Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

26 Dismiss all the charges against me, Lord, for I have tried to keep your laws and have trusted you without wavering. ² Cross-examine me, O Lord, and see that this is so; test my motives and affections too. ³ For I have taken your loving-kindness and your truth as my ideals. ⁴ I do not have fellowship with tricky, two-faced men; they are false and hypocritical. ⁵ I hate the sinners’ hangouts and refuse to enter them. ⁶ I wash my hands to prove my innocence and come before your altar, ⁷ singing a song of thanksgiving and telling about your miracles.

⁸ Lord, I love your home, this shrine where the brilliant, dazzling splendor of your presence lives.

^9-10 Don’t treat me as a common sinner or murderer who plots against the innocent and demands bribes.

¹¹ No, I am not like that, O Lord; I try to walk a straight and narrow path of doing what is right; therefore in mercy save me.

¹² I publicly praise the Lord for keeping me from slipping and falling.

4 A reply to Job from Eliphaz the Temanite:

² “Will you let me say a word? For who could keep from speaking out? ^3-4 In the past^[a] you have told many a troubled soul to trust in God and have encouraged those who are weak or falling, or lie crushed upon the ground or are tempted to despair. ⁵ But now when trouble strikes, you faint and are broken.

⁶ “At such a time as this should not trust in God still be your confidence? Shouldn’t you believe that God will care for those who are good?^{[b] 7-8} Stop and think! Have you ever known a truly good and innocent person who was punished? Experience teaches that it is those who sow sin and trouble who harvest the same. ⁹ They die beneath the hand of God. ¹⁰ Though they are fierce as young lions, they shall all be broken and destroyed. ¹¹ Like aged, helpless lions they shall starve, and all their children shall be scattered.

¹² “This truth was given me in secret, as though whispered in my ear. ¹³ It came in a nighttime vision as others slept. ¹⁴ Suddenly, fear gripped me; I trembled and shook with terror, ¹⁵ as a spirit passed before my face—my hair stood up on end. ¹⁶ I felt the spirit’s presence, but couldn’t see it standing there. Then out of the dreadful silence came this voice:

¹⁷ “‘Is mere man more just than God? More pure than his Creator?’

^18-19 “If God cannot trust his own messengers (for even angels make mistakes), how much less men made of dust, who are crushed to death as easily as moths! ²⁰ They are alive in the morning, but by evening they are dead, gone forever with hardly a thought from anyone. ²¹ Their candle of life is snuffed out. They die and no one cares.

8 So there is now no condemnation awaiting those who belong to Christ Jesus. ² For the power of the life-giving Spirit—and this power is mine through Christ Jesus—has freed me from the vicious circle of sin and death. ³ We aren’t saved from sin’s grasp by knowing the commandments of God because we can’t and don’t keep them, but God put into effect a different plan to save us. He sent his own Son in a human body like ours—except that ours are sinful—and destroyed sin’s control over us by giving himself as a sacrifice for our sins. ⁴ So now we can obey God’s laws if we follow after the Holy Spirit and no longer obey the old evil nature within us.

⁵ Those who let themselves be controlled by their lower natures live only to please themselves, but those who follow after the Holy Spirit find themselves doing those things that please God. ⁶ Following after the Holy Spirit leads to life and peace, but following after the old nature leads to death ⁷ because the old sinful nature within us is against God. It never did obey God’s laws and it never will. ⁸ That’s why those who are still under the control of their old sinful selves, bent on following their old evil desires, can never please God.

⁹ But you are not like that. You are controlled by your new nature if you have the Spirit of God living in you. (And remember that if anyone doesn’t have the Spirit of Christ living in him, he is not a Christian at all.) ¹⁰ Yet, even though Christ lives within you, your body will die because of sin; but your spirit will live, for Christ has pardoned it.^{[a] 11} And if the Spirit of God, who raised up Jesus from the dead, lives in you, he will make your dying bodies live again after you die, by means of this same Holy Spirit living within you.