But we said to him, ‘We are honest men; we are not spies!

If we live, we live for the Lord; if we die, we die for the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.

If we say we do not bear the guilt of sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.

Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.

But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with endurance.

Now by this we know that we have come to know God: if we keep his commandments.

And if we know that he hears us in regard to whatever we ask, then we know that we have the requests that we have asked from him.

Look, we heard about it in Ephrathah, we found it in the territory of Jaar.

But if we examined ourselves, we would not be judged.

We have sinned like our ancestors; we have done wrong, we have done evil.

Now food will not bring us close to God. We are no worse if we do not eat and no better if we do.

Who is the Almighty, that we should serve him? What would we gain if we were to pray to him?’

But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned with the world.

If we go into the city, we’ll die of starvation, and if we stay here we’ll die! So come on, let’s defect to the Syrian camp! If they spare us, we’ll live; if they kill us – well, we were going to die anyway.”

The Israelites said to Moses, “We are bound to die! We perish, we all perish!

By the rivers of Babylon we sit down and weep when we remember Zion.

And by this we will know that we are of the truth and will convince our conscience in his presence,

We do hard work, toiling with our own hands. When we are verbally abused, we respond with a blessing, when persecuted, we endure,

For we know in part, and we prophesy in part,

If we say we have fellowship with him and yet keep on walking in the darkness, we are lying and not practicing the truth.