⁷ “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”

The Need for Self-Discipline

²⁴ Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize?^(A) Run^(B) in such a way as to get the prize.

⁸ We do not want you to be uninformed,^(A) brothers and sisters,^[a] about the troubles we experienced^(B) in the province of Asia.^(C) We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. ⁹ Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God,^(D) who raises the dead.^{(E) 10} He has delivered us from such a deadly peril,^(F) and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope^(G) that he will continue to deliver us,

⁶ You see, at just the right time,^(A) when we were still powerless,^(B) Christ died for the ungodly.^(C)

³ Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed.