I can assure you that they gave as much as they could, and even more than they could. Of their own free will

You were so happy! What has happened? I myself can say that you would have taken out your own eyes, if you could, and given them to me.

I can personally testify to his hard work for you and for the people in Laodicea and Hierapolis.

saying, "Come with me and see for yourself how devoted I am to the LORD." And they rode on together to Samaria.

You will be expelled from the synagogues, and the time will come when those who kill you will think that by doing this they are serving God.

After hearing him, they all praised God. Then they said, "Brother Paul, you can see how many thousands of Jews have become believers, and how devoted they all are to the Law.

"People of Israel!" they shouted. "Help! This is the man who goes everywhere teaching everyone against the people of Israel, the Law of Moses, and this Temple. And now he has even brought some Gentiles into the Temple and defiled this holy place!"

"I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up here in Jerusalem as a student of Gamaliel. I received strict instruction in the Law of our ancestors and was just as dedicated to God as are all of you who are here today.

The people listened to Paul until he said this; but then they started shouting at the top of their voices, "Away with him! Kill him! He's not fit to live!"

"I myself thought that I should do everything I could against the cause of Jesus of Nazareth.

That is what I did in Jerusalem. I received authority from the chief priests and put many of God's people in prison; and when they were sentenced to death, I also voted against them.

I was ahead of most other Jews of my age in my practice of the Jewish religion, and was much more devoted to the traditions of our ancestors.

Those other people show a deep interest in you, but their intentions are not good. All they want is to separate you from me, so that you will have the same interest in them as they have in you.

Now, it is good to have such a deep interest if the purpose is good---this is true always, and not merely when I am with you.

and I was so zealous that I persecuted the church. As far as a person can be righteous by obeying the commands of the Law, I was without fault.

They have not known the way in which God puts people right with himself, and instead, they have tried to set up their own way; and so they did not submit themselves to God's way of putting people right.

while God's people, who were seeking a law that would put them right with God, did not find it.

And why not? Because they did not depend on faith but on what they did. And so they stumbled over the "stumbling stone"

"Don't they know?" asks the LORD. "Are all these evildoers ignorant? They live by robbing my people, and they never pray to me."

Enthusiasm without knowledge is not good; impatience will get you into trouble.

On that day the LORD will use his powerful and deadly sword to punish Leviathan, that wriggling, twisting dragon, and to kill the monster that lives in the sea.

They do not believe, because their minds have been kept in the dark by the evil god of this world. He keeps them from seeing the light shining on them, the light that comes from the Good News about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God.

The God who said, "Out of darkness the light shall shine!" is the same God who made his light shine in our hearts, to bring us the knowledge of God's glory shining in the face of Christ.

I pray that your love will keep on growing more and more, together with true knowledge and perfect judgment,