Error threatening the church

⁶ So live in Christ Jesus the Lord in the same way as you received him. ⁷ Be rooted and built up in him, be established in faith, and overflow with thanksgiving just as you were taught. ⁸ See to it that nobody enslaves you with philosophy and foolish deception, which conform to human traditions and the way the world thinks and acts rather than Christ. ⁹ All the fullness of deity lives in Christ’s body. ¹⁰ And you have been filled by him, who is the head of every ruler and authority. ¹¹ In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not administered by human hands. The circumcision of Christ is realized in the stripping away of the whole self dominated by sin. ¹² You were buried with him through baptism and raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. ¹³ When you were dead because of the things you had done wrong and because your body wasn’t circumcised, God made you alive with Christ and forgave all the things you had done wrong. ¹⁴ He destroyed the record of the debt we owed, with its requirements that worked against us. He canceled it by nailing it to the cross. ¹⁵ When he disarmed the rulers and authorities, he exposed them to public disgrace by leading them in a triumphal parade.

Psalm 145^[a]

Praise. Of David.

Jesus chooses apostles

¹² During that time, Jesus went out to the mountain to pray, and he prayed to God all night long. ¹³ At daybreak, he called together his disciples. He chose twelve of them whom he called apostles: ¹⁴ Simon, whom he named Peter; his brother Andrew; James; John; Philip; Bartholomew; ¹⁵ Matthew; Thomas; James the son of Alphaeus; Simon, who was called a zealot; ¹⁶ Judas the son of James; and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.

Jesus’ popularity increases

¹⁷ Jesus came down from the mountain with them and stood on a large area of level ground. A great company of his disciples and a huge crowd of people from all around Judea and Jerusalem and the area around Tyre and Sidon joined him there. ¹⁸ They came to hear him and to be healed from their diseases, and those bothered by unclean spirits were healed. ¹⁹ The whole crowd wanted to touch him, because power was going out from him and he was healing everyone.