Book of Common Prayer

What is the body for?

¹² “Everything is lawful for me”—but not everything is helpful! “Everything is lawful for me”—but I’m not going to let anything give me orders! ¹³ “Food for the stomach, and the stomach for food, and God will destroy the one and the other”—but the body is not meant for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. ¹⁴ What’s more, God raised the Lord; and he will raise us, too, through his power.

¹⁵ Don’t you know that your bodies are members of the Messiah? Shall I then take the members of the Messiah and make them members of a prostitute? Of course not! ¹⁶ Or don’t you know that anyone who joins himself to a prostitute is one body with her? “The two shall become one flesh”—that’s what it says. ¹⁷ But the one who joins himself to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.

¹⁸ Run away from immorality. Every sin that it’s possible for someone to commit happens outside the body; but immorality involves sinning against your own body. ¹⁹ Or don’t you know that your body is a temple of the holy spirit within you, the spirit God gave you, so that you don’t belong to yourselves? ²⁰ You were quite an expensive purchase! So glorify God in your body.

A lamp on its stand

²¹ Jesus said to them, “When you bring a lamp into a room, do you put it under a bucket, or under a bed? Of course not! It goes on a lampstand. ²² No: nothing is secret except what’s meant to be revealed, and nothing is covered up except what’s meant to be uncovered. ²³ If you have ears, then listen!

²⁴ “Be careful with what you hear,” he went on. “The scales you use will be used for you, and more so. ²⁵ If you have something, you’ll be given more; but if you have nothing, even what you have will be taken away.”

More seed parables

²⁶ “This is what God’s kingdom is like,” said Jesus. “Once upon a time a man sowed seed on the ground. ²⁷ Every night he went to bed; every day he got up; and the seed sprouted and grew without him knowing how it did it. ²⁸ The ground produces crops by itself: first the stalk, then the ear, then the complete corn in the ear. ²⁹ But when the crop is ready, in goes the sickle at once, because harvest has arrived.

³⁰ “What shall we say God’s kingdom is like?” he said. “What picture shall we give of it? ³¹ It’s like a grain of mustard seed. When it’s sown on the ground, it’s the smallest of all the seeds on the earth. ³² But when it’s sown, it springs up and becomes the biggest of all shrubs. It grows large branches, so that ‘the birds of the air make their nests’ within its shade.”

³³ He used to tell them a lot of parables like this, speaking the word as much as they were able to hear. ³⁴ He never spoke except in parables. But he explained everything to his own disciples in private.