purpose of the church

¹⁹Therefore, go forth and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰teaching them to observe all that I have ever commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, even to the consummation of the age.”

¹⁶Let the word of Christ live in you in abundance, with all wisdom, teaching and correcting one another, with psalms, hymns, and spiritual canticles, singing to God with the grace in your hearts.

⁹But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, an acquired people, so that you may announce the virtues of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. ¹⁰Though in past times you were not a people, yet now you are the people of God. Though you had not obtained mercy, yet now you have obtained mercy.

¹⁹Now, therefore, you are no longer visitors and new arrivals. Instead, you are citizens among the saints in the household of God, ²⁰having been built upon the foundation of the Apostles and of the Prophets, with Jesus Christ himself as the preeminent cornerstone. ²¹In him, all that has been built is framed together, rising up into a holy temple in the Lord. ²²In him, you also have been built together into a habitation of God in the Spirit.

¹¹Because of this, console one another and build up one another, just as you are doing.

²⁵not deserting our assembly, as some are accustomed to do, but consoling one another, and even more so as you see that the day is approaching.

⁴²Now they were persevering in the doctrine of the Apostles, and in the communion of the breaking of the bread, and in the prayers.

¹⁰so that the manifold wisdom of God may become well-known to the principalities and powers in the heavens, through the Church,

¹⁴Is anyone ill among you? Let him bring in the priests of the Church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.

¹⁸And I say to you, that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.

¹¹And the same one granted that some would be Apostles, and some Prophets, yet truly others evangelists, and others pastors and teachers, ¹²for the sake of the perfection of the saints, by the work of the ministry, in the edification of the body of Christ,

⁴And approaching him as if he were a living stone, rejected by men, certainly, but elect and honored by God, ⁵be also yourselves like living stones, built upon him, a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, so as to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

⁹But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, an acquired people, so that you may announce the virtues of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.