Book of Common Prayer

¹ From the leader of the church people. I send greetings to the lady whom God has chosen, and to her children. I love you all because you have the truth about Christ. I am not the only one who loves you. All those who know the truth, love you also.

² We love you because of the truth we share which is in our hearts and will be with us for ever.

³ God the Father and Jesus Christ, the Father's son, will bless us. They will be kind to us. They will give us peace. They will do these things because they are true, and they love us.

⁴ I was very glad to find that some of your children are living in the right way. They are living the way the Father told us to live.

⁵ And now I want to ask you to do something. I am not telling you to do something new. It is the same law we had from the beginning. It is this, `We must love one another.'

⁶ We love God when we live the way God has told us. This is the law you heard from the beginning. You must live by it.

⁷ Many men who fool people have gone out into the world. They believe that Jesus Christ did not come to live as a man with a body. These men belong to the one who fools people. He is against Christ.

⁸ Watch out for yourselves! Do not lose what you have worked for, but receive all the reward that you should have.

⁹ Everyone who goes too far, and does not believe what Christ taught, does not believe God. Anyone who believes what Christ taught, believes both the Father and the Son.

¹⁰ If anyone comes to you who does not teach what Christ taught, do not take him into your house. Do not even greet him.

¹¹ Anyone who greets him helps him in the wrong things he does.

¹² I have much to write to you. But I do not want to write it on paper. I hope to come to visit you and talk with you. Then we will be very happy.

¹³ The children of your sister whom God has chosen send their greetings.

12 About that time, Jesus was walking through the grain fields on a Sabbath day. His disciples were hungry. They began to pick some of the grain and to eat it.

² The Pharisees saw them. They said to Jesus, `Look! Your disciples are doing what is not right on the Sabbath day.'

³ But Jesus said to them, `Have you not read what David did? He and his men who were with him were hungry.

⁴ He went into God's house. Some bread was there for God. David's men ate it. David did not have the right to eat it, nor the men who were with him. Only the priests have the right to eat it. But David took the bread and ate it. He also gave some of it to the men who were with him.

⁵ `Have you never read in the books of the law that the priests in the temple break the Sabbath law on the Sabbath day? They are not punished for it.

⁶ I tell you, there is someone here who is greater than the temple.

⁷ `You do not know what this means, "I want you to be kind; I do not want a sacrifice." If you knew, then you would not have said what they did was wrong. What they did was not wrong.

⁸ The Son of Man rules over the Sabbath day.'

⁹ Jesus left that place and went into the meeting house.

¹⁰ There was a man whose hand was thin and weak. The people asked Jesus, `Is it right to heal a man on the Sabbath day?' They wanted to find something wrong about Jesus.

¹¹ Jesus said to them, `If one of you had a sheep and it fell into a hole on the Sabbath day, would you not take hold of it and pull it out?

¹² A man is worth much more than a sheep. So it is right to do good things on the Sabbath day.'

¹³ Then he said to the man, `Hold out your hand.' The man held out his hand and it was made well like the other hand.

¹⁴ Then the Pharisees went out and planned together how to kill Jesus.