endurance brings God's approval, and his approval creates hope.

This hope does not disappoint us, for God has poured out his love into our hearts by means of the Holy Spirit, who is God's gift to us.

When the true message, the Good News, first came to you, you heard about the hope it offers. So your faith and love are based on what you hope for, which is kept safe for you in heaven.

May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and in his grace gave us unfailing courage and a firm hope,

so that by his grace we might be put right with God and come into possession of the eternal life we hope for.

There are these two things, then, that cannot change and about which God cannot lie. So we who have found safety with him are greatly encouraged to hold firmly to the hope placed before us.

He made no difference between us and them; he forgave their sins because they believed.

All these promises are made to us, my dear friends. So then, let us purify ourselves from everything that makes body or soul unclean, and let us be completely holy by living in awe of God.

Try to be at peace with everyone, and try to live a holy life, because no one will see the Lord without it.

In this way he has given us the very great and precious gifts he promised, so that by means of these gifts you may escape from the destructive lust that is in the world, and may come to share the divine nature.

And so, my friends, as you wait for that Day, do your best to be pure and faultless in God's sight and to be at peace with him.

if we say that we remain in union with God, we should live just as Jesus Christ did.

Love is made perfect in us in order that we may have courage on the Judgment Day; and we will have it because our life in this world is the same as Christ's.

You must be perfect---just as your Father in heaven is perfect.

Be merciful just as your Father is merciful.

Jesus, then, is the High Priest that meets our needs. He is holy; he has no fault or sin in him; he has been set apart from sinners and raised above the heavens.