¹⁴ The seed which fell among the thorns, these are the ones who have heard, but as they go on their way they are suffocated with the anxieties and riches and pleasures of this life, and they bring no fruit to maturity.

Do Not Love the World

¹⁵ Do not love the world [of sin that opposes God and His precepts], nor the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

⁵ On the earth you have lived luxuriously and abandoned yourselves to soft living and led a life of wanton pleasure [self-indulgence, self-gratification]; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.

³ For we too once were foolish, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various sinful desires and pleasures, spending and wasting our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another.

⁶ Whereas she who lives for pleasure and self-indulgence is spiritually dead even while she still lives.

²⁴ And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the ^[a]sinful nature together with its passions and appetites.