NEUOFFENBARUNG[Lao.01_001,01] Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will and grace of God, and Timothy our brother,
[Lao.01_001,02] to the holy congregation of Laodicea, to all the brothers in it who believe in Jesus Christ, and to those who are wise in the Spirit of God. Grace be with you, and true peace from God our Father in the Lord Jesus Christ!
[Lao.01_001,03] We always thank, praise and glorify God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are deeply concerned for you and pray to God for you continually.
[Lao.01_001,04] For through the Spirit of the Lord, and through our brother Epaphras and Nymphas, we have heard that in some respects you have fallen away,
[Lao.01_001,05] that you have chosen a bishop and a clergy for yourselves and would make an idol of Christ, and that you have appointed for yourselves a house, a day and ornamented robes,
[Lao.01_001,06] as was done in part among the Gentiles and among the Jews when circumcision of the flesh still counted before God. He appointed it in the days of our father Abraham as a sign foreshadowing the living circumcision of the spirit through Jesus Christ within you.
[Lao.01_001,07] I make this known to you so that you may know what a struggle I endure for your sake, both for those who have seen me in the flesh and for those who have not,
[Lao.01_001,08] and so that you may be earnestly admonished in your hearts and may unite in love, in which lies all the wealth of assured understanding, to recognise the great mystery of God the Father in his Son Jesus Christ,
[Lao.01_001,09] in whom all the treasures of wisdom and living knowledge in the spirit are hidden.
[Lao.01_001,10] I admonish you so that no one may lead you astray with plausible and embellished speeches or with the philosophy of the Gentiles.
[Lao.01_001,11] For reason belongs to animals too, just as philosophy belongs to the Gentiles who sacrifice to dead idols.
[Lao.01_001,12] But you have been bought by the death of the One for eternal life in God the Father. How can you dedicate your heart, which has become a dwelling of the Holy Spirit, to the spirit of the dead once more?
[Lao.01_001,13] Though I am not with you in the flesh, I am always with you in spirit through the power of Christ in me, and I see your faith and your works.
[Lao.01_001,14] I therefore wish to admonish you earnestly and show you, dear brothers, into what great folly some of you have fallen. I know their specious arguments and what they want.
[Lao.01_001,15] Hold fast to Jesus Christ as you received and accepted him from me, and walk according to the gospel I faithfully preached to you.
[Lao.01_001,16] Take firm root in it and be steadfast in faith, as I taught you all in the Spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ, the living Son of God, who rules at the right hand of the Father from eternity.
[Lao.01_001,17] But by what you now want to become and how you want things to be, you set yourselves against Christ and his word.
[Lao.01_001,18] What, then, do you want? Would you once again become slaves and harshly kept servants of the law, sin and death, from all of which we have been set free through Jesus Christ?
[Lao.01_001,19] Hear me. I tell you to take great care lest you be enticed and robbed by your worldly wisdom and by the worthless teaching of those among you who fear the Romans and the blind Jews more than the Lord of glory, who redeemed us and through whom we, heaven and earth, and all things were made.
[Lao.01_001,20] When I was among you, your worldly wise men asked me what difference there was between God and his Son Christ. I took the floor and said to them:
[Lao.01_001,21] ‘Listen, brothers. God is one, and Christ is one. For if there is only one God, there is only one Christ. What difference could there be between God and Christ? God is love, and Christ is the wisdom in God, or the light, the truth, the way and eternal life.
[Lao.01_001,22] ‘In Christ the whole fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily, and in him we are complete. For he is the foundation and head of all glory, all might and power, and all authority in the world, and is prince over all the principalities of the earth.’
[Lao.01_001,23] If I, Paul, have spoken to you thus in the Spirit and in all truth, how can you now let yourselves be beguiled by human teachings and worldly ordinances?
[Lao.01_001,24] You were circumcised without hand or knife by the Holy Spirit when you laid aside your sinful life, which had taken deep root in the flesh of your bodies. That was a true and living circumcision in Christ.
[Lao.01_001,25] For in your sinful flesh you were buried with Christ to the world through baptism with the Holy Spirit. Then through Christ you rose to new life through living faith and love for him.
[Lao.01_001,26] What do you want with the old circumcision, which has come to an end? What do you want with a ceremony that has no value now, since Christ has already come and risen, and we in him? What do you want with the Sabbath, when Christ worked on every day and still works, thereby making every day a day of the Lord, and did not keep the Sabbath as a feast?
[Lao.01_001,27] I know you well enough to tell you that Christ, as he is, wills to be poor in the world, while you want gold. That is why you want a house of prayer, a feast day and ornamented robes.
[Lao.01_001,28] You say that through Christ his Son God nowhere abolished the ordinances of Moses, but rather confirmed them at the Last Supper, so that there must also be a sacrificial ceremony.
[Lao.01_001,29] Yet I, Paul, a true apostle of the Lord chosen by God, am filled with the Spirit of God. How is it that the Spirit of God has never shown me any such thing, though before my calling I was a far more zealous minister and servant of the Temple than you ever were?
[Lao.01_001,30] I will tell you now. When the Spirit of God awakened me as I was going to Damascus to persecute the young congregation of Christ there, the first thing I saw, even in my blindness, was that the Lord wills to be honoured and worshipped in spirit and in truth, and never in a ceremony.
[Lao.01_001,31] For God had not first made blind anyone he had called to his service. But I had to become blind first, so that I would lose everything that belongs to the world before I could become even one of the least of his servants.
[Lao.01_001,32] Why did I have to become blind first? Because my whole being was buried in the material things of Temple worship, and had to be taken out of them.
[Lao.01_001,33] If the Lord called me without ceremony in my blindness, how could I ever have made a ceremony of the Supper?
[Lao.01_001,34] Is it not as the Spirit of God always teaches me? Whoever has the light of their eyes sees the ceremonies of the world and takes pleasure in them.
[Lao.01_001,35] But to the blind person the whole world with its ceremony has passed away, together with the old Temple worship and all the ornamented robes.
[Lao.01_001,36] It is an eternal truth, then, that the Lord did not call me to establish a new ceremony, but to lift up the hearts around which Satan had forged his hard chains for thousands of years,
[Lao.01_001,37] and to preach to everyone the freedom of the spirit and the peace of the soul, so as to break the old, hard bonds of death in Christ the Lord.
[Lao.01_001,38] But what good is my teaching to me and to you, and what good is the gospel of God, if you willingly give yourselves over to the old death again?
[Lao.01_001,39] For the sake of your eternal life I beg you to give up what the old captivity in Babylon left as a harsh inheritance to all the Jews.
[Lao.01_001,40] See, the Lord destroyed Babylon, the great harlot of the world, for she gave death to many peoples. What will you gain by making a new Babylon of Laodicea? Give up, then, what might bring back the abomination of desolation, which Daniel foretold as standing in the holy place.
[Lao.01_001,41] Christ made you alive when you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh. He forgave you all the sins you had committed in the Temple and in your uncircumcision.
[Lao.01_001,42] He blotted out the bloody record that stood against us all, arising from worldly ordinances. In that writing our names were entered in the book of the world, the book of judgement and the book of death. He nailed it to the cross.
[Lao.01_001,43] Why would you now tear down that writing in blood, blotted out by God himself and nailed to the cross of judgement, shame, curse and death, and exchange your new names in Christ for the old ones written in blood in the book of judgement?
[Lao.01_001,44] O blind fools, foolish beyond measure! In Christ you have become free, and now you want to become slaves and servants of sin, judgement and death again. Have you not heard that whoever is nailed to the cross is accursed?
[Lao.01_001,45] But Christ took upon himself your disgrace, shame, sin, judgement and death, and let himself be nailed to the cross as one accursed for your sake, to secure full freedom before God for you all. So that you might walk honourably, he took all your disgrace and shame with him to the cross.
[Lao.01_001,46] What has beguiled you, who were made alive in Christ, so that you now want to give yourselves over to death all over again?
[Lao.01_001,47] To what shall I compare you, to strike home like a well-aimed throw? You are like a wanton woman living in a city, though she is the daughter of a respectable house.
[Lao.01_001,48] Listen to me and mark my words. What good is her respectable birth if her flesh burns with lust more fiercely than the fat of a well-fed scapegoat?
[Lao.01_001,49] Will she not pace up and down in her room, burning with desire, lean halfway out of one window and then another, and cast her lustful eyes in all directions for someone who has what her flesh longs and burns for?
[Lao.01_001,50] If she catches sight of him, she will show him what she wants by the wanton fire of her eyes. In her desire she will sin with him ten times more than a prostitute in a bed of shame with her lover.
[Lao.01_001,51] See, Laodiceans, that is your likeness. Do you know what an honourable suitor will do when he passes her house and sees her shameful lust?
[Lao.01_001,52] He will put her out of his heart and speak of her no more. He will not look upon her again, even if she falls into the greatest distress.
[Lao.01_001,53] The Lord will do the same to you. He has raised a new, living temple in your hearts, where you are to wait for him. But you scorn that temple, that holy chamber, and run in sheer worldly lust to the windows of judgement to dally with the world. You lust for its gold, its prestige and its power.
[Lao.01_001,54] I tell you that the Lord will withdraw and let you go into every kind of prostitution, into the old judgement and the old death, unless you turn back at once and entirely abandon your self-appointed clergy, your temple, your feast day and your ornamented robes. For all this is an abomination before the Lord, like a wanton woman who in her heart is worse than ten harlots of Babylon.