Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

⁶ “Hurry! Run away from Babylon. I have scattered you in all directions,” says the Lord.

⁷ “Hurry, people of Jerusalem! Escape from Babylon.” ⁸ This is what the Lord of heaven’s armies says: “Whoever hurts you hurts what is precious to me.”

So the Lord will honor me. And he will send me to speak against those nations who scattered you. ⁹ “I will raise my hand against them. Their slaves will rob them.”

Then you will know that the Lord of heaven’s armies sent me.

¹⁰ “Shout and be glad, Jerusalem. I am coming, and I will live among you,” says the Lord. ¹¹ “At that time people from many nations will come to the Lord. And they will become my people. I will live among you. And you will know that the Lord of heaven’s armies has sent me to you. ¹² Judah will be the Lord’s special part of the holy land. And Jerusalem will be his chosen city again. ¹³ Be silent, everyone. The Lord is coming out of the holy place where he lives.”

Our Fight Against Sin

⁷ You might think that I am saying that sin and the law are the same thing. That is not true. But the law was the only way I could learn what sin meant. I would never have known what it means to want something wrong if the law had not said, “You must not want to take your neighbor’s things.”^{[a] 8} And sin found a way to use that command and cause me to want every kind of wrong thing. So sin came to me because of that command. But without the law, sin has no power. ⁹ I was alive without the law before I knew the law. But when the law’s command came to me, then sin began to live. ¹⁰ And I died because of sin. The command was meant to bring life, but for me that command brought death. ¹¹ Sin found a way to fool me by using the command. Sin used the command to make me die.

¹² So the law is holy, and the command is holy and right and good. ¹³ Does this mean that something that is good brought death to me? No! Sin used something that is good to bring death to me. This happened so that I could see what sin is really like. The command was used to show that sin is something very evil.

The War Within Man

¹⁴ We know that the law is spiritual. But I am not spiritual. Sin rules me as if I were its slave. ¹⁵ I do not understand the things I do. I do not do the good things I want to do. And I do the bad things I hate to do. ¹⁶ And if I do not want to do the bad things I do, then that means that I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷ But I am not really the one who is doing these bad things. It is sin living in me that does these things. ¹⁸ Yes, I know that nothing good lives in me—I mean nothing good lives in the part of me that is earthly and sinful. I want to do the things that are good. But I do not do them. ¹⁹ I do not do the good things that I want to do. I do the bad things that I do not want to do. ²⁰ So if I do things I do not want to do, then I am not the one doing those things. It is sin living in me that does those bad things.