Book of Common Prayer

Spiritual or merely human?

¹⁴ Someone living at the merely human level doesn’t accept the things of God’s spirit. They are foolishness to such people, you see, and they can’t understand them because they need to be discerned spiritually. ¹⁵ But spiritual people discern everything, while nobody else can discern the truth about them! ¹⁶ For “Who has known the mind of the Lord, so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of the Messiah.

3 In my own case, my dear family, I couldn’t speak to you as spiritual people, but as people who were all too obviously merely human, little babies in the Messiah. ² I fed you with milk, not solid food, because you weren’t able to take it—and you still can’t, even now! ³ You’re still determined to live in the old way! Yes, wherever there is jealousy and quarrelling, doesn’t that mean you’re living in the old way, behaving as any merely human being might do? ⁴ When someone says “I’m with Paul!” and someone else says “I’m with Apollos!” are you not mere humans?

God’s farm, God’s building

⁵ So what d’you suppose Apollos actually is? What d’you think Paul is? I’ll tell you: servants, through whom you came to faith, each one as the Lord gave. ⁶ I planted and Apollos watered, but it was God who gave the growth. ⁷ It follows that the person who plants isn’t anything special, and the person who waters isn’t anything special; what matters is God who gives the growth. ⁸ The person who plants and the person who waters are just the same, and each will receive his own reward according to his own work. ⁹ We are God’s fellow workers, you see: you are God’s farm, God’s building.

¹⁰ According to God’s grace, I laid the foundation like a wise master builder, and someone else is building on it. Everyone should take care how they build on it. ¹¹ Nobody can lay any foundation, you see, except the one which is laid, which is Jesus the Messiah!

The coming day, the coming fire

¹² If anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, grass or straw— ¹³ well, everyone’s work will become visible, because the Day will show it up, since it will be revealed in fire. Then the fire will test what sort of work everyone has done. ¹⁴ If the building work that someone has done stands the test, they will receive a reward. ¹⁵ If someone’s work is burned up, they will be punished by bearing the loss; they themselves will be saved, however, but only as though through a fire.

The healing of the paralytic

2 Jesus went back again to Capernaum, where, after a few days, word got round that he was at home. ² A crowd gathered, so that people couldn’t even get near the door as he was telling them the message.

³ A party arrived: four people carrying a paralyzed man, bringing him to Jesus. ⁴ They couldn’t get through to him because of the crowd, so they opened up the roof above where he was. When they had dug through it, they used ropes to let down the stretcher on which the paralyzed man was lying.

⁵ Jesus saw their faith, and said to the paralyzed man, “Child, your sins are forgiven!”

⁶ “How dare the fellow speak like this?” grumbled some of the legal experts among themselves. ⁷ “It’s blasphemy! Who can forgive sins except God?”

⁸ Jesus knew at once, in his spirit, that thoughts like this were in the air. “Why do your hearts tell you to think that?” he asked. ⁹ “Answer me this,” he went on. “Is it easier to say to this cripple, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, pick up your stretcher, and walk’?

¹⁰ “You want to know that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins?” He turned to the paralytic. ¹¹ “I tell you,” he said, “Get up, take your stretcher, and go home.” ¹² He got up, picked up the stretcher in a flash, and went out before them all.

Everyone was astonished, and they praised God. “We’ve never seen anything like this!” they said.