house, and we are that house, if we hold firm to the End the boldness and the hope which we boast of as ours.
Inasmuch, then, as we have in Jesus, the Son of God, a great High Priest who has passed into Heaven itself, let us hold firmly to our profession of faith.