Bible verses about "perserverance" | Goodspeed

⁸ Love will never die out. If there is inspired preaching, it will pass away. If there is ecstatic speaking, it will cease. If there is knowledge, it will pass away.

¹³ May God, the source of hope, fill you with perfect happiness and peace in your faith, so that you may have overflowing hope through the power of the holy Spirit.

¹ For I want you to know what a fight I am putting up for you and for our brothers in Laodicea, and for all who do not know me personally, ² that your hearts may be cheered. I want you to be united by love, and to have all the benefit of assured knowledge in coming to know Christ— ³ that divine mystery in which all treasures of wisdom and knowledge are to be found. ⁴ What I mean is, let nobody mislead you by specious arguments. ⁵ For though I am absent from you in person I am with you in spirit, and I am glad to observe your harmony and the solidity of your faith in Christ. ⁶ So just as you once accepted the Christ, Jesus, as your Lord, you must live in vital union with him. ⁷ You must be rooted and built up in him and made strong in faith, just as you were taught to be, overflowing with it in your gratitude. ⁸ Take care that nobody exploits you through the pretensions of philosophy, guided by human tradition, following material ways of looking at things, instead of following Christ. ⁹ For it is in him that all the fulness of God's nature lives embodied, ¹⁰ and in union with him you too are filled with it. He is the head of all your principalities and dominions. ¹¹ Through your relation to him you have received not a physical circumcision, but a circumcision effected by Christ, in stripping you of your material nature, ¹² when in your baptism you were buried with him, and raised to life with him through your faith in the power of God who raised him from the dead. ¹³ Yes, you who were dead through your misdeeds and physically uncircumcised, God raised to life with Christ. He forgave us all our misdeeds, ¹⁴ canceled the bond which stood against us, with its requirements, and put it out of our way when he nailed it to the cross. ¹⁵ He disarmed the principalities and dominions and displayed them openly, triumphing over them through him. ¹⁶ So no one can call you to account for what you eat or drink, or do about annual or monthly feasts or Sabbaths. ¹⁷ That was all only the shadow of something that was to follow; the reality is found in Christ. ¹⁸ No one can put you in the wrong by persisting in studied humility and the worship of angels, being absorbed in the visions he has seen, and groundlessly conceited over his mere human mind. ¹⁹ Such people lose their connection with the head, from which the whole body through its ligaments and sinews must be governed and united if it is to grow in the divine way. ²⁰ If you have died with Christ to material ways of looking at things, why do you act as though you still belonged to the world, and submit to rules like ²¹ "You must not handle," "You must not taste," "You must not touch"— ²² referring to things that are all meant to be used up and destroyed? This is to follow mere human rules and regulations. ²³ Such practices pass for wisdom, with their self-imposed devotions, their self-humiliation, and their ascetic discipline, but they carry with them no real distinction, they are really only a catering to the flesh.

⁸ For it is by his mercy that you have been saved through faith. It is not by your own action, it is the gift of God. ⁹ It has not been earned, so that no one can boast of it.

²³ For anyone who merely listens to the message without obeying it is like a man who looks in a mirror at the face that nature gave him, ²⁴ and then goes off and immediately forgets what he looked like. ²⁵ But whoever looks at the faultless law that makes men free and keeps looking, so that he does not just listen and forget, but obeys and acts upon it, will be blessed in what he does.

³ Think of the opposition that he encountered from those sinners against themselves, if you would not grow weary and faint-hearted.

¹ Now I want to remind you, brothers, of the form in which I presented to you the good news I brought, which you accepted and have stood by, ² and through which you are to be saved, if you hold on, unless your faith has been all for nothing. ³ For I passed on to you, as of first importance, the account I had received, that Christ died for our sins, as the Scriptures foretold, ⁴ that he was buried, that on the third day he was raised from the dead, as the Scriptures foretold, ⁵ and that he was seen by Cephas, and then by the Twelve. ⁶ After that he was seen by more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, although some of them have fallen asleep. ⁷ Then he was seen by James, then by all the apostles, ⁸ and finally he was seen by me also, as though I were born at the wrong time. ⁹ For I am the least important of the apostles, and am not fit to be called an apostle, because I once persecuted God's church. ¹⁰ But by God's favor I have become what I am, and the favor he showed me has not gone for nothing, but I have worked harder than any of them, although it was not really I but the favor God showed me. ¹¹ But whether it was I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed. ¹² Now if what we preach about Christ is that he was raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no such thing as a resurrection of the dead? ¹³ If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ was not raised, ¹⁴ and if Christ was not raised, there is nothing in our message; there is nothing in our faith either, ¹⁵ and we are found guilty of misrepresenting God, for we have testified that he raised Christ, when he did not do it, if it is true that the dead are never raised. ¹⁶ For if the dead are never raised, Christ was not raised; ¹⁷ and if Christ was not raised, your faith is a delusion; you are still under the control of your sins. ¹⁸ Yes, and those who have fallen asleep in trust in Christ have perished. ¹⁹ If we have centered our hopes on Christ in this life, and that is all, we are the most pitiable people in the world. ²⁰ But the truth is, Christ was raised from the dead, the first to be raised of those who have fallen asleep. ²¹ For since it was through a man that we have death, it is through a man also that we have the raising of the dead. ²² For just as because of their relation to Adam all men die, so because of their relation to Christ they will all be brought to life again. ²³ But each in his own turn; Christ first, and then at Christ's coming those who belong to him. ²⁴ After that will come the end, when he will turn over the kingdom to God his Father, bringing to an end all other government, authority, and power, ²⁵ for he must retain the kingdom until he puts all his enemies under his feet. ²⁶ The last enemy to be overthrown will be death, ²⁷ for everything is to be reduced to subjection and put under Christ's feet. But when it says that everything is subject to him, he is evidently excepted who reduced it all to subjection to him. ²⁸ And when everything is reduced to subjection to him, then the Son himself will also become subject to him who has reduced everything to subjection to him, so that God may be everything to everyone. ²⁹ Otherwise, what do people mean by having themselves baptized on behalf of their dead? If the dead do not rise at all, why do they have themselves baptized on their behalf? ³⁰ Why do we ourselves run such risks every hour? ³¹ By the very pride I take in you, brothers, through our union with Christ Jesus our Lord, I face death every day. ³² From the human point of view, what good is it to me that I have fought wild animals here in Ephesus? If the dead do not rise at all, "Let us eat and drink, for we will be dead tomorrow!" ³³ Do not be misled. Bad company ruins character. ³⁴ Return to your sober sense as you ought, and stop sinning, for some of you are utterly ignorant about God. To your shame I say so. ³⁵ But someone will say, "How can the dead rise? What kind of a body will they have when they come back?" ³⁶ You foolish man, the very seed you sow never comes to life without dying first; ³⁷ and when you sow it, it has not the form it is going to have, but is a naked kernel, perhaps of wheat or something else; ³⁸ and God gives it just such a form as he pleases, so that each kind of seed has a form of its own. ³⁹ Flesh is not all alike; men have one kind, animals another, birds another, and fish another. ⁴⁰ There are heavenly bodies, and there are earthly bodies, but the beauty of the heavenly bodies is of one kind, and the beauty of the earthly bodies is of another. ⁴¹ The sun has one kind of beauty, and the moon another, and the stars another; why, one star differs from another in beauty. ⁴² It is so with the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown in decay, it is raised free from decay. ⁴³ It is sown in humiliation, it is raised in splendor. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in strength. ⁴⁴ It is a physical body that is sown, it is a spiritual body that is raised. If there is a physical body, there is a spiritual body also. ⁴⁵ This is also what the Scripture says: "The first man Adam became a living creature." The last Adam has become a life-giving Spirit. ⁴⁶ It is not the spiritual that comes first, but the physical, and then the spiritual. ⁴⁷ The first man is of the dust of the earth; the second man is from heaven. ⁴⁸ Those who are of the earth are like him who was of the earth, and those who are of heaven are like him who is from heaven, ⁴⁹ and as we have been like the man of the earth, let us also try to be like the man from heaven. ⁵⁰ But I can tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot share in the Kingdom of God, and decay will not share in what is imperishable. ⁵¹ I will tell you a secret. We shall not all fall asleep, but we shall all be changed, ⁵² in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the sound of the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised free from decay, and we shall be changed. ⁵³ For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality. ⁵⁴ And when this mortal nature puts on immortality, then what the Scripture says will come true—"Death has been triumphantly destroyed. ⁵⁵ Where, Death, is your victory? Where, Death, is your sting?" ⁵⁶ Sin is the sting of death, and it is the Law that gives sin its power. ⁵⁷ But thank God! He gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁵⁸ So my dear brothers, be firm and unmoved, and always devote yourselves to the Lord's work, for you know that through the Lord your labor is not thrown away.

¹³ But you, brothers, must not get tired of doing right.

²⁴ Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one wins the prize? That is the way you must run, so as to win. ²⁵ Any man who enters an athletic contest goes into strict training, to win a wreath that will soon wither, but the one we compete for will never wither. ²⁶ So that is the way I run, unswervingly. That is the way I fight, not punching the air. ²⁷ But I beat and bruise my body and make it my slave, so that after I have called others to the contest I may not be disqualified myself.

³ More than that, we ought to glory in our troubles, for we know that trouble produces endurance,

¹ Therefore, let us too, with such a crowd of witnesses about us, throw off every impediment and the entanglement of sin, and run with determination the race for which we are entered, ² fixing our eyes upon Jesus, our leader and example in faith, who in place of the happiness that belonged to him, submitted to a cross, caring nothing for its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

⁹ Let us not get tired of doing right, for at the proper time we shall reap, if we do not give out.