But when you are invited, go and sit down in the last place, so that when he who invited you comes, he shall say to you, 'Friend, go up higher.' Then you will have glory in the presence of those who recline with you.

For everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled, and he who humbles himself shall be exalted."

even the righteousness of God, through [the] faithfulness of Jesus Christ, to all and upon all those that believe. For there is no distinction;

being justified freely by His grace through the redemption in Christ Jesus,

that the Gentiles should be joint-heirs, and of the same body, and joint-partakers in His promise in Christ by the gospel,

They seek Me day by day, and desire to know My ways, as a people that had done righteousness, and had not forsaken the judgment of their God; they now ask of Me righteous judgment, and desire to draw near to God,

saying, Why have we fasted, and You did not see? [Why] have we afflicted our souls, and You did not know it? Nay, in the days of your fasts you find your pleasures, and all them that are under your power you wound.

speaking to the priests that were in the house of the Lord Almighty, and to the prophets, saying, The holy offering has come in here in the fifth month, as it has done already many years.

Speak to the whole people of the land, and to the priests, saying, Though you fasted or lamented in the fifth or seventh [months] (yea, behold, these seventy years) have you at all fasted to Me?

And you said, These [services] are troublesome: therefore I have utterly rejected them with scorn, says the Lord Almighty: and you brought in torn victims, and lame, and sick: if then you should bring an offering, shall I accept them at your hands? Says the Lord Almighty.

You said, He that serves God labors in vain: and what have we gained in that we have kept His ordinances, and in that we have walked as suppliants before the face of the Lord Almighty?

So he answered and said to his father, 'Lo, so many years I have been serving you and I never transgressed your commandment; and yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might make merry with my friends.

But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your livelihood with prostitutes, you slaughtered the fatted calf for him.'

The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, 'God, I thank You that I am not like other men--swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.

I fast twice a week, I tithe [on] all things, as many as I acquire.'

Where then is the boasting? It is excluded. Through what law? Of works? No, but through the law of faith.

What shall we say then? That Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness of faith;

Why? Because [they did] not [seek it] by faith, but as it were, by the works of the law. For they stumbled the stone of stumbling.

Brothers, the good pleasure of my heart and my supplication to God on behalf of Israel, is for [their] salvation.

For they, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.

Even so then, at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace.

And if by grace, [it is] no longer of works; otherwise grace is no longer grace. But if [it is] of works, it is no longer grace; otherwise work is no longer work.

Even unto this present hour we both hunger and thirst, and we are naked, and beaten, and homeless.

Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool) I [am] even more: in labors far more, in beatings immeasurably, in imprisonments far more, in deaths often.

Three times I was beaten with rods; once I was stoned; three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I have spent in the depth [of the sea].

in labor and hardship, in sleepless nights often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness--