When Jesus had said this, a woman spoke up from the crowd and said to him, "How happy is the woman who bore you and nursed you!"

But Jesus answered, "Rather, how happy are those who hear the word of God and obey it!"

The King will reply, 'I tell you, whenever you did this for one of the least important of these followers of mine, you did it for me!'

The King will reply, 'I tell you, whenever you refused to help one of these least important ones, you refused to help me.'

"Do not be afraid," Jesus said to them. "Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me."

And you are my friends if you do what I command you.

I do not call you servants any longer, because servants do not know what their master is doing. Instead, I call you friends, because I have told you everything I heard from my Father.

"Do not hold on to me," Jesus told her, "because I have not yet gone back up to the Father. But go to my brothers and tell them that I am returning to him who is my Father and their Father, my God and their God."

No longer, then, do we judge anyone by human standards. Even if at one time we judged Christ according to human standards, we no longer do so.

I will be your father, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty."

He purifies people from their sins, and both he and those who are made pure all have the same Father. That is why Jesus is not ashamed to call them his family.

He also says, "I will put my trust in God." And he also says, "Here I am with the children that God has given me."

The seeds that fell in good soil stand for those who hear the message and retain it in a good and obedient heart, and they persist until they bear fruit.

"Not everyone who calls me 'Lord, Lord' will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only those who do what my Father in heaven wants them to do.

Then I will say to them, 'I never knew you. Get away from me, you wicked people!'

The rain poured down, the rivers flooded over, and the wind blew hard against that house. But it did not fall, because it was built on rock.

While he was talking, a shining cloud came over them, and a voice from the cloud said, "This is my own dear Son, with whom I am pleased---listen to him!"

So they asked him, "What can we do in order to do what God wants us to do?"

Jesus answered, "What God wants you to do is to believe in the one he sent."

Now that you know this truth, how happy you will be if you put it into practice!

Do not deceive yourselves by just listening to his word; instead, put it into practice.

You know that Christ is righteous; you should know, then, that everyone who does what is right is God's child.

We receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him.

What he commands is that we believe in his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as Christ commanded us.

My dear friend, do not imitate what is bad, but imitate what is good. Whoever does good belongs to God; whoever does what is bad has not seen God.