August 5th.

I urge you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them. For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. By smooth talk and flattery they deceive the minds of naive people. Everyone has heard about your obedience, so I am full of joy over you; but I want you to be wise about what is good, and innocent about what is evil.

The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.

Satan is a force that lives in the humans that creates appetites in them that need to be satisfied. Here Paul is addressing the powerful egotistical appetite, one born from the need to survive mentally and emotionally, to find the agreement inside oneself that tells him he is okay, acceptable, on the right track. Its origins goes way back to the very first "conversation" the "talking" serpent (satan) had with the human (most likely just thoughts in their minds, the same as the satan who was in the Son's mind during the temptation account, figuratively written as "standing before him"). It proposed, first to the woman then to the man, that they shouldn't be happy and satisfied with what God gave them but instead they should seek to get for themselves what He specifically told them would do them harm, what they didn't want no matter how appealing it looked. It was there to represent the choice against the Father because God didn't/doesn't want automatons who are forced to be His family. He only wants sons who want to and do choose Him over whatever the alternative is (the appealing/alluring consequence), which is the basis for love.

The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again.

The humans chose against God, so they were given over to that choice of "knowing good and evil," which is being able to tell the difference, being able to be the one who is right because he can tell the difference on his own i.e., he doesn't want to let God tell him, he doesn't want to be dependent on a Father who can decide for him because He knows about fifty million times as much about what's good and bad for His children. The idea is that God, after which the humans were made (the father/son relationship), wants His son to depend on Him instead of being like a feral cat who can't be touched. This egotistical appetite exists as the urge to be the one who gets noticed and praised not by God but by the humans who have nothing to do with God, and it is a powerfully seducing craving because it goes down deep in his very complex mind and heart. It is also the thing that makes us need to be the one who is righter or smarter than the others, so it causes divisions in the place where the Father wanted peace, unity and a genuine love that was acceptable to Him and His desire for His children and the way they treated each other.

Then the priests and the prophets said to the officials and all the people, "This man should be sentenced to death because he has prophesied against this city. You have heard it with your own ears!"

When the word of God comes to one or more of the humans, the other humans don't want to hear it because the animal nature in them to be able to get and retain what they've decided for themselves they want, hates the truth of God and does whatever it can to stop from hearing it. Those whom God lives in get put out of the synagogues and communities they were once a part of, ridiculed and effectively killed in the process of stopping what they have to say. That is one of the consequences of the choice for the Father instead of the humans, an opportunity that the sons have to declare their solidarity with God and His family of genuine sons against everything and everyone else.

The high priest tore his clothes. "Why do we need any more witnesses?" he asked. "You have heard the blasphemy. What do you think?"

The word of God is more powerful than what the humans love and do anything to retain e.g., their dignity and good name, their ability to feed themselves, their comfort. The word of God doesn't depend on the humans' acceptance of it because it is intended only for the sons whom have been chosen to be able to hear it. It is designed by God to be selective, only understood by those He has chosen to be able to hear and see the world that is invisible to the humans.

God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes so that they could not see
and ears so that they could not hear, to this very day.

The disciples came to him and asked, "Why do you speak to the people in parables?"

He replied, "The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. This is why I speak to them in parables:

"Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand. In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: " `You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.

For this people's heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears,
and they have closed their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears,
understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.'

But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. For I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it."

But seeing isn't just passively looking, or passively understanding while we live out our lives like all the rest of the animals who are living merely to die. It is choosing the Father, or the ability to see goes away when we become given over to what we wanted as the desire of our heart—to be just another one of the animals. When the word comes to one or more of the humans, it isn't like the word that the humans think is the word of God, which is just a compartment of certain knowledge in the brain like the ability to understand how a toilet works, or the talent to do a particular thing, or the resources to be or attain to a certain position.

If it's the will of God to actually come to one or more of the humans, then the life that is coming in to them takes them completely over or it leaves. The idea of following God, being a disciple of the Christ doesn't just become another compartment in their life, like golf or their career or their family, or any other earthly thing which may have been important to that one before God came. The life that inhabits that one will slowly take them over and do all sorts of naturally undesirable things in and to them as the process of transformation happens. Their choice for the Father is saying yes to that process and no to all the many things they love so much in their heart, what they don't want to become separated from.

Whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him...

All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. Only let us live up to what we have already attained.

It's an actual transformation, not a conceptual one, although it's invisible to the humans and they won't see what the sons are going through, just as they didn't recognize the Son they claimed to be waiting for while they did everything they could to just get rid of him. We become less human and the things of the humans which used to be valuable to us become less valuable, as the spirit teaches us what actually is valuable. It becomes relatively simple, because the only thing that is valuable to God's sons is Him and His family of other sons who have lived before and are concurrently living on the earth in their temporary bodies. Everything else becomes like garbage to them, because they understand that what the humans love so much is all only temporary and the only thing that is going to last is love—for the Father and His family, which is His kingdom.

May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus, so that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

For the humans, what they can attain to is varied and practically limitless, according to their opportunities, luck and the abilities they possess. But they all have one thing in common: they and whatever they do is all pointless because they and their existences are temporary, no matter who or what they are. For the sons, the only thing that is worthwhile is the Father, His family of sons, and doing what He wants us to do i.e., doing His will instead of our own (all the things we do instinctually as animals, according to the instinctual dictates of that nature).

Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood.

His love inside the sons is an active force, what originally initiated the new birth in that one, and it lives in him to transform him from dying animal to living son whose aspirations are being reduced from countless to just one with a couple as subsets of that one—love for God, which bring the other two, doing His will and taking care of His family of sons, His flock.

We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. For even Christ did not please himself but, as it is written: "The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me." For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.

The camaraderie of the family members working together to keep it from harm from everything that threatens it is what the Father loves and loves to see in His children. They turn their back on the animal nature that can only please itself and live for the flock instead, in the spirit of Jesus, Paul and the apostles, and all of God's sons who have given up their lives to hearken to the call when it truly comes, to choose Him over themselves, to take care of what is His, what is permanent, what serves as a testament to their faith in the invisible God to His satisfaction.

For twenty-three years—from the thirteenth year of Josiah son of Amon king of Judah until this very day—the word of the LORD has come to me and I have spoken to you again and again, but you have not listened.

And though the LORD has sent all his servants the prophets to you again and again, you have not listened or paid any attention.

Everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.

Accept one another as genuine brothers and sons of God, just as the Son accepted you as genuine brothers worthy of salvation, in order to bring praise to God.