A Call to Endurance
(2 Timothy 2:1–13)

1Wherefore we also having such a cloud of witnesses lying round about us, having laid down every weight, and sin easily captivating, by patience we should run the race set before us, 2Looking in the distance to Jesus the author and completer of the faith; who for the joy laid before him endured the cross, having despised the shame, and sat down on the right hand of the throne of God.

3For reckon over him having endured such contradiction of the sinful against himself, lest being harassed, ye labor in your souls.

God Disciplines His Sons

4Ye have not yet resisted until blood, fighting against sin.

5And ye have totally forgotten the entreaty which is spoken to you as to sons, My son, neglect not the instruction of the Lord, nor be enervated being rebuked by him:

6For whom the Lord loves he corrects, and he chastises every son which he receives.

7If ye endure correction, God treats you as sons; for who is the son which the father corrects not? 8And if ye are without correction, of which all are partakers, then are ye spurious, not sons. 9Since we truly have fathers of our flesh instructors, and we were influenced: shall we not rather be in subjection to the Father of spirits, and we shall live? 10For they truly for a few days, according as it seemed to them, corrected; but he for profit, in order to partake in his holiness. 11And truly every correction for the present seems not to be for joy, but grief: and later it returns the peaceful fruit of justice to them being exercised by it.

12Wherefore set upright the relaxed hands, and palsied knees; 13And make straight wheel-ruts to your feet, lest the lame thing turned aside; and it should rather be healed.

A Call to Holiness
(1 Peter 1:13–21)

14Follow peace with all, and consecration, without which none shall see the Lord: 15Observing narrowly lest any be failing of the grace of God: lest any root of bitterness springing forth aloft give trouble, and by this many be defiled; 16Lest any fornicator, or profane, as Esau, who for one act of eating sold his primogeniture. 17For ye know also afterwards, wishing to inherit the praise, he was disapproved of: for he found no place for a change of mind, although having sought it with tears.

An Unshakable Kingdom
(Exodus 20:18–21; Deuteronomy 5:22–33)

18For ye have not come to the mount being handled, and burned with fire, and to duskiness, and to darkness, and to a violent storm, 19And to the sound of the trumpet, and the voice of words; which they, having heard, implored that the word be not put before them: 20(For they did not bear that being assigned, And if a beast should touch the mountain, it shall be stoned, or shall be pierced with a missile weapon: 21And so dreadful was that being made to appear, Moses said, I am terrified and trembling:) 22But ye have come to mount Sion, and to the city of the living God, heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, 23To the assembly of people, and church of the firstborn, transcribed in the heavens, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the just perfected, 24And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, speaking better things than Abel.

25See that ye refuse not him speaking. For if they escaped not, having refused him giving an intimation of the divine will on earth, much more we, who having turned back from him from the heavens: 26Whose voice then shook the earth: and now he has proclaimed, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also the heaven. 27And the Yet once more, makes manifest the transferring the things shaken, as of things made, that the things not being shaken might remain. 28Wherefore we receiving a kingdom unmoved; we should have grace by which we might serve God acceptably, with reverence and circumspection: 29For also our God is a consuming fire.