For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel.
my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you!
According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it.
I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.
In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel.
since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God;
Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.
I, Paul, write this with my own hand: I will repay it—to say nothing of your owing me even your own self.
I appeal to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I became in my imprisonment. (Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful to you and to me.) I am sending him back to you, sending my very heart.
To Titus, my true child in a common faith: Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.
For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions,
Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you, or from you? You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all. And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
What then is my reward? That in my preaching I may present the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my right in the gospel.
If others share this rightful claim on you, do not we even more? Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ.
I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.
and thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else's foundation,
And he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath, and tried to persuade Jews and Greeks. When Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia, Paul was occupied with the word, testifying to the Jews that the Christ was Jesus. And when they opposed and reviled him, he shook out his garments and said to them, “Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.” And he left there and went to the house of a man named Titius Justus, a worshiper of God. His house was next door to the synagogue. Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believed in the Lord, together with his entire household. And many of the Corinthians hearing Paul believed and were baptized.
Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are not you my workmanship in the Lord? If to others I am not an apostle, at least I am to you, for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.
Unless otherwise indicated, all content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Copyright ©2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Contact me: openbibleinfo (at) gmail.com.