Book of Common Prayer

¹² My dear people, you have always obeyed me. God has saved you from wrong ways. Now show this by the good things that you do. You must live that way, not only when I am with you, but much more now that I am not with you. Think of how wrong it will be if you do not. Try hard to work out how to do it.

¹³ For God is at work in you. He helps you want to do it. And he helps you do what he wants you to do.

¹⁴ Do everything without grumbling or making trouble.

¹⁵ In that way you will be completely good. No one will be able to say anything wrong about you. You will be God's good children living amongst bad people. Among them you will shine like lights in the world.

¹⁶ You will have the message of life for them. I will be proud of you when Christ comes. My work and trouble will not be for nothing.

¹⁷ The life you live because you believe in God is like a sacrifice. Even if I am killed, it will be like wine which people pour on a sacrifice. I am happy to do this for you, and I am happy about you.

¹⁸ In the same way you must be happy. And you must be happy about me.

¹⁹ I hope the Lord Jesus will let me send Timothy to you soon. I will be glad to hear about you.

²⁰ I have no one like Timothy. He is troubled to know about you.

²¹ All the other people think only of themselves and not of Jesus Christ.

²² But you know what a good man Timothy is. You know that he has worked with me in telling the good news. He has worked just as a son works with his father.

²³ So I hope to send him to you as soon as I see what happens to me.

²⁴ And I trust that the Lord will let me come to you soon myself.

²⁵ I thought I must send Epaphroditus, our Christian brother, back to you. He has worked with me and has also been a soldier of Christ with me. He was your messenger and he brought your gift for my needs.

²⁶ I am sending him back because he has been lonely without you all. And his heart has been troubled because you heard that he was sick.

²⁷ He was very sick! He almost died! But God was kind to him. He was not only kind to him, but also to me. God did not let me have one trouble after another.

²⁸ I want even more to send him to you so that you will be happy when you see him again. And I will not be so troubled any more.

²⁹ So receive him with much joy because he is a Christian brother. Give respect to men like him.

³⁰ He almost died doing the work of Christ. You wished to help me, but you could not come. He came instead. He was willing to put his life in danger in order to help me.

¹³ After the wise men had gone, Joseph had a dream. An angel of the Lord came to him and said, `Get up. Take the child and his mother, and go quickly to the country of Egypt. Stay there till I tell you, because Herod will try to find the child and kill him.'

¹⁴ Joseph woke up. He took the child and his mother in the night and went to Egypt.

¹⁵ He stayed there until Herod died. What the Lord told through his prophet long ago, came true. He said `I called my son out of Egypt.'

¹⁶ Herod saw that the wise men had fooled him. He was very angry. He sent men to kill all the baby boys in the town of Bethlehem and around it. They killed all the boys who were two years old or less. Herod remembered what the wise men had told him about the time they first saw the star.

¹⁷ So what the prophet Jeremiah said, came true.

¹⁸ He said, `A voice could be heard in the town of Ramah. Rachel was crying for her children. She would not let anyone comfort her because her children were dead.'

¹⁹ Herod died. Then Joseph had a dream. An angel of the Lord came to him in Egypt.

²⁰ The angel said, `Get up. Take the child and his mother and go to the country of Israel. The men who wanted to kill the child are dead.'

²¹ Joseph woke up. He took the child and his mother and went to the country of Israel.

²² But he heard that Archelaus was king of Judea in his father Herod's place. So he was afraid to go there. In a dream he was told what to do. He went to the country of Galilee.

²³ He went and made his home in the town of Nazareth. The prophets of God long ago had said, `He shall be called a man from Nazareth.' What they said came true.