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I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
Ephesians 4:1-3 (ESV)"If my sinfulness appears to me in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all."
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, *Life Together*
"The church is not meant to be a society of people who all agree about everything. It is meant to be a society of people who, though they disagree about many things, have discovered that they are bound together by something deeper than their disagreements."
-- N.T. Wright, *Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters*
"Christians are not distinguished from the rest of humanity by country, language, or custom. … They dwell in their own countries, but only as sojourners. … Every foreign land is their fatherland, and every fatherland is a foreign land. … In a word, what the soul is to the body, Christians are to the world."
-- The Letter to Diognetus, Chapter 5
"Mortification from self-strength, carried on by ways of self-invention, unto the end of a self-righteousness, is the soul and substance of all false religion in the world."
-- John Owen, *The Mortification of Sin*
If the calling you received came with no audience, no recognition, and no visible return -- would you walk in it just the same?
"It is no proof of a great mind to give away money and to waste it; but it is a proof of a great mind to give it away with a purpose and a plan, and for the sake of what is honorable and helpful. … For what is more shameful than that he who has declared virtue to be the highest good should live in dependence upon another?"
-- Cicero, *De Officiis*, Book I
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