Book of Common Prayer
God’s promise and Abraham’s faith
3 You witless Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Messiah Jesus was portrayed on the cross before your very eyes! 2 There’s just one thing I want to know from you. Did you receive the spirit by doing the works of Torah, or by hearing and believing? 3 You are so witless: you began with the spirit, and now you’re ending with the flesh? 4 Did you really suffer so much for nothing—if indeed it is going to be for nothing? 5 The one who gives you the spirit and performs powerful deeds among you—does he do this through your performance of Torah, or through hearing and believing?
6 It’s like Abraham. “He believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness.” 7 So you know that it’s people of faith who are children of Abraham. 8 The Bible foresaw that God would justify the nations by faith, so it announced the gospel to Abraham in advance, when it declared that “the nations will be blessed in you.” 9 So you see: the people of faith are blessed along with faithful Abraham.
Redeemed from the law’s curse
10 Because, you see, those who belong to the “works-of-the-law” camp are under a curse! Yes, that’s what the Bible says: “Cursed is everyone who doesn’t stick fast by everything written in the book of the law, to perform it.” 11 But, because nobody is justified before God in the law, it’s clear that “the righteous shall live by faith.” 12 The law, however, is not by faith: rather, “the one who does them shall live in them.”
13 The Messiah redeemed us from the curse of the law, by becoming a curse on our behalf, as the Bible says: “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.” 14 This was so that the blessing of Abraham could flow through to the nations in Messiah Jesus—and so that we might receive the promise of the spirit, through faith.
The feeding of the five thousand
30 The apostles came back to Jesus and told him all they had done and taught. 31 “All right,” he said, “it’s time for a break. Come away, just you, and we’ll go somewhere lonely and private.” (Crowds of people were coming and going and they didn’t even have time to eat.)
32 So they went off privately in the boat to a deserted spot. 33 And . . . crowds saw them going, realized what was happening, hurried on foot from all the towns, and arrived there first. 34 When Jesus got out of the boat he saw the huge crowd, and was deeply sorry for them, because they were like a flock without a shepherd. So he started to teach them many things.
35 It was already getting late when his disciples came to him and said, “Look: there’s nothing here. It’s getting late. 36 Send them away. They need to go off into the countryside and the villages and buy themselves some food.”
37 “Why don’t you give them something?” Jesus replied.
“Are you suggesting,” they asked, “that we should go and spend two hundred dinars and get food for this lot?”
38 “Well,” said Jesus, “how many loaves have you got? Go and see.”
They found out, and said, “Five, and a couple of fish.”
39 Jesus told them to sit everyone down, group by group, on the green grass. 40 So they sat down in companies, by hundreds and by fifties. 41 Then he took the five loaves and the two fishes, looked up to heaven, blessed the bread, broke it, and gave it to his disciples to give to the crowd. Then he divided the two fish for them all. 42 Everyone ate, and had plenty. 43 They picked up the leftovers, and there were twelve baskets of broken pieces, and of the fish.
44 The number of men who had eaten was five thousand.
Jesus walks on water
45 At once Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and set sail across towards Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. 46 He took his leave of them and went off up the mountain to pray.
Scripture quotations from The New Testament for Everyone are copyright © Nicholas Thomas Wright 2011, 2018, 2019.