The Word of God, Not Men

So, to 1 Thessalonians we turn, to three or four verses which I’ve not found particularly easy to wrestle with. I hope that won’t become too apparent, but I fear that it may. First Thessalonians chapter 2, and the small section that is before us here begins in the thirteenth verse and goes through to the sixteenth.

Last time we noted something of Paul’s heart and his concern in ministry as we paid attention to the metaphors which he had employed, which were indicative of his pastoral concerns for those to whom he was writing. And if you recall last Sunday evening, as we dealt with this whole matter of truth and love, you may recall we said that truth that is not softened by love can become dreadfully hard, and that love that is not hardened by truth can become dreadfully soft. And we said that the New Testament brought us to this wonderful holding of these two principles in tension.

And it was illustrated in Paul’s ministry by his compassionate interest in those under his care—dealing with them, as he said, as a father, and also as a mother, and also as a herald. And that picture of being a herald emerged in the ninth verse, which is the word there for “preach[ing] the gospel of God to you,”[1] the word kérussó. And it is this picture of a herald which actually underpins, underlies, what we now discover him saying in verse 13 and following: “And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but [actually as it] is, the word of God, which is at work in [those of] you who believe.” And he is referring there to the ministry that he had been engaging in, along with others, of being, as it were, the crier, the herald in the streets of the town, proclaiming the very word of God.

Now, I have a number of points this evening, all that begin with the letter p, and I will try and get through them properly. Those of you who were alert towards the end last Sunday evening know that you were more alert than myself, because I reversed my final point—made it my first point all over again. I could hear myself doing it; I couldn’t understand what I was doing, and I just had to bash on. But by the time I’d finished, I’d realized what I had done, and that is that I had convoluted the whole thing. I do apologize for that. And for those of you who were trying to take notes, you should by now have worked it out. And if not, then I’ll have to try and work it out for you some other time, because I can’t even remember what the three points were at the moment—couldn’t remember them last Sunday, certainly can’t remember them this Sunday. But I do… Hopefully, we’ll be able to address these.

The Process

First of all, we’re going to notice the process to which he refers. The process to which he refers. I’m not going to spend a long time on any of these tonight but just to try and move through the text. The process, then.

He clearly states the fact that the gospel that he was preaching was “the word of God.” And he commends them for recognizing this fact, indicating that their response to this process, this fact alone, is the occasion of his continual thanksgiving. And the process can be clearly seen by just underlining a couple of words as you go through: the two words “from us”—“which you heard from us”; then above that, “of God”; and then underneath that, “in you.” All right? “What you heard from us,” he says, “was actually the word of God, which is now at work in you.” It’s really a study in prepositions. “From us, came to you the word of God, which is now,” he says, “at work in you.”

Leon Morris has a very helpful comment on this as he addresses this in his commentary, and he says, “Paul could preach with certainty and power, for he had the profound conviction that what he said was not of man’s devising” but in very truth “the word of God.” And then he applies it, and he says the Christian church cannot do without this conviction: “To preach interesting little moral essays can never prove an adequate substitute for the word which comes from God.”[2] And that, of course, is the process that remains. Although we are not exercising the ministry of an apostle—the apostles were a unique group of people upon whom the church was founded under Christ, and they are gone on from there—but the apostle’s doctrine has been left to us in the Bible, which is the Word of God. And therefore, the process should always be the same: that it is the task of the Bible teacher to come with the Word which is “of God,” which comes “from us” and begins to work “in us” together. And nothing short of that is what we look for and anticipate.

Truth that is not softened by love can become dreadfully hard, and love that is not hardened by truth can become dreadfully soft.

There are a number of things which are foundational in this process being continually effective. Two which are immediately apparent and yet should probably be underscored are these.

Number one: the absolute necessity of an expectant, praying congregation. A congregation that prays for their pastors and prays for those who teach the Word of God will be a better-fed congregation than those who do not. And when a congregation learns to anticipate hearing the Word of God, “from us” which will in turn be at work “in you,” then it is a wonderful thing.

And, of course, the other side of the coin is that there needs then to be in the place of proclamation those who are listening to God, who are sensitive to his Spirit, who may not be brilliant—probably, in fact, in this case, will not be—but they will at least be making an honest endeavor to wrestle with the text of Scripture and to come prepared on the Lord’s Day to bring the Word which is “of God,” “from us,” to be at work “in you.” And that process, as Leon Morris says, is absolutely vital, because the Christian church cannot do without this process.

And yet, the fact of the matter is that there are many churches—without being unkind to any other fellowships around us—but there are many, many churches where this process never takes place, because there is not an underlying conviction that what we have here is the Word of God. And without the conviction that what we have in our hands is the Word of God, then the pastors will never address it as such, and people will never learn to anticipate it as such. So, it’s a very happy thing, by God’s grace, to be involved in this process at all.

So, that’s the process then. The word “from us” was the word “of God,” which was the word at work “in you.”

The Product

Secondly, notice the product. For the process has a product. And the transforming power of God’s Word is then seen at work within their lives.

This, of course, is one of the great tests that we ought to look for in our lives concerning our reception of the Word of God. James says, “Don’t merely be hearers of the word of God, but be doers also.”[3] And we have a right to anticipate that when we are receiving the Word of God faithfully proclaimed, when we are anticipating it within our lives, that it will actually produce a product. And the product is defined for us here: “You accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you who believe.” And then he says, “[And I know this is true,] for”—the joining word—“for you, brothers,” first of all, “became imitators of God’s churches in Judea.”

This is what they discovered: the very Word of God. And they looked around, and they said, “What do we do with the Word of God?” And there were some other churches that had been planted before them, and they perhaps sent folks up to see what was going on in Judea and to find out how they were applying the Word of God and to hasten back down and tell them, “This is how the Word of God is at work amongst them.” And they were learning from the example of those who had gone a little before them.

That’s just simple discipleship. You can never lead souls heavenward unless climbing yourself. You need not be very high up, but you must be climbing. And the churches in Judea were a couple of steps up from the church in Thessalonica, and so they sent up there, they found out what was going on, and they said, “Fine, that’s what we’ll do. We’ll imitate their example.” We have no details of it.

When you learn to ski, if you try to learn to ski, you feel like such a bumbling fool for those early weeks. I speak with great conviction. When I came here in ʼ83, the first invitation I received was to go with the youth group on a ski trip, which scared me to death, ʼcause I’d only had one horrible debacle in skiing with my wife since we had been married, and she was embarrassed and left me for most of the day. And one of the girls in the office came in and suggested that I signed up for the Plain Dealer ski school. And I went out on my day off to the Plain Dealer ski school and humbled myself to the instruction of these individuals.

And when they let you loose at some time around ten thirty or eleven o’clock for the final hour, I found that the absolute best thing to do was to go up in the lift and just find somebody who knew what they were doing and just follow right down behind them, and try and turn when they turn, and try and bend when they bend, and try and do what they do. And as long as you find a good example, you probably won’t go too far wrong. And so the Word of God began to work within their lives, and its evidence was in their imitating the churches in Judea.

Pause for a moment and ask yourself: If people came from other churches to imitate Parkside Church, what would we give them to imitate? If they came up to imitate us, what would they find as the kind of distinctive hallmarks of our church family? What are the things they would imitate? It would be dreadful to think that they learned from us how to be divisive, or how to be critical, how to be disillusioned, how to be complacent. It would be wonderful to think that they learned from us how to be united, how to be expectant, how to be rejoicing, how to be progressing. They “became imitators,” and that was part of the product.

But not only were they imitators as a result of the Word taking root in their lives, but they also were sufferers: “For you, brothers, became imitators of God’s churches in Judea, which are in Christ Jesus,” and, he says, “you suffered from your own countrymen.”

Now, if you want the background to this, at your leisure, you can go back into the Acts of the Apostles. And if you turn back to Acts chapter 17 and 18, you have the historical background to what Paul is writing about here. In Acts chapter 17 and 18, you may recall that Paul’s opponents in the preaching of the gospel were Jewish. And they pursued him to Thessalonica; and then, when he went to Berea, they pursued him to Berea; and when he went to Athens, they pursued him to Athens; and after his arrival in Corinth—and it was in Corinth that he wrote 1 Thessalonians—it was Jewish opposition which led him to take the drastic step of turning his ministry away from the Jews and moving over to the gentiles.

It is a reminder that in generations not our own and in places removed from us, the issue of the gospel and the impact of it in a life has been to introduce people to the most manifold suffering. And one of the things that we ought to constantly thank God for is the fact that in all the history of this great nation, God has chosen, in his providence, to preserve the church in the United States of America from this kind of dreadful persecution. Whether he will always choose to stay his hand we cannot say. But it ought at least, as we read our Bibles, to be a reminder to us that if our brethren in all parts of the world and at all times in history, as a result of the process of the Word of God being received and applied in their lives, were ushered into suffering, then we surely ought not to hold out this forlorn, crazy dream of genuine Christianity producing within us all that is tranquil and fine and wonderful and peaceful.

The Persecution

Well, that brings us to the third p, the word persecution. We need to look at this issue of persecution for a moment. First of all, the process, and then the product, and then this issue of persecution.

Halfway through verse 14, he says, “You suffered from your own countrymen the same things those churches suffered from the Jews.” And now Paul makes these graphic statements concerning what the Jews have done, and I want you just to follow along with me as I note them. This is what he says.

First of all, he says they “killed the Lord Jesus.” They “killed the Lord Jesus.” Now, you ought probably just to turn back to Matthew’s Gospel for a cross-reference here—Matthew 27:25. As you’re turning to that, let me say this: that to say such a thing today would be regarded as anti-Semitic. After all, we know that the Romans were involved in the death of Jesus, and so, too, were all of us, insofar as it was our sins that nailed him to the tree. Paul certainly understood himself to be involved in the death of Jesus, as he refers to it in 1 Timothy 1:[15], as he regards himself as the chief of sinners. But despite the fact that the Romans were involved and the gentiles were involved and you and I were involved, in one degree, in this death of Jesus, nevertheless, Paul is unequivocal in stating things as he does. He says, “Your experience of suffering from your own countrymen is akin to the sufferings which came upon the churches as a result of the Jews who killed the Lord Jesus.”

And it is very, very clear that the Jewish people as a whole shared the blame and, frankly, came out and said so. Look at the chilling Matthew 27:25: “When Pilate saw,” verse 24, “that he was getting nowhere” in trying to get one of these win-win situations effected, “but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water,” and he “washed his hands in front of the crowd.” He said, “‘I am innocent of this man’s blood …. It is your responsibility!’”[4] he said to them. “You are the ones who are stirring this up. You are the ones who want him dead. We are in the responding mode. You are the initiators.” Now, it would have been possible for them to say, “Oh, no, it’s not us. It’s not just us alone.” But look at their response: “[And] all the people answered, ‘Let his blood be on us and on our children!’”[5]

Loved ones, it is impossible to explain two thousand years of Semitic history without paying attention to their bold statement in Matthew 27:25. And it is in no way provoked by any sense of anti-Jewish sentiment to say this in clarity: what they asked for, they got. “It is a [fear]ful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”[6]

The persecution is revealed, he says, first of all in that they killed Jesus. Also, they killed the prophets. These were their own folks. These were their own chaps—the fellows who were proclaiming the Word to them. And yet, nevertheless, they despised them, and they killed them also. They had no time for anybody who did not tell them the way they wanted to hear it. They wanted to hear news of peace and somebody told them of terror, they would be done with them. And in Matthew 23:29, we read in one of the woes of Jesus: he says,

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, “If we had lived in the days of our forefathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.” So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of the sin of your forefathers![7]

Now, we don’t have time to stay with this tonight, but you see what he’s saying? He’s saying this to them: “It isn’t enough for you! Your bloody, murderous approach to things cannot be finally absorbed by your killing of these people who’ve gone before. Now go ahead and fill up the measure of your forefathers’ sin.” And what he’s saying is “Go ahead and kill me too.”

And they understood him.

“And,” says Paul, “the persecution was revealed in our own receiving of their response.” They “killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out.” “We were there trying to bring to them the good news, and they drove us out.” And so he says, “They displease God.” Everyone who rejects Jesus displeases God. And there is no matter more significant to God the Father than the rejection of his Son. For you remember, he said, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. This is my beloved Son. Listen to him!”[8] And as they cried, “Away with him! We would rather have Barabbas,”[9] in all of their devotion to God, they were actually displeasing the God whom they claimed to be worshipping.

And he says, fifthly, they “are hostile to all men.” You see this progression: they “killed the Lord Jesus,” they killed “the prophets,” they “drove us out,” they “displease God,” and they are “hostile to all men.” A Jewish historian said of them, “Towards all other people (… except their fellow-Jews) they feel only hatred and hostility.”[10]

Now, how was this hostility represented? Well, we’re told there in verse 16: their hostility towards the human race extended to seeking to prevent Paul and others from preaching the gospel to them and so to stop the gentiles from being saved. They do not want saved themselves, and they do not want the gentiles to be on the receiving of this gospel. They were obstructing the spread of the gospel, and Paul acknowledges this.

Everyone who rejects Jesus displeases God. And there is no matter more significant to God the Father than the rejection of his Son.

I think you sense, as I do, that there is material here for deep and profound thought.

The Pronouncement

The process, the product, the persecution, and the pronouncement.

Verse 16 and the final two sentences: “In this way they always heap up their sins to the limit. The wrath of God has come upon them at last.” Or, “The wrath of God is hanging over them at the last.” It’s an interesting phrase, isn’t it, in light of what Jesus had said to them in Matthew 27, when he called upon them there… I beg your pardon. Back in Matthew [23], he says to them, “Fill up the measure of your response.”[11] And here, says Paul, “They are heaping up their sins to the limit.” They’re eventually tipping the scales to the point where there is no other way for them to go. And eventually, God’s patience runs out. His patience ran out in the Prophets. He sent the prophet Amos to them, and the prophet Amos had to say to them again and again, “If you don’t listen now, I can’t promise you there will be a tomorrow. God’s patience is running out.” And so it is that having “heap[ed] up their sins to the limit,” “the wrath of God has come upon them at [the] last.”

Now, there is some question here in the text as to whether this is a statement in the past tense—that this judgment of God has already taken place; or is in the present tense, is immediately on them now; or is yet in the future tense. In one measure, it doesn’t really matter. If the sense is that it has fallen on them, then Paul may be referring to the great famine which took place in Judea between 45 and 47 AD, or he may be referring to a phenomenal massacre of the Jews in the temple precincts in AD 49. And so they would know exactly what he was talking about. If, however, he is speaking of that which is yet to come, it is more than likely that he is anticipating what would come in the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. In either way, he wants them to understand that their persecution was such that his pronouncement upon them would definitely come to pass.

Now, let me say a couple more things here, and I have one final word, and then we’ll be through. As I studied this this week, I said to myself, “My, my! This is tough stuff, and especially coming from a Jew.” Because remember that Paul was Jewish. Paul was fiercely Jewish. Paul, even after his conversion, was not about to cast aspersions on all that has represented his early heritage. He put it in perspective by saying, “The fact that I had put store in all of this was ridiculous, and now,” he says, “I account all things as rubbish for the sake of knowing Christ.”[12] But he didn’t mean that his mom and dad had taught him rubbish, and he didn’t mean that his training under Gamaliel had been rubbish. He’s saying that in the contrast of the wonder of grace in Jesus, all of this is just like wind in the air.

And when we think of Paul as he writes the letter of the Romans, he writes concerned and compassionate for his Jewish compatriots. He asked the question in Romans 3:1, “What advantage, then, is there in being a Jew, or what value is there in circumcision?” And we might expect him to say, “Absolutely none!” But he doesn’t. He says, “Much in every way! First of all,” referring to the Jews, “they have been entrusted with the very words of God.”[13] He said, “It is a wonderful thing to be brought up in this Jewish heritage.” For the gospel is “first [to] the Jew,” and “then [to] the Gentile.”[14] And so he is not setting that aside. “What if some did not have faith? Will their lack of faith nullify God’s faithfulness? Not at all! Let [the word of] God be true, and every man a liar.”[15] And so he goes on to speak concerning that.

When you turn forward to Romans chapter 9, and to the opening verses of Romans 9, he pours out his heart with great concern for the nation of Israel. He longs for their salvation. Look at Romans 9:2:

I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory, [theirs] the covenants, [theirs] the receiving of the law, [theirs] the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all, forever [to be] praised,

he says, “Amen.”

And yet here in 1 Thessalonians, he writes concerning these same people, his own race, and he says, “They persecuted us. They killed Jesus. They killed the prophets. They drove us out. They stood in the way of the gospel. And by implicating ourselves, we cannot exonerate them.” That’s what he’s saying. “And in consequence,” he says, “the wrath of God has come upon them, even as Jesus warned that it would.”

You cannot read the Gospels without understanding something of this. And I want just to quote to you one or two statements of Jesus which make clear that he warned the people concerning these things. He says in Matthew 21:43, “Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit. He who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed.” And then verse 45: “[And] when the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus’ parables, they knew he was talking about them. [And] they looked for a way to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowd because the people held that he was a prophet.”

Matthew 23:38. Jesus laments over Jerusalem: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often [have I] longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.”[16] The great agony of soul of Jesus over these dear ones. And then he says in 38, “Look, your house is left to you desolate.”

One final reference, Luke 23:26:

[And] as [Jesus was] led … away, they seized Simon from Cyrene, who was on his way in the from the country, and [they] put the cross [of Jesus] on him and [they] made him carry it behind Jesus. [And] a large number of people followed him, including women who mourned and wailed for him. [And] Jesus turned [to them and said], “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children.”[17]

What a strange thing to say! “Do not weep for me; weep for yourselves.” Why would they weep for themselves? He was the one that was with the cross. He was the one that was about to see the demise. He was the one who would be bloodied and beaten and lost. And he goes on, and he says,

For the time will come when you will say, “Blessed are the barren women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!” Then “they will say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us!’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us!’” For if men do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?[18]

These great enigmatic statements of Jesus, warning, warning, warning. And now, after time has elapsed, Paul explains it in the final sentence of the sixteenth verse: “The wrath of God has come upon them at [the] last.”

A Perspective

Now, let me give you something of a perspective on this in conclusion. And this is just the briefest and most cursory look at a small period of church history. But the fact is, loved ones, that in the history of the church, the church has not been guiltless when it comes to the issue of anti-Judaism. And the church has sought to use some of the statements that we have just referred to tonight as a means of standing with others in some of the most dreadful treatment of Jewish people. And that’s why out of the period of the Second World War, there were only one or two pastors who stood to the fore and were prepared eventually, as in Bonhoeffer’s case, to meet their end, to say, “This is wrong. This cannot be countenanced on the basis of God’s Word.” But the vast majority of people, as a result either of blinding their eyes and stopping their ears or a horrible misunderstanding of the Bible, were prepared somehow or another to be caught up in the drift. And for that there needs to be some solemn and honest repentance. We cannot go to our Jewish neighbors and our friends without recognizing that some of the blood of their forefathers is on our hands.

Chrysostom in the fourth century, preaching in Antioch—fourth century—preached eight virulent sermons against the Jews. He described them as animals, he accused them of all kinds of bizarre and immoral activity, and he did so on the basis of a warped understanding of the Scriptures. In the Middle Ages, there were all kinds of repressive treatments of the Jews that came out from statements of the church, none more repressive than four regulations from the Lateran Council in 1215 AD. And as a result of these four regulations, the Jewish people were obliged to live in ghettoes and to wear distinctive dress. This is not Nazi Germany. This is thirteenth-century Christianity. “You will live in ghettoes,” they said, “and you will wear clothes that mark you out so that we might know who you are.” During the Crusades, the church failed to stand against a massive and wholesale pillaging of Jewish settlements. And as difficult as it is for many of us who have Luther as one of our heroes to face, in 1543, soon before his death, and perhaps a little in his dotage, and somewhat disillusioned by the fact that some Jewish evangelism in which he had engaged had failed dramatically, Luther issued a paper entitled “The Jews and Their Lies.” And in this dreadful diatribe, he cried out against the Jewish people, calling for people to set fire to their synagogues, to destroy their homes, to confiscate their books, and to silence their rabbis. That was Martin Luther.

Now, what did I tell you? The best of men are men at best. We could sidestep from here—and we won’t—and address the blood that’s on the hands of White people in relationship to slavery, also bolstered by a horrendous wresting of the Scriptures. And when we read our Bibles, and when we understand the text of Scripture, and when we wrestle with this and try somehow or another to get a semblance of normality in it all, there’s only one clarification that I can make any attempt at understanding it, and it is this—and I think it lightens the guilt at least a little.

As far as I can understand church history, the fathers and those in the Middle Ages and the Reformers were expressing a sentiment that was anti-Judaism; it was not anti-Semitic. In other words, it was a theological conviction; it was not, I hope, a racial prejudice. It was because, presumably, we must say that the incarnate Son of God must be honored and must be adored, and only through him can we come to the Father; and therefore, the monotheism of Judaism is bereft and therefore has to be counteracted. And in that sense, we would have to stand against Judaism as a religious expression when it comes to that element.

But sadly, loved ones, our zeal so often overstrides the boundaries that are established by the parameters of biblical love. And I have a funny feeling that some of us, in this respect, still have some repenting to do, still have some sorrys to say, still have some bridges to mend, and still have some friendships to make.

You are sensible people. You think these things out for yourselves.

Let us pray together:

O Lord our God, we come to these three or four verses tonight. We don’t find them easy, palatable. They’re not necessarily cheery. But we know that all Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for doctrine and for reproof and for correction and for training in righteousness.[19] We want to understand this process and live in it—that it may be your Word, the Word of God, from your servants, in us. We do want the product to be evident in our lives.

We do recognize, too, Lord, that there is this fact of persecution, with which we’ve wrestled. There is this pronouncement concerning your wrath being revealed from heaven, and we see something of it. And as we reflect upon the history of the church, we get a perspective that is not always encouraging, but it is, frankly, challenging.

And so, we pray that you will forgive us our sins. Some of us still harbor bitterness towards those around us who look differently, who live differently, who come from a different religious persuasion. We do ask you to forgive us and to change us.

We pray, too, at the same time that you will make us zealous for the gospel. We recognize that the task of evangelism in our world tonight is a daunting task. So much confusion abounds in our schools, in universities, in the thoroughfares of our lives. It’s hard to engage people. In fact, the task is so daunting it drives us to our knees.

Bring us to our knees. Help us to be an army raised up to walk the land as a result of getting the Captain’s instructions, and then being about the Captain’s business. To this end we commit ourselves to you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

[1] 1 Thessalonians 2:9 (NIV 1984).

[2] Leon Morris, 1 and 2 Thessalonians: An Introduction and Commentary, 2nd ed. (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1985), 63.

[3] James 1:22 (paraphrased).

[4] Matthew 27:24 (NIV 1984).

[5] Matthew 27:25 (NIV 1984).

[6] Hebrews 10:31 (NIV 1984).

[7] Matthew 23:29–32 (NIV 1984).

[8] Matthew 17:5; Mark 9:7; Luke 9:35 (paraphrased).

[9] Matthew 27:21; Luke 23:18; John 18:40 (paraphrased).

[10] Tacitus, History, v. 5, quoted in John R. W. Stott, The Message of 1 and 2 Thessalonians: The Gospel and the End of Time, The Bible Speaks Today (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1991), 56.

[11] Mathew 23:32 (paraphrased).

[12] Philippians 3:8 (paraphrased).

[13] Romans 3:2 (NIV 1984).

[14] Romans 1:16 (NIV 1984).

[15] Romans 3:3–4 (NIV 1984).

[16] Matthew 23:37 (NIV 1984).

[17] Luke 23:26–28 (NIV 1984).

[18] Luke 23:29–31 (NIV 1984).

[19] See 2 Timothy 3:16.