Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
You Yourselves Are Proof To Everyone That God Is Working Through Us
3 Are we[a] beginning to commend ourselves again? Or we do not have-need of letters of recommendation[b] to you or from you, like some, do we? 2 You are our letter— it having been inscribed in our hearts, it being known and being read by all people, 3 you being made-known[c] that you are a letter from[d] Christ having been served by us, having been inscribed not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not in tablets made-of-stone but in tablets[e] which are hearts made-of-flesh.
It Is God Who Makes Us Sufficient As Ministers of His New Covenant
4 And we have such[f] a confidence through Christ toward God— 5 not that we are sufficient[g] from ourselves to count anything as out of ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, 6 Who indeed made us sufficient as ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives-life.
Jesus Calls Levi The Tax Collector And Eats With His Friends: I Came For Sinners
13 And He went out again beside the sea. And all the multitude[a] was coming to Him. And He was teaching them. 14 And while passing on He saw Levi, the son of Alphaeus, sitting at the tax-office[b]. And He says to him “Be following Me!” And having stood-up, he followed Him. 15 And it comes about that He was reclining [to eat] in his[c] house. And many tax-collectors and sinners were reclining-back-with Jesus and His disciples. For there were many, and they were following Him. 16 And the scribes of the Pharisees, having seen that He was eating with the sinners and tax collectors, were saying to His disciples “Why is it that[d] He is eating with the tax collectors and sinners?” 17 And having heard, Jesus says to them that “The ones being strong have no need of a physician, but the ones being ill. I did not come to call righteous ones, but sinners”.
Why Do Your Disciples Not Fast? The Bridegroom Is Here. New Wine Needs New Wineskins
18 And the disciples of John and the Pharisees[e] were fasting. And they come and say to Him, “For what reason are the disciples of John and the disciples of the Pharisees fasting, but Your disciples are not fasting?” 19 And Jesus said to them, “The sons of the wedding-hall[f] cannot be fasting while the bridegroom is with them, can they? As long a time as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot be fasting. 20 But days will come when the bridegroom is taken-away from them, and then they will fast in that day. 21 No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise the fullness [of the patch] takes from it— the new from the old— and a worse tear[g] takes place. 22 And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise the wine will burst the wineskins, and the wine is lost, and the wineskins. But one puts new wine into fresh[h] wineskins”.
Disciples' Literal New Testament: Serving Modern Disciples by More Fully Reflecting the Writing Style of the Ancient Disciples, Copyright © 2011 Michael J. Magill. All Rights Reserved. Published by Reyma Publishing