Book of Common Prayer

Dying to the law

7 Surely you know, my dear family—I am, after all, talking to people who know the law!—that the law rules a person as long as that person is alive? ² The law binds a married woman to her husband during his lifetime; but if he dies, she is free from the law as regards her husband. ³ So, then, she will be called an adulteress if she goes with another man while her husband is alive; but if the husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is not an adulteress if she goes with another man.

⁴ In the same way, my dear family, you too died to the law through the body of the Messiah, so that you could belong to someone else—to the one who was raised from the dead, in fact—so that we could bear fruit for God. ⁵ For when we were living a mortal human life, the passions of sins which were through the law were at work in our limbs and organs, causing us to bear fruit for death. ⁶ But now we have been cut loose from the law; we have died to the thing in which we were held tightly. The aim is that we should now be enslaved in the new life of the spirit, not in the old life of the letter.

When the law arrived: Sinai looks back to the fall

⁷ What then shall we say? That the law is sin? Certainly not! But I would not have known sin except through the law. I would not have known covetousness if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” ⁸ But sin grabbed its opportunity through the commandment, and produced all kinds of covetousness within me.

Apart from the law, sin is dead. ⁹ I was once alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life ¹⁰ and I died. The commandment which pointed to life turned out, in my case, to bring death. ¹¹ For sin grabbed its opportunity through the commandment. It deceived me, and, through it, killed me.

¹² So, then, the law is holy; and the commandment is holy, upright and good.

The question about John

²³ Jesus went into the Temple. As he was teaching, the chief priests and the elders of the people came up to him.

“By what right are you doing these things?” they asked him. “Who gave you this right?”

²⁴ “I’m going to ask you one question, too,” replied Jesus, “and if you tell me the answer then I’ll tell you by what right I’m doing these things. ²⁵ Where did John’s baptism come from? Was it from heaven, or from this world?”

They debated this among themselves. “If we say ‘from heaven,’ ” they said, “he’s going to say to us, ‘So why didn’t you believe him?’ ²⁶ But if we say ‘from this world,’ we’ll have to watch out for the crowd, because they all reckon that John was a prophet.”

²⁷ So they answered Jesus, “We don’t know.”

“Well, then,” said Jesus, “nor will I tell you by what right I’m doing these things.

²⁸ “What d’you think?” he went on. “Once upon a time there was a man who had two sons.

“He went to the first one and said, ‘Now then, my boy, off you go and do a day’s work in the vineyard.’

²⁹ “ ‘Don’t want to,’ replied the son; but afterwards he thought better of it and went.

³⁰ “He went to the other son and said the same thing.

“ ‘Certainly, Master,’ he said; but he didn’t go.

³¹ “So which of the two did what his father wanted?”

“The first,” they answered.

“I’m telling you the truth,” Jesus said to them. “The tax-collectors and prostitutes are going into God’s kingdom ahead of you! ³² Yes: John came to you, in accordance with God’s righteous covenant plan, and you didn’t believe him—but the tax-collectors and prostitutes believed him. But when you saw it, you didn’t think better of it afterwards and believe him.”