And now I entrust ¹  you to God and to the message ²  of his grace. This message ³  is able to build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified.

Then those who were about to interrogate him stayed away ¹  from him, and the commanding officer ²  was frightened when he realized that Paul ³  was ⁴  a Roman citizen ⁵  and that he had had him tied up. ⁶ 

Against hope Abraham ¹  believed ²  in hope with the result that he became the father of many nations ³  according to the pronouncement, ⁴  “so will your descendants be.” ⁵ 

For if, by the transgression of the one man, ¹  death reigned through the one, how much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ!

You, however, are not in ¹  the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, this person does not belong to him.

Indeed, he who ¹  did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all – how will he not also, along with him, freely give us all things?

Nevertheless, ¹  as the Lord has assigned to each one, as God has called each person, so must he live. I give this sort of direction in all the churches.

For if someone weak sees you who possess knowledge dining in an idol’s temple, will not his conscience be “strengthened” ¹  to eat food offered to idols?

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?

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, ¹  so that each one may be paid back according to what he has done while in the body, whether good or evil. ² 

And what mutual agreement does the temple of God have with idols? For we are ¹  the temple of the living God, just as God said, “I will live in them ²  and will walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.” ³ 

For if I have boasted to him about anything concerning you, I have not been embarrassed by you, ¹  but just as everything we said to you was true, ²  so our boasting to Titus about you ³  has proved true as well.

Are they servants of Christ? (I am talking like I am out of my mind!) I am even more so: with much greater labors, with far more imprisonments, with more severe beatings, facing death many times.

And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, proclaimed the gospel to Abraham ahead of time, ¹  saying, “All the nations ²  will be blessed in you.” ³ 

and be found in him, not because I have my own righteousness derived from the law, but because I have the righteousness that comes by way of Christ’s faithfulness ¹  – a righteousness from God that is in fact ²  based on Christ’s ³  faithfulness. ⁴ 

However, God’s solid foundation remains standing, bearing this seal: “The Lord knows those who are his,” ¹  and “Everyone who confesses the name of the Lord ²  must turn away from evil.”

And so he is the mediator ¹  of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the eternal inheritance he has promised, ²  since he died ³  to set them free from the violations committed under the first covenant.

For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with hands – the representation ¹  of the true sanctuary ²  – but into heaven itself, and he appears now in God’s presence for us.

¹ Because Christ also suffered ²  once for sins, the just for the unjust, ³  to bring you to God, by being put to death in the flesh but ⁴  by being made alive in the spirit. ⁵ 

So, since Christ suffered ¹  in the flesh, you also arm yourselves with the same attitude, because the one who has suffered in the flesh has finished with sin, ²