Book of Common Prayer
Unity in everything
2 So if our shared life in the Messiah brings you any comfort; if love still has the power to make you cheerful; if we really do have a partnership in the spirit; if your hearts are at all moved with affection and sympathy— 2 then make my joy complete! Bring your thinking into line with one another.
Here’s how to do it. Hold on to the same love; bring your innermost lives into harmony; fix your minds on the same object. 3 Never act out of selfish ambition or vanity; instead, regard everybody else as your superior. 4 Look after each other’s best interests, not your own.
The mind of the Messiah
5 This is how you should think among yourselves—with the mind that you have because you belong to the Messiah, Jesus:
6 Who, though in God’s form, did not
regard his equality with God
as something he ought to exploit.
7 Instead, he emptied himself,
and received the form of a slave,
being born in the likeness of humans.
And then, having human appearance,
8 he humbled himself, and became
obedient even to death,
yes, even the death of the cross.
9 And so God has greatly exalted him,
and to him in his favor has given
the name which is over all names:
10 That now at the name of Jesus
every knee within heaven shall bow—
on earth, too, and under the earth;
11 And every tongue shall confess
that Jesus, Messiah, is Lord,
to the glory of God, the father.
Jesus cleanses the Temple
41 When he came near and saw the city, he wept over it.
42 “If only you’d known,” he said, “on this day—even you!—what peace meant. But now it’s hidden, and you can’t see it. 43 Yes, the days are coming upon you when your enemies will build up earthworks all round you, and encircle you, and squeeze you in from every direction. 44 They will bring you crashing to the ground, you and your children within you. They won’t leave one single stone on another, because you didn’t know the moment when God was visiting you.”
45 He went into the Temple and began to throw out the traders.
46 “It’s written,” he said, “ ‘My house shall be a house of prayer; but you’ve made it a brigands’ cave.’ ”
47 He was teaching every day in the Temple. But the chief priests, the scribes and the leading men of the people were trying to destroy him. 48 They couldn’t find any way to do it, because all the people were hanging on his every word.
Scripture quotations from The New Testament for Everyone are copyright © Nicholas Thomas Wright 2011, 2018, 2019.