⁴ but, just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel, even so we speak, not to please mortals but to please God, who tests our hearts.^(A)

¹⁰ Am I now seeking human approval or God’s approval? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ.^(A)

⁷ On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel for the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel for the circumcised^(A)

²⁷ And God,^[a] who searches hearts, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit^[b] intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.^(A)

³ in due time he revealed his word through the proclamation with which I have been entrusted by the command of God our Savior,^(A)

¹⁴ Guard the good deposit entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.

¹¹ that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, with which I was entrusted.

Gratitude for Mercy

¹² I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because he considered me faithful and appointed me to his service,^{(A) 13} even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief,^(B)

⁶ not with a slavery performed merely for looks, to please people, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the soul.

¹⁹ great in counsel and mighty in deed, whose eyes are open to all the ways of mortals, rewarding all according to their ways and according to the fruit of their doings.^(A)