Book of Common Prayer
God’s love
7 Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God, and all who love are fathered by God and know God. 8 The one who does not love has not known God, because God is love. 9 This is how God’s love has appeared among us: God sent his only son into the world, so that we should live through him. 10 Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the sacrifice that would atone for our sins. 11 Beloved, if that’s how God loved us, we ought to love one another in the same way. 12 Nobody has ever seen God. If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is completed in us. 13 That is how we know that we abide in him, and he in us, because he has given us a portion of his spirit. 14 And we have seen and bear witness that the father sent the son to be the world’s savior. 15 Anyone who confesses that Jesus is God’s son, God abides in them and they abide in God. 16 And we have known and have believed the love which God has for us.
God is love; those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. 17 This is what makes love complete for us, so that we may have boldness and confidence on the day of judgment, because just as he is, so are we within this world. 18 There is no fear in love; complete love drives out fear. Fear has to do with punishment, and anyone who is afraid has not been completed in love. 19 We love, because he first loved us. 20 If someone says, “I love God,” but hates their brother or sister, that person is a liar. Someone who doesn’t love a brother or sister whom they have seen, how can they love God, whom they haven’t seen? 21 This is the command we have from him: anyone who loves God should love their brother or sister too.
30 Jesus hadn’t yet arrived in the village. He was still in the place where Martha had met him.
31 The Judaeans who were in the house with Mary, consoling her, saw her get up quickly and go out. They guessed that she was going to the tomb to weep there, and they followed her.
32 When Mary came to where Jesus was, she saw him and fell down at his feet.
“Master!” she said. “If only you’d been here, my brother wouldn’t have died!”
33 When Jesus saw her crying, and the Judaeans who had come with her crying, he was deeply stirred in his spirit, and very troubled.
34 “Where have you laid him?” he asked.
“Master,” they said, “come and see.”
35 Jesus burst into tears.
36 “Look,” said the Judaeans, “see how much he loved him!”
37 “Well, yes,” some of them said, “but he opened the eyes of a blind man, didn’t he? Couldn’t he have done something to stop this fellow from dying?”
The raising of Lazarus
38 Jesus was once again deeply troubled within himself. He came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was placed in front of it.
39 “Take away the stone,” said Jesus.
“But, Master,” said Martha, the dead man’s sister, “there’ll be a smell! It’s the fourth day already!”
40 “Didn’t I tell you,” said Jesus, “that if you believed you would see God’s glory?”
41 So they took the stone away. Jesus lifted up his eyes.
“Thank you, Father,” he said, “for hearing me! 42 I know you always hear me, but I’ve said this because of the crowd standing around, so that they may believe that you sent me.”
43 With these words, he gave a loud shout: “Lazarus—come out!”
44 And the dead man came out. He was tied up, hand and foot, with strips of linen, and his face was wrapped in a cloth.
“Untie him,” said Jesus, “and let him go.”
Scripture quotations from The New Testament for Everyone are copyright © Nicholas Thomas Wright 2011, 2018, 2019.