Book of Common Prayer

How salvation is worked out

¹² So, my dear people: you always did what I said, so please now carry on in the same way, not just as though I was there with you, but much more because I’m not! Your task now is to work at bringing about your own salvation; and naturally you’ll be taking this with utter seriousness. ¹³ After all, God himself is the one who’s at work among you, who provides both the will and the energy to enable you to do what pleases him.

¹⁴ There must be no grumbling and disputing in anything you do. ¹⁵ That way, nobody will be able to fault you, and you’ll be pure and spotless children of God in the midst of a twisted and depraved generation. You are to shine among them like lights in the world, ¹⁶ clinging on to the word of life. That’s what I will be proud of on the day of the Messiah. It will prove that I didn’t run a useless race, or work to no purpose.

¹⁷ Yes: even if I am to be poured out like a drink-offering on the sacrifice and service of your faith, I shall celebrate, and celebrate jointly with you all. ¹⁸ In the same way, you should celebrate, yes, and celebrate with me.

On Timothy

¹⁹ I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, so that I in turn may be encouraged by getting news about you. ²⁰ I have nobody else of his quality: he will care quite genuinely about how you are. ²¹ Everybody else, you see, looks after their own interests, not those of Messiah Jesus. ²² But you know how Timothy has proved himself. Like a child with a father he has worked as a slave alongside me for the sake of the gospel. ²³ So I’m hoping to send him just as soon as I see how it will turn out with me. ²⁴ And I am confident in the Lord that I myself will come very soon as well.

On Epaphroditus

²⁵ But I did think it was necessary to send Epaphroditus to you. He is my brother; he has worked alongside me and fought alongside me; and he’s served as your agent in tending to my needs. ²⁶ He was longing for you all, you see, and he was upset because you heard that he was sick. ²⁷ And he really was sick, too; he nearly died. But God took pity on him—yes, and on me as well, so that I wouldn’t have one sorrow piled on top of another.

²⁸ This has made me all the more eager to send him, so that you’ll see him again and be glad, and my own anxieties will be laid to rest. ²⁹ So give him a wonderfully happy welcome in the Lord, and hold people like him in special respect. ³⁰ He came close to death through risking his life for the Messiah’s work, so that he could complete the service to me that you hadn’t been able to perform.

Travels to Egypt

¹³ After the Magi had gone, suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream.

“Get up,” he said, “and take the child, and his mother, and hurry off to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you. Herod is going to hunt for the child, to kill him.”

¹⁴ So he got up and took the child and his mother by night, and went off to Egypt. ¹⁵ He stayed there until the death of Herod. This happened to fulfill what the Lord said through the prophet:

¹⁶ When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the Magi, he flew into a towering rage. He dispatched people to kill all the boys in Bethlehem, and in all its surrounding districts, from two years old and under, according to the time the Magi had told him. ¹⁷ That was when the word that came through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled:

¹⁹ After the death of Herod, suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt.

²⁰ “Get up,” he said, “and take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel. Those who wanted to kill the child are dead.”

²¹ So he got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel.

²² But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling Judaea instead of his father Herod, he was afraid to go back there. After being advised in a dream, he went off to the region of Galilee. ²³ When he got there, he settled in a town called Nazareth. This was to fulfill what the prophet had spoken: