Book of Common Prayer
Born of God
3 Look at the remarkable love the father has given us—that we should be called God’s children! That indeed is what we are. That’s why the world doesn’t know us, because it didn’t know him. 2 Beloved ones, we are now, already, God’s children; it hasn’t yet been revealed what we are going to be. We know that when he is revealed we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. 3 All who have this hope in him make themselves pure, just as he is pure.
4 Everyone who goes on sinning is breaking the law; sin, in fact, is lawlessness. 5 And you know that he was revealed so that he might take away sins, and there is no sin in him. 6 Everyone who abides in him does not go on sinning. Everyone who goes on sinning has not seen him, or known him.
7 Children, don’t let anyone deceive you. The person who does righteousness is righteous, just as he is righteous. 8 The person who goes on sinning is from the devil, because the devil is a sinner from the very start. The son of God was revealed for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. 9 Everyone who is fathered by God does not go on sinning, because God’s offspring remain in him; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been fathered by God. 10 That is how it is clear who are the children of God and who are the children of the devil: everyone who does not do what is right is not of God, particularly those who do not love their brother or sister.
Blasphemy!
31 So the Judaeans once more picked up stones to stone him.
32 “I’ve shown you many fine deeds from the father,” Jesus replied to them. “Which of these deeds are you stoning me for?”
33 “We’re not stoning you for good deeds,” replied the Judaeans, “but because of blasphemy! Here you are, a mere man, and you’re making yourself into God!”
34 “It’s written in your law, isn’t it,” replied Jesus to them, “ ‘I said, you are gods?’ 35 Well, if the law calls people ‘gods,’ people to whom God’s word came (and you can’t set the Bible aside), 36 how can you accuse someone of blasphemy when the father has placed him apart and sent him into the world, and he says, ‘I am the son of God’?
37 “If I’m not doing the works of my father, don’t believe me. 38 But if I am doing them, well—even if you don’t believe me, believe the works! That way you will know and grasp that the father is in me, and I am in the father.”
39 So again they tried to arrest him. But Jesus managed to get away from them.
40 He went off once more across the Jordan, to the place where John had been baptizing at the beginning, and he stayed there. 41 Several people came to him.
“John never did any signs,” they said, “but everything that John said about this man was true.”
42 And many believed in him there.
Scripture quotations from The New Testament for Everyone are copyright © Nicholas Thomas Wright 2011, 2018, 2019.