Obeying those in authority
13
📚✭✭Every person should be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God; the authorities that exist have been determined by God. 2 📚Therefore, whoever resists the authority is resisting what God has arranged, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. 3 📚For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Do you want to be without fear of the authority? Do what is good, and you will receive praise from him. 4 📚For he is God’s minister to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is God’s minister✭, an avenger to execute wrath on him who does evil. 5 📚Therefore you need to be subject to the authorities, not only because of wrath, but also because of conscience.6 📚✭For this reason you also pay taxes; for they are God’s ministers, attending continually to this very thing. 7 📚Therefore, give to all their due; tax to whom tax is due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honour to whom honour.
The principle of love
8 📚✭Do not owe anyone anything, except to love one another. For he who loves others has fulfilled the Law. 9 📚✭For the commandments, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, You shall not covet, and any other commandment there may be, are summed up in this saying, namely, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself”. 10 📚Love does no harm to a neighbour, so love is the fulfilling of the Law.
11 📚✭✭And do that, knowing the present time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep. for now our salvation is nearer than when we believed. 12 📚The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Let us, therefore, cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light✭. 13 📚Let us walk decently, as in the daylight, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and unbridled lust, not in strife and envy. 14 📚✭But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfil its cravings.