Book of Common Prayer

People are different—make allowances

^5-9 Again, one man thinks some days of more importance than others. Another man considers them all alike. Let every one be definite in his own convictions. If a man specially observes one particular day, he does so “to God”. The man who eats, eats “to God”, for he thanks God for the food. The man who fasts also does it “to God”, for he thanks God for the benefits of fasting. The truth is that we neither live nor die as self-contained units. At every turn life links us to God, and when we die we come face to face with him. In life or death we are in the hands of God. Christ lived and died that he might be the Lord in both life and death.

^10-12 Why, then, criticise your brother’s actions, why try to make him look small? We shall all be judged one day, not by each other’s standards or even our own, but by the standard of Christ. It is written: ‘As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God’. It is to God alone that we have to answer for our actions.

^43-45 The following day Jesus decided to go into Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me!” Philip was a man from Bethsaida, the town that Andrew and Peter came from. Now Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have discovered the man whom Moses wrote about in the Law and about whom the Prophets wrote too. He is Jesus, the son of Joseph and comes from Nazareth.”

⁴⁶ “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” retorted Nathanael. “You come and see,” replied Philip.

⁴⁷ Jesus saw Nathanael coming towards him and remarked, “Now here is a true man of Israel; there is no deceit in him!”

⁴⁸ “How can you know me?” returned Nathanael. “When you were underneath that fig-tree,” replied Jesus, “before Philip called you, I saw you.”

⁴⁹ At which Nathanael exclaimed, “Master, you are the Son of God, you are the king of Israel!”

^50-51 “Do you believe in me,” replied Jesus, “because I said I had seen you underneath that fig-tree? You are going to see something greater than that! Believe me,” he added, “I tell you all that you will see Heaven wide open and God’s angels ascending and descending around the Son of Man!”