Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

A Call to Repentance^(A)

1 In the eighth month ^(B)of the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came ^(C)to Zechariah the son of Berechiah, the son of ^(D)Iddo the prophet, saying, ² “The Lord has been very angry with your fathers. ³ Therefore say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts: “Return ^(E)to Me,” says the Lord of hosts, “and I will return to you,” says the Lord of hosts. ⁴ “Do not be like your fathers, ^(F)to whom the former prophets preached, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts: ^(G)“Turn now from your evil ways and your evil deeds.” ’ But they did not hear nor heed Me,” says the Lord.

“So they returned and said:

Freed from the Law

7 Or do you not know, brethren (for I speak to those who know the law), that the law ^[a]has dominion over a man as long as he lives? ² For ^(A)the woman who has a husband is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives. But if the husband dies, she is released from the law of her husband. ³ So then ^(B)if, while her husband lives, she marries another man, she will be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from that law, so that she is no adulteress, though she has married another man. ⁴ Therefore, my brethren, you also have become ^(C)dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another—to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should ^(D)bear fruit to God. ⁵ For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law ^(E)were at work in our members ^(F)to bear fruit to death. ⁶ But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve ^(G)in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.