Book of Common Prayer

Hospitality for God’s people

¹ The Elder to beloved Gaius, whom I love in truth.

² Beloved, I pray that all is going well with you, and that you are every bit as healthy physically as you are spiritually. ³ I was absolutely delighted, you see, when some of the family arrived and bore witness to your truthfulness, since clearly you are walking in the truth. ⁴ Nothing gives me greater joy than this, to hear that my children are walking in the truth.

⁵ Beloved, when you are doing all that you do for family members, even when they are strangers, you are doing a faithful work. ⁶ These people have borne witness to your love in the presence of the assembly, and you will do well to send them on their way in a manner worthy of God. ⁷ They went out for the sake of the Name, not accepting help from outsiders. ⁸ We ought to support people like that, so that we may become fellow workers with the truth.

Authority and example

⁹ I have written something to the assembly. But Diotrephes, who wants to be the most important person there, refuses to acknowledge us. ¹⁰ So, then, if I come, I will refer back to what he has done, and the slanderous words he has spoken against us. Not being satisfied with that, he doesn’t welcome family members himself; and, when others want to do so, he forbids them and throws them out of the assembly.

¹¹ Beloved, don’t imitate evil; imitate good! Someone who does good is from God; someone who does evil has not seen God. ¹² Demetrius has been well attested by everybody, and by the truth itself. We join in this testimony, and you know that our testimony is true.

¹³ I have much to write to you, but I don’t want to do it with pen and ink. ¹⁴ I am hoping instead to see you very soon, so that we can talk face to face.

¹⁵ Peace be with you. All the friends greet you. Greet all the friends by name.

Questions about table-company and fasting

²⁷ After this Jesus went out and saw a tax-collector called Levi, sitting at the tax-office. “Follow me,” he said. ²⁸ And he left everything, got up, and followed him.

²⁹ Levi made a great feast for him in his house, and a large crowd of tax-collectors and others were there reclining at table. ³⁰ The Pharisees and the legal experts began to grumble to Jesus’ disciples.

“Why do you lot eat and drink,” they asked, “with tax-collectors and sinners?”

³¹ “Healthy people don’t need a doctor,” replied Jesus. “It’s sick people who do! ³² I haven’t come to call the righteous; I’m calling sinners to repentance.”

³³ “John’s disciples often fast, and say prayers,” they said to him, “and so do the Pharisees’ followers—but your disciples eat and drink.”

³⁴ “Can you make the wedding guests fast,” replied Jesus, “while the bridegroom is with them? ³⁵ But the time will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them. That’s when they will fast.”

³⁶ He added this parable. “Nobody tears a piece of cloth from a new coat to make a patch on an old one. If they do, they tear the new, and the patch from it won’t fit the old one anyway. ³⁷ And nobody puts new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the new wine will burst the skins: it will go to waste, and the skins will be ruined too. ³⁸ You have to put new wine in new skins. ³⁹ And nobody who drinks old wine wants new. ‘I prefer the old,’ they say.”