Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

Warning signs on the wrong road

2 So where do you come into it all? Well, you were dead because of your offenses and sins! ² That was the road you used to travel, keeping in step with this world’s “present age”; in step, too, with the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is, even now, at work among people whose whole lives consist of disobeying God. ³ Actually, that’s how all of us used to behave, conditioned by physical desires. We used to do what our flesh and our minds were urging us to do. What was the result? We too were subject to wrath in our natural state, just like everyone else.

⁴ But when it comes to mercy, God is rich! He had such great love for us that ⁵ he took us at the very point where we were dead through our offenses, and made us alive together with the Messiah (yes, you are saved by sheer grace!). ⁶ He raised us up with him, and made us sit with him—in the heavenly places, in Messiah Jesus! ⁷ This was so that in the ages to come he could show just how unbelievably rich his grace is, the kindness he has shown us in Messiah Jesus.

Grace, not works

⁸ How has this all come about? You have been saved by grace, through faith! This doesn’t happen on your own initiative; it’s God’s gift. ⁹ It isn’t on the basis of works, so no one is able to boast. ¹⁰ This is the explanation: God has made us what we are. God has created us in Messiah Jesus for the good works that he prepared, ahead of time, as the road we must travel.

The snake and the love of God

¹⁴ “So, just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, in the same way the son of man must be lifted up, ¹⁵ so that everyone who believes in him may share in the life of God’s new age. ¹⁶ This, you see, is how much God loved the world: enough to give his only, special son, so that everyone who believes in him should not be lost but should share in the life of God’s new age. ¹⁷ After all, God didn’t send the son into the world to condemn the world, but so that the world could be saved by him.

¹⁸ “Anyone who believes in him is not condemned. But anyone who doesn’t believe is condemned already, because they didn’t believe in the name of God’s only, special son. ¹⁹ And this is the condemnation: that light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light, because what they were doing was evil. ²⁰ For everyone who does evil hates the light; people like that don’t come to the light, in case their deeds get shown up and reproved. ²¹ But people who do the truth come to the light, so that it can become clear that what they have done has been done in God.”