More Persecution

¹About this time King Herod began to persecute some members of the church.

²He had James, the brother of John, put to death by the sword.

³When he saw that this pleased the Jews, he went ahead and had Peter arrested. (This happened during the time of the Festival of Unleavened Bread.)

⁴After his arrest Peter was put in jail, where he was handed over to be guarded by four groups of four soldiers each. Herod planned to put him on trial in public after Passover.

⁵So Peter was kept in jail, but the people of the church were praying earnestly to God for him.

Peter Is Set Free from Prison

⁶The night before Herod was going to bring him out to the people, Peter was sleeping between two guards. He was tied with two chains, and there were guards on duty at the prison gate.

⁷Suddenly an angel of the Lord stood there, and a light shone in the cell. The angel shook Peter by the shoulder, woke him up, and said, “Hurry! Get up!” At once the chains fell off Peter's hands.

⁸Then the angel said, “Tighten your belt and put on your sandals.” Peter did so, and the angel said, “Put your cloak around you and come with me.”

⁹Peter followed him out of the prison, not knowing, however, if what the angel was doing was real; he thought he was seeing a vision.

¹⁰They passed by the first guard station and then the second, and came at last to the iron gate that opens into the city. The gate opened for them by itself, and they went out. They walked down a street, and suddenly the angel left Peter.

¹¹Then Peter realized what had happened to him, and said, “Now I know that it is really true! The Lord sent his angel to rescue me from Herod's power and from everything the Jewish people expected to happen.”

¹²Aware of his situation, he went to the home of Mary, the mother of John Mark, where many people had gathered and were praying.

¹³Peter knocked at the outside door, and a servant named Rhoda came to answer it.

¹⁴She recognized Peter's voice and was so happy that she ran back in without opening the door, and announced that Peter was standing outside.

¹⁵“You are crazy!” they told her. But she insisted that it was true. So they answered, “It is his angel.”

¹⁶Meanwhile Peter kept on knocking. At last they opened the door, and when they saw him, they were amazed.

¹⁷He motioned with his hand for them to be quiet, and he explained to them how the Lord had brought him out of prison. “Tell this to James and the rest of the believers,” he said; then he left and went somewhere else.

¹⁸When morning came, there was a tremendous confusion among the guards—what had happened to Peter?

¹⁹Herod gave orders to search for him, but they could not find him. So he had the guards questioned and ordered them put to death. After this, Herod left Judea and spent some time in Caesarea.

The Death of Herod

²⁰Herod was very angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon, so they went in a group to see him. First they convinced Blastus, the man in charge of the palace, that he should help them. Then they went to Herod and asked him for peace, because their country got its food supplies from the king's country.

²¹On a chosen day Herod put on his royal robes, sat on his throne, and made a speech to the people.

²²“It isn't a man speaking, but a god!” they shouted.

²³At once the angel of the Lord struck Herod down, because he did not give honor to God. He was eaten by worms and died.

²⁴Meanwhile the word of God continued to spread and grow.

²⁵Barnabas and Saul finished their mission and returned from Jerusalem, taking John Mark with them.

Immorality in the Church

¹Now, it is actually being said that there is sexual immorality among you so terrible that not even the heathen would be guilty of it. I am told that a man is sleeping with his stepmother!

²How, then, can you be proud? On the contrary, you should be filled with sadness, and the man who has done such a thing should be expelled from your fellowship.

^3-4And even though I am far away from you in body, still I am there with you in spirit; and as though I were there with you, I have in the name of our Lord Jesus already passed judgment on the man who has done this terrible thing. As you meet together, and I meet with you in my spirit, by the power of our Lord Jesus present with us,

⁵you are to hand this man over to Satan for his body to be destroyed, so that his spirit may be saved in the Day of the Lord.

⁶It is not right for you to be proud! You know the saying, “A little bit of yeast makes the whole batch of dough rise.”

⁷You must remove the old yeast of sin so that you will be entirely pure. Then you will be like a new batch of dough without any yeast, as indeed I know you actually are. For our Passover Festival is ready, now that Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.

⁸Let us celebrate our Passover, then, not with bread having the old yeast of sin and wickedness, but with the bread that has no yeast, the bread of purity and truth.

⁹In the letter that I wrote you I told you not to associate with immoral people.

¹⁰Now I did not mean pagans who are immoral or greedy or are thieves, or who worship idols. To avoid them you would have to get out of the world completely.

¹¹What I meant was that you should not associate with a person who calls himself a believer but is immoral or greedy or worships idols or is a slanderer or a drunkard or a thief. Don't even sit down to eat with such a person.

^12-13After all, it is none of my business to judge outsiders. God will judge them. But should you not judge the members of your own fellowship? As the scripture says, “Remove the evil person from your group.”

Lawsuits against Fellow Christians

¹If any of you have a dispute with another Christian, how dare you go before heathen judges instead of letting God's people settle the matter?

²Don't you know that God's people will judge the world? Well, then, if you are to judge the world, aren't you capable of judging small matters?

³Do you not know that we shall judge the angels? How much more, then, the things of this life!

⁴If such matters come up, are you going to take them to be settled by people who have no standing in the church?

⁵Shame on you! Surely there is at least one wise person in your fellowship who can settle a dispute between fellow Christians.

⁶Instead, one Christian goes to court against another and lets unbelievers judge the case!

⁷The very fact that you have legal disputes among yourselves shows that you have failed completely. Would it not be better for you to be wronged? Would it not be better for you to be robbed?

⁸Instead, you yourselves wrong one another and rob one another, even other believers!

⁹Surely you know that the wicked will not possess God's Kingdom. Do not fool yourselves; people who are immoral or who worship idols or are adulterers or homosexual perverts

¹⁰or who steal or are greedy or are drunkards or who slander others or are thieves—none of these will possess God's Kingdom.

¹¹Some of you were like that. But you have been purified from sin; you have been dedicated to God; you have been put right with God by the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Use Your Bodies for God's Glory

¹²Someone will say, “I am allowed to do anything.” Yes; but not everything is good for you. I could say that I am allowed to do anything, but I am not going to let anything make me its slave.

¹³Someone else will say, “Food is for the stomach, and the stomach is for food.” Yes; but God will put an end to both. The body is not to be used for sexual immorality, but to serve the Lord; and the Lord provides for the body.

¹⁴God raised the Lord from death, and he will also raise us by his power.

¹⁵You know that your bodies are parts of the body of Christ. Shall I take a part of Christ's body and make it part of the body of a prostitute? Impossible!

¹⁶Or perhaps you don't know that the man who joins his body to a prostitute becomes physically one with her? The scripture says quite plainly, “The two will become one body.”

¹⁷But he who joins himself to the Lord becomes spiritually one with him.

¹⁸Avoid immorality. Any other sin a man commits does not affect his body; but the man who is guilty of sexual immorality sins against his own body.

¹⁹Don't you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and who was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourselves but to God;

²⁰he bought you for a price. So use your bodies for God's glory.

¹The wicked run when no one is chasing them, but an honest person is as brave as a lion.

²When a nation sins, it will have one ruler after another. But a nation will be strong and endure when it has intelligent, sensible leaders.

³Someone in authority who oppresses poor people is like a driving rain that destroys the crops.