To the weak I became weak in order to gain the weak. I have become all things to all people, so that by all means I may save some.

Otherwise, if you are praising God with your spirit, how can someone without the gift ¹  say “Amen” to your thanksgiving, since he does not know what you are saying?

Therefore we have been encouraged. And in addition to our own encouragement, we rejoiced even more at the joy of Titus, because all of you have refreshed his spirit. ¹ 

Now this matter arose ¹  because of the false brothers with false pretenses ²  who slipped in unnoticed to spy on ³  our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, to make us slaves. ⁴ 

But if while seeking to be justified in Christ we ourselves have also been found to be sinners, is Christ then one who encourages ¹  sin? Absolutely not!

for all things in heaven and on earth were created by him – all things, whether visible or invisible, whether thrones or dominions, ¹  whether principalities or powers – all things were created through him and for him.

For though you should in fact be teachers by this time, ¹  you need someone to teach you the beginning elements of God’s utterances. ²  You have gone back to needing ³  milk, not ⁴  solid food.

so that we who have found refuge in him ¹  may find strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us through two unchangeable things, since it is impossible for God to lie.

By faith Enoch was taken up so that he did not see death, and he was not to be found because God took him up. For before his removal he had been commended as having pleased God.

For you know that ¹  later when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no opportunity for repentance, although he sought the blessing ²  with tears.

But the one who peers into the perfect law of liberty and fixes his attention there, ¹  and does not become a forgetful listener but one who lives it out – he ²  will be blessed in what he does. ³ 

For we all stumble ¹  in many ways. If someone does not stumble ²  in what he says, ³  he is a perfect individual, ⁴  able to control the entire body as well.

He answered, ‘The Lord, before whom I have walked, ¹  will send his angel with you. He will make your journey a success and you will find a wife for my son from among my relatives, from my father’s family.

One of you must go and get ¹  your brother, while ²  the rest of you remain in prison. ³  In this way your words may be tested to see if ⁴  you are telling the truth. ⁵  If not, then, as surely as Pharaoh lives, you are spies!”

Then their father Israel said to them, “If it must be so, then do this: Take some of the best products of the land in your bags, and take a gift down to the man – a little balm and a little honey, spices and myrrh, pistachios and almonds.

But the men were afraid when they were brought to Joseph’s house. They said, “We are being brought in because of ¹  the money that was returned in our sacks last time. ²  He wants to capture us, ³  make us slaves, and take ⁴  our donkeys!”

then ¹  the man must bring his wife to the priest, and he must bring the offering required for her, one tenth of an ephah of barley meal; he must not pour olive oil on it or put frankincense on it, because it is a grain offering of suspicion, ²  a grain offering for remembering, ³  for bringing ⁴  iniquity to remembrance.

Then a ceremonially clean person must take hyssop, dip it in the water, and sprinkle it on the tent, on all its furnishings, and on the people who were there, or on the one who touched a bone, or one killed, or one who died, or a grave.

So all of you approached me and said, “Let’s send some men ahead of us to scout out the land and bring us back word as to how we should attack it and what the cities are like there.”

Indeed, ask about the distant past, starting from the day God created humankind ¹  on the earth, and ask ²  from one end of heaven to the other, whether there has ever been such a great thing as this, or even a rumor of it.