Book of Common Prayer

5 I have heard a very bad report about you. I hear there are wrong sexual ways among you. Even the people who are not Jews do not allow wrong sex such as this among them. A man is living with his father's wife!

² Can it be that you are still proud? This should make you very sad. The man who has done this should be put out of the church meeting.

³ My body is not with you, but my spirit is. Just as if I were right there, I have decided what to do about the man who did such a thing as this.

⁴ Do this in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. When you meet together my spirit will be with you. Then, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, give this man over to Satan. Let Satan punish his body. By this the man's spirit may yet be saved when the Lord Jesus comes.

⁵ Surely it is not right for you to be proud. Do you not know that only a little yeast in the bread will make all the bread rise?

⁶ Clean out the old yeast so that you will become like new bread. You are free from the old things. Christ, the Passover Lamb, has been killed for us.

⁷ Let us then remember the feast of Passover and have our bread. But let us not have our feast with old yeast in the bread. To do bad and wrong things is like that old yeast. But let us have it with new bread that has no old yeast in it. To be honest and true is like the new bread.

⁸ I wrote a letter to you. I told you not to be friends with people who use sex the wrong way [with a person they are not married to].

¹⁹ He also chose Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus, Simon of Canan, and Judas Iscariot, the one who gave Jesus over to people who hated him. Then Jesus and his disciples went home.

²⁰ So many people came again that they could not even eat.

²¹ When Jesus' family heard about this, they came to take him away. They said, `He is crazy.'

²² The scribes who came from Jerusalem also talked about Jesus. They said, `Beelzebub, the chief of bad spirits, is in this man. He drives out bad spirits by the help of Beelzebub.'

²³ Jesus called the people and talked to them in stories. He asked, `How can Satan drive out Satan?

²⁴ If one part of a country fights against another part of the country, that country cannot be strong.

²⁵ If one part of a family fights against the other part of the family, it cannot stand.

²⁶ If Satan fights against himself and the bad spirits fight against each other, he cannot stand. It will be the end of him.

²⁷ If anyone wants to go into a strong man's house and steal his things, he must first tie the strong man. Then he can steal his things.

²⁸ `I tell you the truth. All wrong things that people do and say about anyone will be forgiven.

²⁹ But people who say wrong things against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven. A person who does that will be punished for ever.'

³⁰ Jesus said all this because the scribes said, `A bad spirit is in him.'

³¹ Jesus' mother and brothers came to him. They stood outside. They sent someone to him.

³² Many people were sitting around him. They said, `See, your mother and your brothers are outside. They want you.'

³³ Jesus asked them, `Who are my mother and my brothers?'

³⁴ Then he looked at the people who sat around him. He said, `These people are my mother and my brothers!

³⁵ Anyone who obeys God is my brother, my sister, and my mother.'