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

1Wherefore, since we also have so great a cloud of witnesses lying round about us, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin that so easily besets us, and let us run with patience the race that lies before us, 2looking to Jesus the author and finisher of the faith, who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

3For consider him that endured such opposition of sinners against himself, lest you become weary and despondent in your minds.

God Disciplines His Sons

4You have not yet resisted to blood, in your contest with sin;

5and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as to sons: My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by him.

6For, whom the Lord loves, he chastens, and scourges every son that he receives.

7If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons: for what son is there whose father chastens him not? 8But if you are without chastisement, of which all are partakers, then are you bastards, and not sons. 9So, then, we have had fathers of our flesh who corrected us, and we reverenced them; shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of our spirits, and live? 10For they, indeed, for a few days, chastened us as they thought it good; but he chastens us for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness. 11But no chastisement seems, at the time, to be a matter of joy, but of grief: yet afterward, it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who are exercised by it.

12Wherefore, lift up the hands that hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees, 13and make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned aside; but rather let it be restored to health.

A Call to Holiness
(1 Peter 1:13–21)

14Follow peace with all, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord; 15taking care, lest any one slight the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness spring up and trouble you, and by this many be defiled; 16lest there be any lewd person, or profane man, as Esau, who, for a single meal, sold his birthright. 17For you know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no means to change his father's mind, though he sought it earnestly with tears.

An Unshakable Kingdom

18For you have not come to a mountain that may be touched, and that burns with fire, and to blackness and darkness and tempest, 19and to the sound of a trumpet, and to the utterance of words, the hearing of which utterance caused the people to entreat that the word might not be spoken to them again; 20for they could not endure that which was commanded, And if even a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned: 21and so terrible was the sight, that even Moses said, I exceedingly fear and tremble. 22But you have come to Mount Zion, and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels; 23to the general assembly and church of the first-born, who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the just made perfect, 24and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than the blood of Abel.

25See that you reject not him that speaks: for if they escaped not who rejected that earthly man who gave the oracles, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that is from heaven, 26whose voice then shook the earth; but now he has promised, saying, Yet once more I will shake not the earth only, but also the heaven. 27And this prophecy, Yet once more, signifies the removing of the things that are shaken, as of things that have been made, that the things which can not be shaken may remain. 28Wherefore, as we receive a kingdom that can not be shaken, let us have gratitude, by which we may serve God acceptably, with reverence and godly fear: 29for our God is a consuming fire.