Book of Common Prayer
13 So fasten your belts—the belts of your minds! Keep yourselves under control. Set your hope completely on the grace that will be given you when Jesus the Messiah is revealed. 14 As children of obedience, don’t be squashed into the shape of the passions you used to indulge when you were still in ignorance. 15 Rather, just as the one who called you is holy, so be holy yourselves, in every aspect of behavior. 16 It is written, you see, “Be holy, for I am holy.” 17 If you call on God as “Father”—the God, that is, who judges everyone impartially according to their work—behave with holy fear throughout the time in which you are resident here.
18 You know, after all, that you were ransomed from the futile practices inherited from your ancestors, and that this ransom came not through perishable things like gold or silver, 19 but through the precious blood of the Messiah, like a lamb without spot or blemish. 20 He was destined for this from before the foundation of the world, and appeared at the end of the times for your sake, 21 for you (that is) who through him believe in the God who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.
Newborn babies
22 Once your lives have been purified by obeying the truth, resulting in a sincere love for all your fellow believers, love one another eagerly, from a pure heart. 23 You have been born again, not from seed which decays but from seed which does not—through the living and abiding word of God. 24 Because, you see—
All flesh is like grass
and all its glory is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, and the flower falls
25 but the word of the Lord lasts forever.
That is the word that was announced to you.
18 “I’m not going to leave you bereft. I am coming to you. 19 Not long from now, the world won’t see me anymore; but you will see me. Because I live, you will live too. 20 On that day you will know that I am in my father, and you in me, and I in you.
21 “Anyone who has my commandments and keeps them—that’s the person who loves me. Anyone who loves me will be loved by my father, and I will love them and show myself to them.”
My peace I give to you
22 Judas spoke up. (This was the other Judas, not Iscariot.)
“Master,” he said, “how will it be that you will show yourself to us and not to the world?”
23 “If anyone loves me,” Jesus replied, “they will keep my word. My father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. 24 Anyone who doesn’t love me won’t keep my word. And the word which you hear isn’t mine. It comes from the father, who sent me.
25 “I’ve said all this to you while I’m here with you. 26 But the helper, the holy spirit, the one the father will send in my name, he will teach you everything. He will bring back to your mind everything I’ve said to you.
27 “I’m leaving you peace. I’m giving you my own peace. I don’t give gifts in the way the world does. Don’t let your hearts be troubled; don’t be fearful. 28 You heard that I said to you, ‘I’m going away, and I’m coming back to you.’ If you loved me, you would be happy that I’m going to the father—because the father is greater than me. 29 And now I’ve told you before it happens, so that when it does happen, you may believe.
30 “I haven’t got much more to say to you. The ruler of the world is coming. He has nothing to do with me. 31 But all this is happening so that the world may know that I love the father, and that I’m doing what the father has told me to do.
“Get up. Let’s be going.”
Scripture quotations from The New Testament for Everyone are copyright © Nicholas Thomas Wright 2011, 2018, 2019.