Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

¹³ If any be wise and learned among you, let him show the works of his good living in humility that is coupled with wisdom. ¹⁴ But if you have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, do not be pleased, neither be liars against the truth. ¹⁵ This wisdom descends not from above, but is earthly, and natural, and devilish. ¹⁶ For where envying and strife are, there is instability and all manner of evil works.

¹⁷ But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated – full of mercy and good fruits, without judging and without dissimulation. ¹⁸ Yea and the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who maintain peace.

Conflict and fighting come from sensuality and covetousness. The friendship of the world is enmity before God. An exhortation to flee slander and the vanity of this life.

4 Where do conflict and fighting come from among you? Do they not come from the sensuality and covetousness that reign in your members? ² You lust, and have not. You envy, and have indignation, and cannot obtain. You fight and war, and have not because you ask not. ³ You ask and receive not because you ask amiss, even to consume it upon your pleasures.

⁷ Submit yourselves to God. And resist the devil, and he will flee from you. ⁸ Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners, and purge your hearts, ye wavering-minded.

³⁰ And they left that place, and took their journey through Galilee. But Jesus did not want anyone to know of it, ³¹ because he was teaching his disciples. And he said to them, The Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And after he has been killed, he will arise again on the third day. ³² But they did not comprehend what that saying meant, and were afraid to ask him.

³³ And they came to Capernaum. And once he was indoors, he asked them, What was it that you were disputing between yourselves along the way? ³⁴ And they held their peace, for on the road they had been debating among themselves who should be chief. ³⁵ And he sat down and called the twelve to him and said to them, If any man desires to be first, let him be last of all, and servant to all. ³⁶ And he took a child and set him in the midst of them, and took him in his arms and said to them, ³⁷ Whosoever receives any such a child in my name, receives me. And whosoever receives me, receives not me, but him who sent me.