M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan

Faith wins the victory

5 Everyone who believes that the Messiah is Jesus has been fathered by God. Everyone who loves the parent loves the child as well. ² That is how we know that we love the children of God, because we love God and do what he commands. ³ This is what loving God means: it means keeping his commandments. His commandments, what’s more, are no trouble, ⁴ because everything that is fathered by God conquers the world. This is the victory that conquers the world: our faith.

⁵ Who is the one who conquers the world? Surely the one who believes that Jesus is God’s son! ⁶ It was he who came by means of water and blood, Jesus the Messiah, not by water only but by the water and the blood. The spirit is the one who bears witness, because the spirit is the truth. ⁷ There are three that bear witness, you see, ⁸ the spirit, the water and the blood, and these three agree together. ⁹ If we have received human witness, God’s witness is greater. This is the witness of God, the testimony he has borne to his son. ¹⁰ All those who believe in the son of God have the witness in themselves, but anyone who does not believe God has made a liar of him, because they have not believed in the witness which God bore concerning his son. ¹¹ This is the witness: God has given us the life of the age to come, and this life is in his son. ¹² Anyone who has the son has life. Anyone who does not have the son of God does not have life.

The true God

¹³ I am writing these things to you so that you may know that you, who believe in the name of the son of God, do indeed have the life of the age to come. ¹⁴ This is the bold confidence we have before him: if we ask for something according to his will, he hears us. ¹⁵ And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we already possess the requests we have asked from him.

¹⁶ If anyone sees a brother or sister committing a sin which is not deadly, they should ask, and God will give life to the people who are sinning in a way which is not deadly. There is such a thing as deadly sin; I do not say that one should pray about that. ¹⁷ All sin is unrighteousness, and there is a sin which is not deadly.

¹⁸ We know that everyone fathered by God does not go on sinning. The one who was fathered by God keeps them, and the evil one does not touch them. ¹⁹ We know that we are from God, and the whole world is under the power of the evil one. ²⁰ We know that the son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we should know the truth. And we are in the truth, in his son Jesus the Messiah.

This is the true God; this is the life of the age to come. ²¹ Children, guard yourselves against idols.

The question about Jesus’ authority

20 On one of those days, while Jesus was teaching the people in the Temple, and announcing the good news, the chief priests and the scribes came up with the elders, and said to him, ² “Tell us: by what authority are you doing these things? Or who gave you this authority?”

³ “I’ve got a question for you, too,” said Jesus, “so tell me this: ⁴ was John’s baptism from God, or was it merely human?”

⁵ “If we say it was from God,” they said among themselves, “he’ll say, So why didn’t you believe him? ⁶ But if we say ‘merely human,’ all the people will stone us, since they’re convinced that John was a prophet.”

⁷ So they replied that they didn’t know where John and his baptism came from.

⁸ “Very well, then,” said Jesus. “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.”

The parable of the tenants

⁹ Jesus began to tell the people this parable. “There was a man who planted a vineyard, let it out to tenant farmers, and went abroad for a long while. ¹⁰ When the time came, he sent a slave to the farmers to collect from them some of the produce of the vineyard. But the farmers beat him and sent him away empty-handed. ¹¹ He then sent a further slave, and they beat him, abused him, and sent him back empty-handed. ¹² Then he sent yet a third, and they beat him up and threw him out.

¹³ “So the master of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I’ll send my beloved son. They will certainly respect him!’ ¹⁴ But when the farmers saw him they said to each other, ‘This is the heir! Let’s kill him, and then the inheritance will belong to us!’ ¹⁵ And they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.

“So what will the master of the vineyard do? ¹⁶ He will come and wipe out those farmers, and give the vineyard to others.”

When they heard this, they said, “God forbid!” ¹⁷ But Jesus looked round at them and said, “What then does it mean in the Bible when it says,

¹⁸ “Everyone who falls on that stone will be smashed to smithereens; but if it falls on anyone, it will crush them.”

¹⁹ The scribes and the chief priests tried to lay hands on him then and there. But they were afraid of the people, because they knew that Jesus had told this parable against them.

On paying taxes to Caesar

²⁰ So the authorities watched Jesus, and sent people to lie in wait for him. They pretended to be upright folk, but were trying to trap him in something he said, so that they could hand him over to the rule and authority of the governor. ²¹ So they asked him this question.

“Teacher,” they said, “we know that you speak and teach with integrity. You are completely impartial, and you teach God’s way and God’s truth. ²² So: is it right for us to give tribute to Caesar, or not?”

²³ Jesus knew they were playing a trick.

²⁴ “Show me a tribute-coin,” he said. “This image . . . and this inscription . . . who do they belong to?”

“Caesar,” they said.

²⁵ “Well, then,” replied Jesus, “you’d better give Caesar back what belongs to him! And give God back what belongs to him.”

²⁶ They couldn’t catch him in anything he said in front of the people. They were amazed at his answer, and had nothing more to say.

Marriage and the resurrection

²⁷ Some of the Sadducees came to Jesus to put their question. (The Sadducees deny that there is any resurrection.)

²⁸ “Teacher,” they said, “Moses wrote for us that ‘if a man’s brother dies, leaving a widow but no children, the man should marry the widow and raise up a family for his brother.’ ²⁹ Well, now: there were seven brothers; the eldest married a wife, and died without children. ³⁰ The second ³¹ and the third married her, and then each of the seven, and they died without children. ³² Finally the woman died as well. ³³ So, in the resurrection, whose wife will the woman be? The seven all had her as their wife.”

³⁴ “The children of this age,” replied Jesus, “marry and are given in marriage. ³⁵ But those who are counted worthy of a place in the age to come, and of the resurrection of the dead, don’t marry, and they are not given in marriage. ³⁶ This is because they can no longer die; they are the equivalent of angels. They are children of God, since they are children of the resurrection.

³⁷ “But when it comes to the dead being raised, Moses too declares it, in the passage about the burning bush, where scripture describes the Lord as ‘the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ ³⁸ God is God, not of the dead, but of the living. They are all alive to him.”

³⁹ “That was well said, Teacher,” commented some of the scribes, ⁴⁰ since they no longer dared ask him anything else.

David’s son and the widow’s mite

⁴¹ Jesus said to them, “How can people say that the Messiah is the son of David? ⁴² David himself says, in the book of Psalms,

⁴⁴ “David, you see, calls him ‘Lord’; so how can he be his son?”

⁴⁵ As all the people listened to him, he said to the disciples, ⁴⁶ “Watch out for the scribes who like to go about in long robes, and enjoy being greeted in the market-place, sitting in the best seats in the synagogues, and taking the top table at dinners. ⁴⁷ They devour widows’ houses, and make long prayers without meaning them. Their judgment will be all the more severe.”