M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan
The healing of the disabled man
5 After this there was a Jewish festival, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
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.
The coming judgment
19 So Jesus made this response to them.
“I’m telling you the solemn truth,” he said. “The son can do nothing by himself. He can only do what he sees the father doing. Whatever the father does, the son does too, and in the same way. 20 The father loves the son, you see, and shows him all the things that he’s doing. Yes: he will show him even greater things than these, and that’ll amaze you! 21 For, just as the father raises the dead and gives them life, in the same way the son gives life to anyone he chooses.
22 “The father doesn’t judge anyone, you see; he has handed over all judgment to the son, 23 so that everyone should honor the son just as they honor the father. Anyone who doesn’t honor the son doesn’t honor the father who sent him.
24 “I’m telling you the solemn truth: anyone who hears my word, and believes in the one who sent me, has the life of God’s coming age. Such a person won’t come into judgment; they will have passed out of death into life. 25 I’m telling you the solemn truth: the time is coming—in fact, it’s here already!—when the dead will hear the voice of God’s son, and those who hear it will live. 26 You see, just as the father has life in himself, in the same way he has given the son the privilege of having life in himself. 27 He has even given him authority to pass judgment, because he is the son of man.
28 “Don’t be surprised at this. The time is coming, you see, when everyone in the tombs will hear his voice. 29 They will come out—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment.”
The evidence in support of Jesus
30 “I can’t do anything on my own authority,” Jesus went on. “I judge on the basis of what I hear. And my judgment is just, because I’m not trying to carry out my own wishes, but the wishes of the one who sent me.
31 “If I give evidence about myself, my evidence isn’t true. 32 There is someone else who gives evidence about me, and I know that the evidence he brings about me is true. 33 You sent messengers to John, and he gave evidence about the truth. 34 Not that I need evidence from human beings; but I’m saying this so that you may be saved.
35 “John was a burning, bright lamp, and you were happy to celebrate in his light for a while. 36 But I have greater evidence on my side than that of John. The works which the father has given me to complete—these works, which I’m doing, will provide evidence about me, evidence that the father has sent me. 37 And the father who sent me has given evidence about me. You’ve never heard his voice; you’ve never seen his form. 38 What’s more, you haven’t got his word abiding in you, because you don’t believe in the one he sent.”
Jesus and Moses
39 “You study the Bible,” Jesus continued, “because you suppose that you’ll discover the life of God’s coming age in it. In fact, it’s the Bible which gives evidence about me! 40 But you won’t come to me so that you can have life.
41 “I’m not accepting glory from human beings; 42 but I know that you haven’t got the love of God within you. 43 I have come in the name of my father, and you won’t receive me. If someone else comes in his own name, you will receive him! 44 How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another, and you’re not looking for the glory which comes from the one and only God?
45 “Don’t think that I’m going to accuse you to the father. There is someone who accuses you, namely Moses, the one you look to in hope! 46 You see, if you’d believed Moses, you would have believed me—because it was me he was writing about. 47 But if you don’t believe his writings, how are you going to believe my words?”
Paul’s distress over the Galatians
1 Paul, an apostle . . . (my apostleship doesn’t derive from human sources, nor did it come through a human being; it came through Jesus the Messiah, and God the father who raised him from the dead) . . . 2 and the family who are with me; to the churches of Galatia. 3 Grace to you and peace from God our father and Jesus the Messiah, our Lord, 4 who gave himself for our sins, to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of God our father, 5 to whom be glory to the ages of ages. Amen.
6 I’m astonished that you are turning away so quickly from the one who called you by grace, and going after another gospel— 7 not that it is another gospel, it’s just that there are some people stirring up trouble for you and wanting to pervert the gospel of the Messiah. 8 But even if we—or an angel from heaven!—should announce a gospel other than the one we announced to you, let such a person be accursed. 9 I said it before and I now say it again: if anyone offers you a gospel other than the one you received, let that person be accursed.
Paul’s conversion and call
10 Well now . . . does that sound as though I’m trying to make up to people—or to God? Or that I’m trying to curry favor with people? If I were still pleasing people, I wouldn’t be a slave of the Messiah.
11 You see, brothers and sisters, let me make it clear to you: the gospel announced by me is not a mere human invention. 12 I didn’t receive it from human beings, nor was I taught it; it came through an unveiling of Jesus the Messiah.
13 You heard, didn’t you, the way I behaved when I was still within “Judaism.” I persecuted the church of God violently, and ravaged it. 14 I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my own age and people; I was extremely zealous for my ancestral traditions. 15 But when God, who set me apart from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace, was pleased 16 to unveil his son in me, so that I might announce the good news about him among the nations—immediately I did not confer with flesh and blood. 17 Nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me. No; I went away to Arabia, and afterwards returned to Damascus.
Paul’s first visit to Peter
18 Then, after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to speak with Cephas. I stayed with him for two weeks. 19 I didn’t see any other of the apostles except James, the Lord’s brother. 20 (Look, I’m not lying! The things I’m writing to you are written in God’s presence.) 21 Then I went to the regions of Syria and Cilicia. 22 I remained unknown by sight to the messianic assemblies in Judaea. 23 They simply heard that the one who had been persecuting them was now announcing the good news of the faith which he once tried to destroy. 24 And they glorified God because of me.
Scripture quotations from The New Testament for Everyone are copyright © Nicholas Thomas Wright 2011, 2018, 2019.