⁴⁴ Then it says, ‘I will return to the person I came from.’ So it returns and finds its former home empty, swept, and in order.

⁴ But you belong to God, my dear children. You have already won a victory over those people, because the Spirit who lives in you is greater than the spirit who lives in the world.

⁸ And all the people who belong to this world worshiped the beast. They are the ones whose names were not written in the Book of Life that belongs to the Lamb who was slaughtered before the world was made.^[a]

⁴ I say this because some ungodly people have wormed their way into your churches, saying that God’s marvelous grace allows us to live immoral lives. The condemnation of such people was recorded long ago, for they have denied our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

⁵ So I want to remind you, though you already know these things, that Jesus^[a] first rescued the nation of Israel from Egypt, but later he destroyed those who did not remain faithful.

¹⁹ These people left our churches, but they never really belonged with us; otherwise they would have stayed with us. When they left, it proved that they did not belong with us.