³ I thank my God upon every remembrance of you,

⁴ Always in every prayer of mine for you all making request with joy,

⁵ For your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now;

⁶ Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:

⁷ Even as it is meet for me to think this of you all, because I have you in my heart; inasmuch as both in my bonds, and in the defence and confirmation of the gospel, ye all are partakers of my grace.

⁸ For God is my record, how greatly I long after you all in the bowels of Jesus Christ.

⁹ And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment;

¹⁰ That ye may approve things that are excellent; that ye may be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ.

¹¹ Being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God.

3 Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judaea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of Ituraea and of the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene,

² Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests, the word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness.

³ And he came into all the country about Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins;

⁴ As it is written in the book of the words of Esaias the prophet, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.

⁵ Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth;

⁶ And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.