I asked, “What is it?” And he replied, “It is a basket for measuring grain ¹  that is moving away from here.” Moreover, he said, “This is their ‘eye’ ²  throughout all the earth.”

‘Rather, I will sweep them away in a storm into all the nations they are not familiar with.’ Thus the land had become desolate because of them, with no one crossing through or returning, for they had made the fruitful ¹  land a waste.”

Judah has become disloyal, and unspeakable sins have been committed in Israel and Jerusalem. ¹  For Judah has profaned ²  the holy things that the Lord loves and has turned to a foreign god! ³ 

You have said, ‘It is useless to serve God. How have we been helped ¹  by keeping his requirements and going about like mourners before the Lord who rules over all? ² 

“Woe to you, Chorazin! ¹  Woe to you, Bethsaida! If ²  the miracles ³  done in you had been done in Tyre ⁴  and Sidon, ⁵  they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.

The people ¹  of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented when Jonah preached to them ²  – and now, ³  something greater than Jonah is here!

Therefore produce ¹  fruit ²  that proves your repentance, and don’t begin to say ³  to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ ⁴  For I tell you that God can raise up children for Abraham from these stones! ⁵ 

“Woe to you, Chorazin! ¹  Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if ²  the miracles ³  done in you had been done in Tyre ⁴  and Sidon, ⁵  they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes.

The people ¹  of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented when Jonah preached to them ²  – and now, ³  something greater than Jonah is here!

“I tell you the solemn truth, ¹  the one who hears ²  my message ³  and believes the one who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned, ⁴  but has crossed over from death to life.

but I declared to those in Damascus first, and then to those in Jerusalem and in all Judea, ¹  and to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, ²  performing deeds consistent with ³  repentance.

But if our unrighteousness demonstrates ¹  the righteousness of God, what shall we say? The God who inflicts wrath is not unrighteous, is he? ²  (I am speaking in human terms.) ³ 

Yet death reigned from Adam until Moses even over those who did not sin in the same way that Adam (who is a type ¹  of the coming one) transgressed. ² 

For when we were in the flesh, ¹  the sinful desires, ²  aroused by the law, were active in the members of our body ³  to bear fruit for death.

Some of you once lived this way. ¹  But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ ²  and by the Spirit of our God.

and live ¹  in love, just as Christ also loved us ²  and gave himself for us, a sacrificial and fragrant offering ³  to God.

he saved us not by works of righteousness that we have done but on the basis of his mercy, through the washing of the new birth and the renewing of the Holy Spirit,

how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our ¹  consciences from dead works to worship the living God.

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.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, ¹  we must get rid of every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and run with endurance the race set out for us,