Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

The Lord will be among his people

⁶ ‘Come! Come! Run away from the country in the north,’ says the Lord. ‘As the four winds blow in different directions, I sent you to many far countries.

⁷ Come, my people. Run away from Babylon and return to Jerusalem.’ ⁸ Return because the Lord says, ‘Anyone that attacks you is attacking the Lord's people. He is attacking the people that the Lord loves.’ So the Lord Almighty sent me, Zechariah, with this message about the countries that have robbed his people. ⁹ ‘The Lord himself will fight against your enemies and their own slaves will rob them. Then you will know that the Lord Almighty has sent me, Zechariah, to you.’

¹⁰ ‘Sing and be happy, you people in Jerusalem. This is because I will come. And I will live among you,’ says the Lord. ¹¹ ‘On that day, the people from many countries will come to me, the Lord, and they will become my people. I will live among you. You will know that the Lord Almighty has sent me. ¹² The Lord will choose Judah for himself again. Jerusalem will be the city that he loves most of all cities. ¹³ Be quiet, all people, because the Lord has left his home in heaven to come among you.’

God's Law teaches us about sin

⁷ So someone might say, ‘God's Law must be bad.’ No! Certainly, it is not bad! Without that law, I would not have known what sin really is. One rule says, ‘You must not want to take things for yourself that belong to other people.’^[a] Without that command, I would not have known that it is wrong to want other people's things. ⁸ But the command gave sin a chance to come into my thoughts. As a result, I started to want all kinds of wrong things. If there is no law to tell us what is wrong, then sin has no power to make us guilty.

⁹ As for me, there was a time when I did not know God's laws. I was living without any law to obey. But when I learned about that command, sin now had power in my life. ¹⁰ As a result, I became separate from God, as if I had died.^[b] So the command that should have brought life to me brought death instead. ¹¹ That command gave sin a chance to deceive me. It caused me to become separate from God.

¹² So we understand that God's Law and its commands are completely good. They are holy, fair and good.

¹³ But someone might say, ‘This means that something good brought death to you.’ No! God's Law did not do that! It was sin that brought death to me. Sin used God's good Law to show that I was guilty. Because of that, we can see that sin is really very bad. The commands in God's Law help to show that sin is completely bad.

The power of sin in our lives

¹⁴ We understand that God's Law is spiritual. But I am weak and human. I am like a slave that has sin as my master. ¹⁵ I do not understand the things that I do. I do not do the good things that I want to do. Instead, I do the things that I hate to do. ¹⁶ But I do not want to do those wrong things. So I am agreeing that God's Law is good. ¹⁷ So it is not really I myself who am doing those wrong things. Instead, sin has power in my life. It is sin that causes me to do wrong things.

¹⁸ I know that there is nothing good in me. I am weak and human. I want to do what is good. But I am unable to do it. ¹⁹ I do not do the good things that I want to do. Instead, I continue to do the bad things that I do not want to do. ²⁰ So, when I do bad things that I do not want to do, it is not really I myself who do them. It is sin that causes me to do wrong things, because it has power in my life.