Book of Common Prayer

7 My brothers, I am saying this to you people who know the law. Do you not know that the law is master over a person only while he lives?

² A married woman belongs to her husband by law as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free from the law that made her belong to her husband.

³ So if she belongs to another man while her husband is living, she commits adultery. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law. Then if she belongs to another man, she does not commit adultery.

⁴ In the same way my brothers, you died when Christ died. And you are free from the law. Now you belong to another person. You belong to the one who has been raised from death. Because of that, we are able to do what God wants us to do.

⁵ One time we lived in the way our bodies wanted to live. The law made us think about doing wrong things. And we did things that made us die.

⁶ But now we have been made free from the law. We died, and so we are no longer slaves to the one who was our master. Now we are slaves to God in our new life. This new life is ruled by the Spirit. We do not work for the old written law.

⁷ So what shall we say? Shall we say that the law is bad? No! I would not have known what is wrong if there had been no law. The law says, `Do not want to take other people's things.' That is how I know it is wrong to want another person's things.

⁸ My wrong ways used the law to make me want all kinds of things. When there is no law, the thing within me that wants to do wrong is dead.

⁹ Once I had no law, and I lived. But when the law came, that which wanted to do wrong things came to life, and I died.

¹⁰ The same law which was meant to make a person live, made me die.

¹¹ My wrong ways used the law to fool me and kill me.

¹² So the law is holy. And what the law says is holy and right and good.

6 Then Jesus crossed over the sea of Galilee. (Another name for this sea was Tiberias.)

² Many people followed him because they saw the big works he had done in healing the sick people.

³ Jesus went up on a hill and sat down with his disciples.

⁴ The time for the Passover Feast of the Jews was near.

⁵ When Jesus looked up, he saw many people coming to him. He said to Philip, `Where shall we buy food for these people to eat?'

⁶ Jesus knew what he himself would do, but he said this to see what Philip would do.

⁷ Philip answered him, `It would take nearly a year's wages to buy enough food for them, even if each one gets only a little.'

⁸ One of Jesus' disciples, Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, talked to Jesus.

⁹ He said, `A boy here has five loaves of bread and two small fish. But what can that little bit of food do for so many people?'

¹⁰ Jesus said, `Tell the people to sit down.' Much grass was there. The number of men who sat down was about five thousand.

¹¹ Then Jesus took the bread and thanked God for it. He gave it to the disciples and they divided it among those who were sitting. He did the same thing with the fish. The people had all they wanted.

¹² When they had eaten enough, he said to his disciples, `Gather up all the pieces that are left so that nothing will be lost.'

¹³ They gathered all the pieces of the five loaves. Twelve baskets full were left over after all the people had eaten enough.

¹⁴ When those men saw the big work that Jesus did, they said, `Truly, this is the Prophet that is to come into the world.'

¹⁵ The people wanted to take Jesus by force to make him a king. When he saw this, he left again and went on the hill by himself.