Book of Common Prayer

Unbearably crushed

⁸ You see, my dear family, we don’t want to keep you in the dark about the suffering we went through in Asia. The load we had to carry was far too heavy for us; it got to the point where we gave up on life itself. ⁹ Yes: deep inside ourselves we received the death sentence. This was to stop us relying on ourselves, and to make us rely on the God who raises the dead. ¹⁰ He rescued us from such a great and deadly peril, and he’ll do it again; we have placed our hope in him, that he’ll do it again! ¹¹ But you must cooperate with us through prayer for us, so that when God gives us this gift, answering the prayers of so many, all the more will give thanks because of what’s happened to us.

¹² This is what we boast of, you see; this is what our conscience is telling us: that our conduct in the world, and in particular in relation to you, has been marked by holiness and godly sincerity, not in merely human wisdom but in God’s grace. ¹³ We are not writing anything to you, after all, except what you can read and understand. And I hope you will go on understanding right through to the end, ¹⁴ just as you have understood us already—well, partly, at least! We are your pride and joy, just as you are ours, on the day of our Lord Jesus.

Paul’s plans and God’s “Yes”

¹⁵ I was quite sure of this. That’s why I wanted to come to you again, so that you could have a double blessing. ¹⁶ I intended to go on to Macedonia by way of you, and to come back to you from Macedonia and have you send me on to Judaea. ¹⁷ Was I just fooling around when I was making plans like this? Was I concocting schemes in a merely human way, prepared to say “Yes, yes,” and “No, no,” at the same moment? ¹⁸ God can bear me faithful witness that our word to you was not a mixture of Yes and No. ¹⁹ The son of God, Jesus the Messiah, who was proclaimed among you by Silvanus, Timothy and myself, wasn’t a Yes-and-No person; in him it’s always Yes! ²⁰ All God’s promises, you see, find their Yes in him; and that’s why we say the Yes, the Amen through him when we pray to God and give him glory. ²¹ It’s God who strengthens us with you into the Messiah, the anointed one; and he has anointed us, too. ²² God has stamped his seal on us, by giving us the spirit in our hearts as a down payment and guarantee of what is to come.

The authority of Jesus is questioned

²⁷ Once more they went into Jerusalem. As Jesus was walking in the Temple he was approached by the chief priests, the legal experts and the elders.

²⁸ “By what right do you do these things?” they asked. “Who gave you the right to do them?”

²⁹ “I have one question for you, too,” replied Jesus, “and if you tell me the answer I shall tell you by what right I do these things. ³⁰ Was the baptism of John from heaven, or was it a human invention? What’s your answer?”

³¹ “Well now,” they muttered to each other, “if we say it was from heaven, he will say, ‘Then why didn’t you believe him?’ ³² But if we say it was a human invention . . .” They were afraid of the crowd, because everyone regarded John as a prophet.

³³ “We don’t know,” they said to Jesus.

“Nor will I tell you,” replied Jesus, “by what right I do these things.”