“Do not call to mind the former things; pay no attention to the things of old.
Behold, I am about to do something new; even now it is coming. Do you not see it? Indeed, I will make a way in the wilderness and streams in the desert.
‘He will wipe away every tear from their eyes,’ and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the former things have passed away.”
As for you, if you direct your heart and lift up your hands to Him,
if you put away the iniquity in your hand, and allow no injustice to dwell in your tents,
then indeed you will lift up your face without shame; you will stand firm and unafraid.
For you will forget your misery, recalling it only as waters gone by.
Your life will be brighter than noonday; its darkness will be like the morning.
. . .
Repent, then, and turn back, so that your sins may be wiped away,
that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that He may send Jesus, the Christ, who has been appointed for you.
My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you will not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate before the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.
I, yes I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake and remembers your sins no more.
Remind Me, let us argue the matter together. State your case, so that you may be vindicated.
And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to depart into hell.
And as for you, the anointing you received from Him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But just as His true and genuine anointing teaches you about all things, so remain in Him as you have been taught.
When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place.
Suddenly a sound like a mighty rushing wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.
They saw tongues like flames of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them.
And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
“I am the true vine, and My Father is the keeper of the vineyard.
He cuts off every branch in Me that bears no fruit, and every branch that does bear fruit, He prunes to make it even more fruitful.
You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.
Remain in Me, and I will remain in you. Just as no branch can bear fruit by itself unless it remains in the vine, neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in Me.
I am the vine and you are the branches. The one who remains in Me, and I in him, will bear much fruit. For apart from Me you can do nothing.
. . .
Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,
I press on toward the goal to win the prize of God’s heavenly calling in Christ Jesus.
and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.
Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,
I press on toward the goal to win the prize of God’s heavenly calling in Christ Jesus.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off every encumbrance and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with endurance the race set out for us.
Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know how we ought to pray, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans too deep for words.
Behold, I am about to do something new; even now it is coming. Do you not see it? Indeed, I will make a way in the wilderness and streams in the desert.
Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.
It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant they broke, though I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD.
“But this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD. I will put My law in their minds and inscribe it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they will be My people.
No longer will each man teach his neighbor or his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquities and will remember their sins no more.”
For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that everyone who believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.
For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.
and said, “Fill four waterpots and pour the water on the offering and on the wood.” “Do it a second time,” he said, and they did it a second time. “Do it a third time,” he said, and they did it a third time.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off every encumbrance and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with endurance the race set out for us.
remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.
Then I acknowledged my sin to You and did not hide my iniquity. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,” and You forgave the guilt of my sin. Selah
and if My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land.
I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.
Let the wicked man forsake his own way and the unrighteous man his own thoughts; let him return to the LORD, that He may have compassion, and to our God, for He will freely pardon.
Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.
And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Now for the matters you wrote about: It is good to abstain from sexual relations.
But because there is so much sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband.
The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband.
The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife.
Do not deprive each other, except by mutual consent and for a time, so you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again, so that Satan will not tempt you through your lack of self-control.
. . .
Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world; if it were, My servants would fight to prevent My arrest by the Jews. But now My kingdom is not of this realm.”
If your brother sins against you, go and confront him privately. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over.
But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’
If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, regard him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no stately form or majesty to attract us, no beauty that we should desire Him.
He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. Like one from whom men hide their faces, He was despised, and we esteemed Him not.
Surely He took on our infirmities and carried our sorrows; yet we considered Him stricken by God, struck down and afflicted.
But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.
. . .
Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.
We all stumble in many ways. If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to control his whole body.
Once again Jesus began to teach beside the sea, and such a large crowd gathered around Him that He got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people crowded along the shore.
And He taught them many things in parables, and in His teaching He said,
Of David. To You, O LORD, I lift up my soul;
in You, my God, I trust. Do not let me be put to shame; do not let my enemies exult over me.
Surely none who wait for You will be put to shame; but those who are faithless without cause will be disgraced.
Show me Your ways, O LORD; teach me Your paths.
Guide me in Your truth and teach me, for You are the God of my salvation; all day long I wait for You.
. . .
For the choirmaster. A Psalm of David. When Nathan the prophet came to him after his adultery with Bathsheba. Have mercy on me, O God, according to Your loving devotion; according to Your great compassion, blot out my transgressions.
Wash me clean of my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.
For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.
Against You, You only, have I sinned and done what is evil in Your sight, so that You may be proved right when You speak and blameless when You judge.
Surely I was brought forth in iniquity; I was sinful when my mother conceived me.
. . .
Did that which is good, then, become death to me? Certainly not! But in order that sin might be exposed as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.
No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, He will also provide an escape, so that you can stand up under it.
Now about virgins, I have no command from the Lord, but I give a judgment as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy.
Because of the present crisis, I think it is good for a man to remain as he is.
Are you committed to a wife? Do not seek to be released. Are you free of commitment? Do not look for a wife.
But if you do marry, you have not sinned. And if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. But those who marry will face troubles in this life, and I want to spare you this.
What I am saying, brothers, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they had none;
. . .
So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking.
They are darkened in their understanding and alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of their hearts.
Having lost all sense of shame, they have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity, with a craving for more.
But this is not the way you came to know Christ.
Surely you heard of Him and were taught in Him—in keeping with the truth that is in Jesus—
. . .
And this day will be a memorial for you, and you are to celebrate it as a feast to the LORD, as a permanent statute for the generations to come.
For seven days you must eat unleavened bread. On the first day you are to remove the leaven from your houses. Whoever eats anything leavened from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel.
On the first day you are to hold a sacred assembly, and another on the seventh day. You must not do any work on those days, except to prepare the meals—that is all you may do.
So you are to keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this very day I brought your divisions out of the land of Egypt. You must keep this day as a permanent statute for the generations to come.
In the first month you are to eat unleavened bread, from the evening of the fourteenth day until the evening of the twenty-first day.
. . .
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary; His understanding is beyond searching out.
Truly, truly, I tell you, whoever hears My word and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life and will not come under judgment. Indeed, he has crossed over from death to life.
So he got up and went to his father. But while he was still in the distance, his father saw him and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him.
Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may walk in newness of life.
For the choirmaster. A Psalm of David. When Nathan the prophet came to him after his adultery with Bathsheba. Have mercy on me, O God, according to Your loving devotion; according to Your great compassion, blot out my transgressions.
Wash me clean of my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.
For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.
Against You, You only, have I sinned and done what is evil in Your sight, so that You may be proved right when You speak and blameless when You judge.
Surely I was brought forth in iniquity; I was sinful when my mother conceived me.
. . .