12 Therefore, my dearly-loved friends, as I have always found you obedient, labour earnestly with fear and trembling –not merely as though I were present with you, but much more now since I am absent from you– labour earnestly, I say, to make sure of your own salvation.
13 For it is God Himself whose power creates within you the desire to do His gracious will and also brings about the accomplishment of the desire.
14 Be ever on your guard against a grudging and contentious spirit,
15 so that you may always prove yourselves to be blameless and spotless–irreproachable children of God in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you are seen as heavenly lights in the world,
16 holding out to them a Message of Life. It will then be my glory on the day of Christ that I did not run my race in vain nor toil in vain.