Book of Common Prayer
So—come to worship!
19 So then, my brothers and sisters, we have boldness to go into the sanctuary through the blood of Jesus. 20 He has inaugurated a brand new, living path through the curtain (that is, his earthly body). 21 We have a high priest who is over God’s house. 22 Let us therefore come to worship, with a true heart, in complete assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from a bad conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.
23 Let us hold on tightly to our confession of hope, without being diverted; the one who announced the message to us is trustworthy! 24 Let us, as well, stir up one another’s minds to energetic effort in love and good works. 25 We mustn’t neglect meeting together, as some are now doing. Instead, we must encourage one another, and all the more as you can see the great day coming closer.
Warning of judgment
26 For if we sin deliberately and knowingly after having received the knowledge of the truth, there is no further sacrifice for sin. 27 Instead, there is a fearful prospect of judgment, and a hungry fire which will consume the opponents. 28 If someone sets aside the law of Moses, they are to be “put to death on the testimony of two or three witnesses,” with no pity. 29 How much worse punishment, do you think, will be appropriate for people who trample the son of God underfoot, and profane the blood of the covenant by which they were sanctified, and scorn the spirit of grace? 30 We know the one who said, “Vengeance belongs to me; I will pay everyone back,” and again, “The Lord will judge his people.” 31 It’s a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
2 In Jerusalem, near the Sheep Gate, there is a pool which is called, in Hebrew, Bethesda. It has five porticoes, 3 where several sick people were lying. They were blind, lame and paralyzed.
5 There was a man who had been there, in the same sick state, for thirty-eight years. 6 Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had been there a long time already.
“Do you want to get well?” he asked him.
7 “Well, sir,” the sick man replied, “I don’t have anyone to put me into the pool when the water gets stirred up. While I’m on my way there, someone else gets down before me.”
8 “Get up,” said Jesus, “pick up your mattress and walk!”
9 At once the man was healed. He picked up his mattress and walked.
God’s son breaks the sabbath!
The day all this happened was a sabbath. 10 So the Judaeans confronted the man who had been healed.
“It’s the sabbath!” they said. “You shouldn’t be carrying your mattress!”
11 “Well,” he replied, “the man who cured me told me to pick up my mattress and walk!”
12 “Oh, really?” they said. “And who is this man, who told you to pick it up and walk?”
13 But the man who’d been healed didn’t know who it was. Jesus had gone away, and the place was crowded.
14 After this Jesus found the man in the Temple.
“Look!” he said. “You’re better again! Don’t sin anymore, or something worse might happen to you!”
15 The man went off and told the Judaeans that it was Jesus who had healed him. 16 That was why the Judaeans began to persecute Jesus, because he did these things on the sabbath.
17 This was Jesus’ response to them.
“My father,” he said, “is going on working, and so am I!”
18 So for this reason the Judaeans were all the more eager to kill him, because he not only broke the sabbath, but spoke of God as his own father, making himself equal to God.
Scripture quotations from The New Testament for Everyone are copyright © Nicholas Thomas Wright 2011, 2018, 2019.