M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan

Teachings on the sabbath

6 One sabbath, Jesus was walking through some cornfields. His disciples were plucking and eating ears of grain, rubbing them with their hands.

² “Why,” asked some Pharisees, “are you doing something that isn’t permitted on the sabbath?”

³ “Haven’t you read what David did?” replied Jesus. “When he and his men were hungry, ⁴ he went into God’s house and took the ‘bread of the presence,’ which no one but the priests was allowed to eat. He ate some, and gave it to his companions.

⁵ “The son of man,” he declared, “is Lord of the sabbath.”

⁶ On another sabbath he went into the synagogue and was teaching. A man was there whose right hand was withered. ⁷ The scribes and Pharisees were watching him, to see if he would heal him on the sabbath, so that they could find an accusation against him.

⁸ He knew what they were thinking.

“Get up,” he said to the man with the withered hand, “and come out here in the middle.” He got up and came out.

⁹ “Let me ask you something,” Jesus said to them. “Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath or to do evil? To save life or to destroy it?”

¹⁰ He looked round at all of them.

“Stretch out your hand,” he said to the man.

He did so; and his hand was restored. ¹¹ But they were filled with rage, and discussed with each other what they might do to Jesus.

The Beatitudes

¹² It happened around that time that Jesus went up into the mountain to pray, and he spent all night in prayer to God. ¹³ When day came, he called his disciples, and chose twelve of them, calling them “apostles”: ¹⁴ Simon, whom he called Peter, and Andrew his brother, and James and John, and Philip, Bartholomew, ¹⁵ Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Simon who was called “the hothead,” ¹⁶ Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who turned traitor.

¹⁷ He went down with them, and took up a position on a level plain where there was a large crowd of his followers, with a huge company of people from all Judaea, from Jerusalem, and from the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon. ¹⁸ They came to hear him, and to be cured from their diseases. Those who were troubled by unclean spirits were healed, ¹⁹ and the whole crowd tried to touch him, because power was going out from him and healing everybody.

²⁰ He lifted up his eyes and looked at his disciples, and said:

Loving your enemies

²⁷ “But this is my word,” Jesus continued, “for those of you who are listening: love your enemies! Do good to people who hate you! ²⁸ Bless people who curse you! Pray for people who treat you badly!

²⁹ “If someone hits you on the cheek—offer him the other one! If someone takes away your coat—don’t stop him taking your shirt! ³⁰ Give to everyone who asks you, and don’t ask for things back when people have taken them.

³¹ “Whatever you want people to do to you, do that to them. ³² If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Think about it: even sinners love people who love them. ³³ Or again, if you do good only to people who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Sinners do that too. ³⁴ If you lend only to people you expect to get things back from, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners to get paid back. ³⁵ No: love your enemies, do good and lend without expecting any return. Your reward will be great! You will be children of the Highest! He is generous, you see, to the stingy and wicked. ³⁶ You must be merciful, just as your father is merciful.

³⁷ “Don’t judge, and you won’t be judged. Don’t condemn, and you won’t be condemned. Forgive, and you’ll be forgiven. ³⁸ Give, and it will be given to you: a good helping, squashed down, shaken in, and overflowing—that’s what will land in your lap. Yes: the ration you give to others is the ration you’ll get back for yourself.”

Judging others and true obedience

³⁹ Jesus told them this riddle. “What do you get when one blind man guides another? Both of them falling in a ditch! ⁴⁰ Students can’t do better than the teacher; when the course is done, they’ll all be just like the teacher.

⁴¹ “Why look at the speck of dust in your brother’s eye, when you haven’t noticed the plank in your own eye? ⁴² How can you say to your brother, ‘Dear brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when you can’t see the plank in your own? You’re a fraud! First take the plank out of your own eye, and then you’ll see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.

⁴³ “You see, no good tree bears bad fruit; nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. ⁴⁴ Every tree is known by its fruit. You don’t pick figs from thorns; nor do you get grapes from a briar-bush. ⁴⁵ The good person brings good things out of the good treasure of the heart; the evil person brings evil things out of evil. What comes out of the mouth is what’s overflowing in the heart.

⁴⁶ “Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and don’t do what I say? ⁴⁷ I’ll show you what people are like when they come to me, and hear my words, and do them. ⁴⁸ They are like a wise man building a house: he dug, he went down deep, and he laid a foundation on rock. When a flood came, the river burst its banks all over the house, but it couldn’t shake it because it was well built. ⁴⁹ But when people hear but don’t obey—that’s like a man who built a house on the ground, without a foundation. When the river burst over it, it fell down at once. The ruin of that house was devastating.”

Life within marriage

7 Let me now turn to the matters you wrote about. “It is good for a man to have no sexual contact with a woman.” ² Well, yes; but the temptation to immorality means that every man should maintain sexual relations with his own wife, and every woman with her own husband. ³ The man should give his wife her marital rights, and the woman should do the same for her husband. ⁴ The woman isn’t in charge of her own body; her husband is. In the same way, the man isn’t in charge of his own body; his wife is. ⁵ Don’t deny one another, except perhaps by agreement for a period of time, so that you may have more space for prayer. But then come together again, in case the satan might tempt you because of your weakness of will.

⁶ I’m not saying this as a command, but as a concession. ⁷ I would be happy to see everyone be in the same situation as myself. But each person has his or her own gift from God, one this way, another that way.

Marriage and divorce

⁸ To unmarried people, and to widows, I have this to say: it’s perfectly all right for you to remain like me. ⁹ But if you don’t have power over your passions, then get married. Much better to marry than to have desire smoldering away inside you!

¹⁰ I have a command, too, for married people—actually, it’s not just from me, it’s from the Lord: that a woman should not separate from her husband. ¹¹ If she does, she should remain unmarried or return to her husband. So, too, a man should not divorce his wife.

¹² To everyone else I have this to say (this is just me, not the Lord). If a Christian has an unbelieving wife, and she is happy to live with him, he shouldn’t divorce her. ¹³ If a woman has an unbelieving husband, and he is happy to live with her, she shouldn’t divorce him. ¹⁴ The unbelieving husband, you see, is made holy by his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy by her husband; otherwise your children would be impure, whereas in fact they are holy. ¹⁵ But if the unbelieving partner wants to separate, let them separate; a brother or sister is not bound in a case like that. God has called you in peace. ¹⁶ If you’re a wife, how d’you know whether or not you will save your husband? If you’re a husband, how d’you know whether or not you will save your wife?

Stay the way you were called

¹⁷ This is the overriding rule: everyone should conduct their lives as the Lord appointed, as God has called them. This is what I lay down in all the churches. ¹⁸ If someone was circumcised when he was called, he shouldn’t try to remove the marks. If someone was uncircumcised when he was called, he shouldn’t get circumcised. ¹⁹ Circumcision is nothing; uncircumcision is nothing; what matters is keeping God’s commandments!

²⁰ Everyone should stay within the calling they had when they were called. ²¹ Were you a slave when you were called? Don’t worry about it (but if you get the chance of freedom, seize it!). ²² The one who is in the Lord and called as a slave is the Lord’s freedman, just as the one who is called as a free person is the Messiah’s slave. ²³ You were bought at a high price; don’t become the slaves of human beings. ²⁴ So, brothers and sisters, let each person remain before God in the state in which they were called.

On remaining unmarried

²⁵ Now when it comes to unmarried people, I have no command from the Lord, but I give my opinion as (thanks to the Lord’s mercy!) a trustworthy person. ²⁶ This, then, is what I think is for the best: just at the moment we are in the middle of a very difficult time, and it’s best for people to remain as they are. ²⁷ Are you bound to a wife? Don’t try to dissolve the marriage. Have you had your marriage dissolved? Don’t look for another wife. ²⁸ But if you do marry, you are not sinning, and if an unmarried woman marries, she is not sinning. But people who go that way will have trouble at a human level, and I would prefer to spare you that.

²⁹ This is what I mean, my brothers and sisters. The present situation won’t last long; for the moment, let those who have wives live as though they weren’t married, ³⁰ those who weep as though they were not weeping, those who celebrate as though they were not celebrating, those who buy as though they had no possessions, ³¹ those who use the world as though they were not making use of it. The pattern of this world, you see, is passing away.

Divided loyalties

³² I want you to be free from worries. The unmarried man worries about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord; ³³ but the married man worries about the things of the world, in other words, how to please his wife— ³⁴ and he is pulled in both directions. So too the unmarried woman or girl worries about the things of the Lord, how to be holy both in body and spirit; but the married woman worries about the things of the world, in other words, how to please her husband.

³⁵ I’m saying this for your own benefit. I’m not placing restrictions on you; my aim is that nothing will get in the way of your appropriate behavior and steady devotion to the Lord.

³⁶ If anyone thinks he is behaving improperly towards his fiancée—if he finds the situation overly stressful, and matters reach a point of necessity—then let him do as he wishes, he won’t be sinning: let them marry. ³⁷ But the man who settles it firmly in his heart and is not under necessity, but in control of his own will, and has made his judgment in his own heart to keep her as his fiancée, will do well. ³⁸ So the one who marries his fiancée will do well; and the one who holds back from marrying will do better.

³⁹ A woman is bound in marriage as long as her husband lives. But if the husband dies she is free to marry anyone she likes, only in the Lord. ⁴⁰ But in my opinion she is happier if she remains as she is. And I think I too have the spirit of God.