Book of Common Prayer

Opponents of the truth

3 You need to know this: bad times are coming in the last days. ² People will be in love with themselves, you see, and with money too. They will be boastful, arrogant, abusive, haters of parents, ungrateful, unholy, ³ unfeeling, implacable, accusing, dissolute, savage, haters of the good, ⁴ traitors, reckless, puffed up, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, ⁵ holding on to a pattern of godliness but denying its power. Avoid people like that! ⁶ This group, you see, includes those who worm their way into people’s houses and ensnare foolish women who are overwhelmed with their sins and are pulled and pushed by all kinds of desires, ⁷ always learning but never able to arrive at the truth. ⁸ Just as Jannes and Jambres stood up against Moses, so people like this oppose the truth. In their minds they are corrupt; in their faith they are of no account. ⁹ They won’t get very far, though, because their foolishness will become obvious to everyone, as it was with those two.

Continue in the scriptures!

¹⁰ So what about you? You have followed my teaching faithfully, and also my way of life, my aims and goals, my faith, longsuffering, love and patience, ¹¹ my persecutions, my sufferings, the things I went through in Antioch, in Iconium, in Lystra, the persecutions I endured—and the Lord rescued me from all of them. ¹² Yes, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Messiah Jesus will be persecuted, ¹³ while evil people and impostors will go on to even worse things, deceiving others and being themselves deceived. ¹⁴ But you, on the other hand, must stand firm in the things you learned and believed. You know who it was you received them from, ¹⁵ and how from childhood you have known the holy writings which have the power to make you wise for salvation through faith in Messiah Jesus. ¹⁶ All scripture, breathed as it is by God, is useful for teaching, for rebuke, for improvement, for training in righteousness, ¹⁷ so that people who belong to God may be complete, fitted out and ready for every good work.

Washing the disciples’ feet

13 It was before the festival of Passover. Jesus knew that his time had come, the time for him to leave this world and go to the father. He had always loved his own people in the world; now he loved them right through to the end.

² It was suppertime. The devil had already put the idea of betraying him into the heart of Judas, son of Simon Iscariot. ³ Jesus knew that the father had given everything into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God. ⁴ So he got up from the supper-table, took off his clothes, and wrapped himself in a towel. ⁵ Then he poured water into a bowl, and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel he was wrapped in.

⁶ He came to Simon Peter.

“Master,” said Peter, “what’s this? You, washing my feet?”

⁷ “You don’t understand yet what I’m doing,” replied Jesus, “but you’ll know afterwards.”

⁸ “I’m not going to have you washing my feet!” said Peter. “Never!”

“If I don’t wash you,” replied Jesus, “you don’t belong to me.”

⁹ “All right then, Master,” said Simon Peter, “but not only my feet—wash my hands and my head as well!”

¹⁰ “Someone who has washed,” said Jesus to him, “doesn’t need to wash again, except for their feet. They are clean all over. And you are clean—but not all of you.”

¹¹ Jesus knew, you see, who was going to betray him. That’s why he said, “You are not all clean.”

Like master, like servant

¹² So when he had washed their feet, he put on his clothes and sat down again.

“Do you know what I’ve done to you?” he asked. ¹³ “You call me ‘Teacher,’ and ‘Master,’ and you’re right. That’s what I am. ¹⁴ Well, then: if I, as your master and teacher, washed your feet just now, you should wash one another’s feet. ¹⁵ I’ve given you a pattern, so that you can do things in the same way that I did to you.

¹⁶ “I’m telling you the solemn truth,” he continued. “The slave isn’t greater than the master. People who are sent are not greater than the person who sends them. ¹⁷ If you know these things, God’s blessing on you if you do them.

¹⁸ “I’m not talking about all of you,” he went on. “I know the ones I have chosen. What the Bible says has to come true: ‘The person who ate my bread lifted up his heel against me.’ ¹⁹ I’m telling you this now, before it happens, so that when it does happen you may believe that I am who I am. ²⁰ I’m telling you the solemn truth: anyone who welcomes someone I send, welcomes me, and anyone who welcomes me, welcomes the one who sent me.”