Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

In Praise of the Law of the Lord

³² I command you to show respect for older people and to obey me with fear and trembling.

^33 (A) Don't mistreat any foreigners who live in your land. ³⁴ Instead, treat them as well as you treat your own people and love them as much as you love yourself. Remember, you were once foreigners in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.

^35-36 (B) Use honest scales and don't cheat when you weigh or measure anything.

I am the Lord your God. I rescued you from Egypt, ³⁷ and I command you to obey my laws.

God's Way of Accepting People

²¹ Now we see how God does make us acceptable to him. The Law and the Prophets^[a] tell how we become acceptable, and it isn't by obeying the Law of Moses. ^22 (A) God treats everyone alike. He accepts people only because they have faith in Jesus Christ. ²³ All of us have sinned and fallen short of God's glory. ²⁴ But God treats us much better than we deserve, and because of Christ Jesus, he freely accepts us and sets us free from our sins. ^25-26 (B) God sent Christ to be our sacrifice. Christ offered his life's blood, so by faith in him we could come to God. And God did this to show that in the past he was right to be patient and forgive sinners. This also shows that God is right when he accepts people who have faith in Jesus.

²⁷ What is left for us to brag about? Not a thing! Is it because we obeyed some law? No! It is because of faith. ²⁸ We see that people are acceptable to God because they have faith, and not because they obey the Law. ²⁹ Does God belong only to the Jews? Isn't he also the God of the Gentiles? Yes, he is! ^30 (C) There is only one God, and he accepts Gentiles as well as Jews, simply because of their faith. ³¹ Do we destroy the Law by our faith? Not at all! We make it even more powerful.