Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

⁸ The LORD is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger, and of great mercy.

⁹ The LORD is good to all, and His mercies are over all His works.

¹⁰ All Your works praise You, O LORD, and Your Saints bless You.

¹¹ They show the glory of Your Kingdom, and speak of Your power,

¹² to cause His power and the glorious renown of His Kingdom to be known to the sons of men.

¹³ Your Kingdom is an everlasting Kingdom, and Your dominion endures throughout all ages.

¹⁴ The LORD upholds all who fall and lifts up all who are ready to fall.

1 In the eighth month of the second year of Darius, the Word of the LORD came to Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo the Prophet, saying,

² “The LORD has been very displeased with your fathers.

³ “Therefore, say to them, ‘Thus says the LORD of Hosts: “Turn to Me,” says the LORD of Hosts, “and I will turn to you,” says the LORD of Hosts.

⁴ “Do not be as your fathers, to whom the former Prophets have cried, saying, ‘Thus says the LORD of Hosts: “Turn now from your evil ways and from your wicked works!”’ But they would not hear or listen to Me,” says the LORD.

⁵ “Your fathers. Where are they? And do the Prophets live forever?

⁶ “But did not My Words and My Statutes which I Commanded by My servants the Prophets take hold of your fathers? And they returned, and said, ‘As the LORD of Hosts has determined to do to us according to our own ways, and according to our works, so has He dealt with us.’”’”

7 Do you not know, brothers, (for I speak to those who know the Law) that the Law has dominion over a man for as long as he lives?

² For the woman who is in subjection to a man, is bound by the Law to the man, while he lives. But if the man is dead, she is released from the Law of the man.

³ So then, if while the man lives, she takes another man, she shall be called an adulteress. But, if the man is dead, she is free from the Law; so that she is not an adulteress, even though she takes another man.

⁴ So you, my brothers, are also dead to the Law, by the body of Christ; so that you should belong to Another (that is, to Him Who was raised up from the dead) so that we should bring forth fruit unto God.

⁵ For when we were in the flesh, the sufferings of sins (which were by the Law) were at work in our limbs, bringing forth fruit unto death.

⁶ But now, we are delivered from the Law (that being dead in which we were held), so that we should serve in newness of Spirit, and not in the oldness of letter.