Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

6 Now this is the instruction, the laws, and the precepts which the Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that you might do them in the land to which you go to possess it,

² That you may [reverently] fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son’s son, and keep all His statutes and His commandments which I command you all the days of your life, and that your days may be prolonged.

³ Hear therefore, O Israel, and be watchful to do them, that it may be well with you and that you may increase exceedingly, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey.

⁴ Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord [the only Lord].

⁵ And you shall love the Lord your God with all your [mind and] heart and with your entire being and with all your might.

⁶ And these words which I am commanding you this day shall be [first] in your [own] minds and hearts; [then]

⁷ You shall whet and sharpen them so as to make them penetrate, and teach and impress them diligently upon the [minds and] hearts of your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down and when you rise up.

⁸ And you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets (forehead bands) between your eyes.

⁹ And you shall write them upon the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Psalm 119

¹ Blessed (happy, fortunate, to be envied) are the undefiled (the upright, truly sincere, and blameless) in the way [of the revealed will of God], who walk (order their conduct and conversation) in the law of the Lord (the whole of God’s revealed will).

² Blessed (happy, fortunate, to be envied) are they who keep His testimonies, and who seek, inquire for and of Him and crave Him with the whole heart.

³ Yes, they do no unrighteousness [no willful wandering from His precepts]; they walk in His ways.^(A)

⁴ You have commanded us to keep Your precepts, that we should observe them diligently.

⁵ Oh, that my ways were directed and established to observe Your statutes [hearing, receiving, loving, and obeying them]!

⁶ Then shall I not be put to shame [by failing to inherit Your promises] when I have respect to all Your commandments.

⁷ I will praise and give thanks to You with uprightness of heart when I learn [by sanctified experiences] Your righteous judgments [Your decisions against and punishments for particular lines of thought and conduct].

⁸ I will keep Your statutes; O forsake me not utterly.

¹¹ But [that appointed time came] when Christ (the Messiah) appeared as a High Priest of the better things that have come and are to come. [Then] through the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with [human] hands, that is, not a part of this material creation,

¹² He went once for all into the [Holy of] Holies [of heaven], not by virtue of the blood of goats and calves [by which to make reconciliation between God and man], but His own blood, having found and secured a complete redemption (an everlasting release for us).

¹³ For if [the mere] sprinkling of unholy and defiled persons with blood of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a burnt heifer is sufficient for the purification of the body,^(A)

¹⁴ How much more surely shall the blood of Christ, Who ^[a]by virtue of [His] eternal Spirit [His own preexistent ^[b]divine personality] has offered Himself as an unblemished sacrifice to God, purify our consciences from dead works and lifeless observances to serve the [ever] living God?

²⁸ Then one of the scribes came up and listened to them disputing with one another, and, noticing that Jesus answered them fitly and admirably, he asked Him, Which commandment is first and most important of all [^[a]in its nature]?

²⁹ Jesus answered, The first and principal one of all commands is: Hear, O Israel, The Lord our God is one Lord;

³⁰ And you shall love the Lord your God ^[b]out of and with your whole heart and out of and with all your soul (your ^[c]life) and out of and with all your mind (with ^[d]your faculty of thought and your moral understanding) and out of and with all your strength. ^[e]This is the first and principal commandment.^(A)

³¹ The second is like it and is this, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.^(B)

³² And the scribe said to Him, Excellently and fitly and admirably answered, Teacher! You have said truly that He is One, and there is no other but Him;

³³ And to love Him out of and with all the heart and with all the understanding [with the ^[f]faculty of quick apprehension and intelligence and keenness of discernment] and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is much more than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.^(C)

³⁴ And when Jesus saw that he answered intelligently (discreetly and ^[g]having his wits about him), He said to him, You are not far from the kingdom of God. And after that no one ventured or dared to ask Him any further question.