Book of Common Prayer

Greetings and thanksgiving

1 Paul, Silvanus and Timothy, to the assembly of Thessalonians in God our father and the Lord Jesus, the Messiah: ² grace to you and peace from God our father and the Lord Jesus, the Messiah.

³ We owe God a constant debt of gratitude concerning you, my dear family. It is only right and proper. Your faith is growing marvelously, and the love which every single one of you has for each other is multiplying. ⁴ As a result, we ourselves can tell all the churches of God how proud we are of you—of your patience and loyalty in all your troubles, and in all the sufferings you are going through.

⁵ All this is a clear sign of the just judgment of God, to make you thoroughly worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are suffering— ⁶ since it is just, on God’s part, to pay back with suffering those who inflict suffering on you, ⁷ and to give you, with us, respite from your sufferings.

The coming of Jesus

This will come about when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his powerful angels, ⁸ in a flaming fire, meting out punishment to those who don’t know God and those who don’t obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. ⁹ They will pay the penalty of eternal destruction from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his power, ¹⁰ when he comes to be glorified in all his holy ones, and to be marveled at by all who believe in him, because our testimony to you was met with faith, on that day.

¹¹ To that end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his call, and may complete every plan he has to do you good, and every work of faith in power, ¹² so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and of the Lord Jesus, the Messiah.

Adultery and hypocrisy

⁵³ They all went off home,

8 and Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. ² In the morning he went back to the Temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them.

³ The scribes and Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught out in adultery. They stood her out in the middle.

⁴ “Teacher,” they said to him. “This woman was caught in the very act of adultery. ⁵ In the law, Moses commanded us to stone people like this. What do you say?”

⁶ They said this to test him, so that they could frame a charge against him.

Jesus squatted down and wrote with his finger on the ground. ⁷ When they went on pressing the question, he got up and said to them, “Whichever of you is without sin should throw the first stone at her.”

⁸ And once again he squatted down and wrote on the ground.

⁹ When they heard that, they went off one by one, beginning with the oldest. Jesus was left alone, with the woman still standing there.

¹⁰ Jesus looked up.

“Where are they, woman?” he asked. “Hasn’t anybody condemned you?”

¹¹ “Nobody, sir,” she replied.

“Well, then,” said Jesus, “I don’t condemn you either! Off you go—and from now on don’t sin again!”