Old/New Testament

Psalm 146

¹ Praise the Lord! (Hallelujah!) Praise the Lord, O my soul!

² While I live will I praise the Lord; I will sing praises to my God while I have any being.

³ Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no help.

⁴ When his breath leaves him, he returns to his earth; in that very day his [previous] thoughts, plans, and purposes perish.^(A)

⁵ Happy (blessed, fortunate, enviable) is he who has the God of [special revelation to] Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God,^(B)

⁶ Who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, Who keeps truth and is faithful forever,

⁷ Who executes justice for the oppressed, Who gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets free the prisoners,

⁸ The Lord opens the eyes of the blind, the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down, the Lord loves the [uncompromisingly] righteous (those upright in heart and in right standing with Him).^(C)

⁹ The Lord protects and preserves the strangers and temporary residents, He upholds the fatherless and the widow and sets them upright, but the way of the wicked He makes crooked (turns upside down and brings to ruin).

¹⁰ The Lord shall reign forever, even Your God, O Zion, from generation to generation. Praise the Lord! (Hallelujah!)^(D)

Psalm 147

¹ Praise the Lord! For it is good to sing praises to our God, for He is gracious and lovely; praise is becoming and appropriate.

² The Lord is building up Jerusalem; He is gathering together the exiles of Israel.

³ He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds [curing their pains and their sorrows].^(E)

⁴ He determines and counts the number of the stars; He calls them all by their names.

⁵ Great is our Lord and of great power; His understanding is inexhaustible and boundless.

⁶ The Lord lifts up the humble and downtrodden; He casts the wicked down to the ground.

⁷ Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving; sing praises with the harp or the lyre to our God!—

⁸ Who covers the heavens with clouds, Who prepares rain for the earth, Who makes grass to grow on the mountains.

⁹ He gives to the beast his food, and to the young ravens that for which they cry.

¹⁰ He delights not in the strength of the horse, nor does He take pleasure in the legs of a man.

¹¹ The Lord takes pleasure in those who reverently and worshipfully fear Him, in those who hope in His mercy and loving-kindness.^(F)

¹² Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem! Praise your God, O Zion!

¹³ For He has strengthened and made hard the bars of your gates, and He has blessed your children within you.

¹⁴ He makes peace in your borders; He fills you with the finest of the wheat.

¹⁵ He sends forth His commandment to the earth; His word runs very swiftly.

¹⁶ He gives [to the earth] snow like [a blanket of] wool; He scatters the hoarfrost like ashes.

¹⁷ He casts forth His ice like crumbs; who can stand before His cold?

¹⁸ He sends out His word, and melts [ice and snow]; He causes His wind to blow, and the waters flow.

¹⁹ He declares His word to Jacob, His statutes and His ordinances to Israel.^(G)

²⁰ He has not dealt so with any [other] nation; they have not known (understood, appreciated, given heed to, and cherished) His ordinances. Praise the Lord! (Hallelujah!)^(H)

15 And now let me remind you [since it seems to have escaped you], brethren, of the Gospel (the glad tidings of salvation) which I proclaimed to you, which you welcomed and accepted and upon which your faith rests,

² And by which you are saved, if you hold fast and keep firmly what I preached to you, unless you believed at first without effect and all for nothing.

³ For I passed on to you first of all what I also had received, that Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One) died for our sins in accordance with [what] the Scriptures [foretold],^(A)

⁴ That He was buried, that He arose on the third day as the Scriptures foretold,^(B)

⁵ And [also] that He appeared to Cephas (Peter), then to the Twelve.

⁶ Then later He showed Himself to more than five hundred brethren at one time, the majority of whom are still alive, but some have fallen asleep [in death].

⁷ Afterward He was seen by James, then by all the apostles (the special messengers),

⁸ And last of all He appeared to me also, as to one prematurely and born dead [^[a]no better than an unperfected fetus among living men].

⁹ For I am the least [worthy] of the apostles, who am not fit or deserving to be called an apostle, because I once wronged and pursued and molested the church of God [oppressing it with cruelty and violence].

¹⁰ But by the grace (the unmerited favor and blessing) of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not [found to be] for nothing (fruitless and without effect). In fact, I worked harder than all of them [the apostles], though it was not really I, but the grace (the unmerited favor and blessing) of God which was with me.

¹¹ So, whether then it was I or they, this is what we preach and this is what you believed [what you adhered to, trusted in, and relied on].

¹² But now if Christ (the Messiah) is preached as raised from the dead, how is it that some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?

¹³ But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not risen;

¹⁴ And if Christ has not risen, then our preaching is in vain [it amounts to nothing] and your faith is devoid of truth and is fruitless (without effect, empty, imaginary, and unfounded).

¹⁵ We are even discovered to be misrepresenting God, for we testified of Him that He raised Christ, Whom He did not raise in case it is true that the dead are not raised.

¹⁶ For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised;

¹⁷ And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is mere delusion [futile, fruitless], and you are still in your sins [under the control and penalty of sin];

¹⁸ And further, those who have died in [^[b]spiritual fellowship and union with] Christ have perished (are lost)!

¹⁹ If we who are [abiding] in Christ have hope only in this life and that is all, then we are of all people most miserable and to be pitied.

²⁰ But the fact is that Christ (the Messiah) has been raised from the dead, and He became the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep [in death].

²¹ For since [it was] through a man that death [came into the world, it is] also through a Man that the resurrection of the dead [has come].

²² For just as [because of their ^[c]union of nature] in Adam all people die, so also [by virtue of their ^[d]union of nature] shall all in Christ be made alive.

²³ But each in his own rank and turn: Christ (the Messiah) [is] the firstfruits, then those who are Christ’s [own will be resurrected] at His coming.

²⁴ After that comes the end (the completion), when He delivers over the kingdom to God the Father after rendering inoperative and abolishing every [other] rule and every authority and power.

²⁵ For [Christ] must be King and reign until He has put all [His] enemies under His feet.^(C)

²⁶ The last enemy to be subdued and abolished is death.

²⁷ For He [the Father] has put all things in subjection under His [Christ’s] feet. But when it says, All things are put in subjection [under Him], it is evident that He [Himself] is excepted Who does the subjecting of all things to Him.^(D)

²⁸ However, when everything is subjected to Him, then the Son Himself will also subject Himself to [the Father] Who put all things under Him, so that God may be all in all [be everything to everyone, supreme, the indwelling and controlling factor of life].