Book of Common Prayer
The call to holy living
12 So don’t allow sin to rule in your mortal body, to make you obey its desires. 13 Nor should you present your limbs and organs to sin to be used for its wicked purposes. Rather, present yourselves to God, as people alive from the dead, and your limbs and organs to God, to be used for the righteous purposes of his covenant. 14 Sin won’t actually rule over you, you see, since you are not under law but under grace.
The two types of slavery
15 What then? Shall we sin, because we are not under law but under grace? Certainly not! 16 Don’t you know that if you present yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you really are slaves of the one you obey, whether that happens to be sin, which leads to death, or obedience, which leads to final vindication? 17 Thank God that, though you once were slaves to sin, you have become obedient from the heart to the pattern of teaching to which you were committed. 18 You were freed from sin, and now you have been enslaved to God’s covenant justice. 19 (I’m using a human picture because of your natural human weakness!) For just as you presented your limbs and organs as slaves to uncleanness, and to one degree of lawlessness after another, so now present your limbs and organs as slaves to covenant justice, which leads to holiness.
Where the two roads lead
20 When you were slaves of sin, you see, you were free in respect of covenant justice. 21 What fruit did you ever have from the things of which you are now ashamed? Their destination is death. 22 But now that you have been set free from sin and enslaved to God, you have fruit for holiness. Its destination is the life of the age to come. 23 The wages paid by sin, you see, are death; but God’s free gift is the life of the age to come, in the Messiah, Jesus our Lord.
47 The one who is from God speaks God’s words. That’s why you don’t listen, because you’re not from God.”
Before Abraham, “I Am”
48 This was the Judaeans’ response to Jesus.
“Haven’t we been right all along,” they said, “in saying you’re a Samaritan, and that you’ve got a demon inside you?”
49 “I haven’t got a demon!” replied Jesus. “I am honoring my father, and you are dishonoring me. 50 I’m not looking for my own glory; there is one who is looking after that, and he will be the judge. 51 I’m telling you the solemn truth: anyone who keeps my word will never, ever see death.”
52 “Now we know that you really have got a demon!” replied the Judaeans. “Look here: Abraham died! So did the prophets! And here are you, saying, ‘Anyone who keeps my word will never, ever taste death.’ 53 You’re not suggesting, are you, that you’re greater than our father Abraham? He died, and so did the prophets! Who are you making yourself out to be?”
54 “If I do give myself glory,” replied Jesus, “my glory is nothing. My father is the one who brings me glory—the one you say is ‘our God’; 55 and you don’t know him! I know him, though. If I were to say I didn’t know him, I would be a liar like you. But I do know him, and I keep his word. 56 Your father Abraham celebrated the fact that he would see my day. He saw it and was delighted.”
57 “You’re not yet fifty years old!” responded the Judaeans. “Have you seen Abraham?”
58 “I’m telling you the solemn truth,” replied Jesus. “Before Abraham existed, I Am.”
59 So they picked up stones to throw at him. But Jesus hid, and left the Temple.
Scripture quotations from The New Testament for Everyone are copyright © Nicholas Thomas Wright 2011, 2018, 2019.