Book of Common Prayer

We have great spiritual privileges: let us live up to them

^14-15 The lesson we must learn, my brothers, is at all costs to avoid worshipping a false god. I am speaking to you as intelligent men: think over what I am saying.

^16-18 The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a very sharing in the blood of Christ? When we break the bread do we not actually share in the body of Christ? The very fact that we all share one bread makes us all one body. Look at the Jews of our own day. Isn’t there a fellowship between all those who eat the altar sacrifices?

^19-22 Now am I implying that a false god really exists, or that sacrifices made to any god have some value? Not at all! I say emphatically that Gentile sacrifices are made to evil powers and not to God at all. I don’t want you to have any fellowship with such powers. You cannot drink both the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils. You cannot be a guest at the Lord’s table and at the table of devils. Are we trying to arouse the wrath of God? Have we forgotten how completely we are in his hands?

The Christian’s guiding principle is love not knowledge

^23-24 As I have said before, the Christian position is this: I may do anything, but everything is not useful. Yes, I may do anything but everything is not constructive. Let no man, then, set his own advantage as his objective, but rather the good of his neighbour.

^25-26 You should eat whatever is sold in the meat-market without asking any of the questions of an over-scrupulous conscience, for ‘The earth is the Lord’s, and all its fullness’

^27-28 If a pagan asks you to dinner and you want to go, feel free to eat whatever is set before you, without asking any questions through conscientious scruples. But if your host should say straight out, “This meat has been offered to an idol”, then don’t eat it, for his sake—I mean for the sake of conscience, not yours but his.

^29-31 Now why should my freedom to eat be at the mercy of someone else’s conscience? Or why should any evil be said of me when I have eaten meat with thankfulness, and have thanked God for it? Because, whatever you do, eating or drinking or anything else, everything should be done to bring glory to God.

^32-33 Do nothing that might make men stumble, whether they are Jews or Greeks or members of the Church of God. I myself try to adapt myself to all men without considering my own advantage but their advantage, that if possible they may be saved.

11 Copy me, my brothers, as I copy Christ himself.

The faith of a gentile is rewarded

^24-27 Then he got up and left that place and went off to the neighbourhood of Tyre. There he went into a house and wanted no one to know where he was. But it proved impossible to remain hidden. For no sooner had he got there, than a woman who had heard about him, and who had a daughter possessed by an evil spirit, arrived and prostrated herself before him. She was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth, and she asked him to drive the evil spirit out of her daughter. Jesus said to her, “You must let the children have all they want first. It is not right, you know, to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

²⁸ But she replied, “Yes, Lord, I know, but even the dogs under the table eat what the children leave.”

²⁹ “If you can answer like that,” Jesus said to her, “you can go home! The evil spirit has left your daughter.”

³⁰ And she went back home and found the child lying quietly on her bed, and the evil spirit gone.

Jesus restores speech and hearing

^31-34 Once more Jesus left the neighbourhood of Tyre and passed through Sidon towards the Lake of Galilee, and crossed the Ten Towns territory. They brought to him a man who was deaf and unable to speak intelligibly, and they implored him to put his hand upon him. Jesus took him away from the crowd by himself. He put his fingers in the man’s ears and touched his tongue with his own saliva. Then, looking up to Heaven, he gave a deep sigh and said to him in Aramaic, “Open!”

^35-37 And his ears were opened and immediately whatever had tied his tongue came loose and he spoke quite plainly. Jesus gave instructions that they should tell no one about this happening, but the more he told them, the more they broadcast the news. People were absolutely amazed, and kept saying, “How wonderful he has done everything! He even makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak.”