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

1THEREFORE also seeing we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, laying aside every weight, and that most easily besetting sin, let us run with patience the race lying before us, 2earnestly looking up to Jesus the author and the finisher of faith; who, for the joy set before him, endured the cross, despising shame, and hath sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

3Consider then attentively him that endured from sinners such opposition against himself, that ye be not wearied out, fainting in your souls.

God Disciplines His Sons

4As yet ye have not resisted unto blood, struggling against sin.

5And have you forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you, as children, ?My son, count not lightly of the Lord?s childlike correction, nor faint when under his rebuke:

6for whom the Lord loveth he correcteth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.?

7If ye patiently endure correction, God carries himself towards you as his children: for who is the son whom the father doth not correct? 8If then ye are without correction, of which all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not children. 9If then we have had the fathers of our flesh for correctors, and reverenced them; shall we not much more be under subjection to the Father of spirits, and live? 10For they indeed for a few days as seemed proper to themselves corrected us; but he for our own advantage, that we might be partakers of his holiness. 11Now all correction at the moment seemeth not to be cause for joy, but for sorrow; but after a while it produceth peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have thereby been disciplined.

12Wherefore stretch out again the hands that hang down, and the paralytic knees; 13and make strait paths for your feet, that what is halting may not be turned out of the way; but that it may rather be healed.

A Call to Holiness
(1 Peter 1:13–21)

14Earnestly seek peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord: 15carefully observing lest any of you fail of attaining the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and by it many be defiled; 16lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of bread parted with his birthrights. 17For ye know, that when afterwards he wished to inherit the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place for a change of his father?s mind, though he sought it earnestly with tears.

An Unshakable Kingdom

18For ye have not approached the mountain that could only be groped for, and that burned with fire, and the thick cloud, and the darkness, and the tempest, 19and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words, which they who heard, earnestly begged that the discourse might not be directed to them: 20for they could not bear the charge given, and ?If but a beast touch the mountain he shall be stoned, or shot through with a dart:? 21and so terrible was the appearance, that Moses said, I am exceedingly afraid and trembling: 22but ye are come unto mount Sion, and to the city of the living God, to the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, 23and to the general assembly and church of the first-born registered in the heavens, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of just men perfected, 24and to Jesus the mediator of the new testament, and to the blood of sprinkling, which speaketh better things than that of Abel.

25Beware that ye reject not him that speaketh: for if they escaped not, who rejected him, that upon earth spake by divine influence, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him who speaks from heaven: 26whose voice then shook the earth, but now he hath promised, saying, ?Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also the heaven.? 27Now this word yet once more manifests the removal of the things shaken, as of things formed, that the things not shaken may endure. 28Wherefore receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, may we hold fast the grace, by which we can offer to God acceptably divine service, with reverence and pious awe: 29for our God is a devouring fire.