Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

⁵ The next day, the people’s rulers, elders and Torah-teachers assembled in Yerushalayim, ⁶ along with ‘Anan the cohen hagadol, Kayafa, Yochanan, Alexander and the other men from the family of the cohen hagadol. ⁷ They had the emissaries stand before them and asked, “By what power or in what name did you do this?”

⁸ Then Kefa, filled with the Ruach HaKodesh, said to them, “Rulers and elders of the people! ⁹ If we are being examined today about a good deed done for a disabled person, if you want to know how he was restored to health, ¹⁰ then let it be known to you and to all the people of Isra’el that it is in the name of the Messiah, Yeshua from Natzeret, whom you had executed on a stake as a criminal but whom God has raised from the dead, that this man stands before you perfectly healed.

¹¹ “This Yeshua is the stone rejected by you builders which has become the cornerstone.^{[a] 12} There is salvation in no one else! For there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by whom we must be saved!”

¹⁶ The way that we have come to know love is through his having laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers! ¹⁷ If someone has worldly possessions and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how can he be loving God? ¹⁸ Children, let us love not with words and talk, but with actions and in reality!

¹⁹ Here is how we will know that we are from the truth and will set our hearts at rest in his presence: ²⁰ if our hearts know something against us, God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. ²¹ Dear friends, if our hearts know nothing against us, we have confidence in approaching God; ²² then, whatever we ask for, we receive from him; because we are obeying his commands and doing the things that please him.

²³ This is his command: that we are to trust in the person and power of his Son Yeshua the Messiah and to keep loving one another, just as he commanded us. ²⁴ Those who obey his commands remain united with him and he with them.

Here is how we know that he remains united with us: by the Spirit whom he gave us.

¹¹ “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. ¹² The hired hand, since he isn’t a shepherd and the sheep aren’t his own, sees the wolf coming, abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf drags them off and scatters them. ¹³ The hired worker behaves like this because that’s all he is, a hired worker; so it doesn’t matter to him what happens to the sheep. ¹⁴ I am the good shepherd; I know my own, and my own know me — ¹⁵ just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father — and I lay down my life on behalf of the sheep. ¹⁶ Also I have other sheep which are not from this pen; I need to bring them, and they will hear my voice; and there will be one flock, one shepherd.

¹⁷ “This is why the Father loves me: because I lay down my life — in order to take it up again! ¹⁸ No one takes it away from me; on the contrary, I lay it down of my own free will. I have the power to lay it down, and I have the power to take it up again. This is what my Father commanded me to do.”