Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

The lawless one

2 Now concerning the royal presence of our Lord Jesus the Messiah, and our gathering together around him, this is our request, my dear family. ² Please don’t be suddenly blown off course in your thinking, or be unsettled, either through spiritual influence, or through a word, or through a letter supposedly from us, telling you that the day of the Lord has already arrived. ³ Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way. You see, it can’t happen unless the rebellion takes place first, and the man of lawlessness, the son of destruction, is revealed. ⁴ He is the one who sets himself against every so-called god or cult object, and usurps their role, so that he installs himself in God’s temple, and makes himself out to be a god.

⁵ Don’t you remember that I told you this while I was with you?

Exhortation to steadfastness

¹³ But we always owe God a debt of gratitude for you, my family beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the first fruits of his work of salvation, through sanctification by the spirit and belief of the truth. ¹⁴ To this he called you through our gospel, so that you might obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus the Messiah.

¹⁵ So then, my dear family, stand firm, and hold on tight to the traditions which you were taught, whether through what we said or through our letter. ¹⁶ And may our Lord Jesus the Messiah himself, and God our father who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope by grace, ¹⁷ comfort your hearts and strengthen you in every good work and word.

Marriage and the resurrection

²⁷ Some of the Sadducees came to Jesus to put their question. (The Sadducees deny that there is any resurrection.)

²⁸ “Teacher,” they said, “Moses wrote for us that ‘if a man’s brother dies, leaving a widow but no children, the man should marry the widow and raise up a family for his brother.’ ²⁹ Well, now: there were seven brothers; the eldest married a wife, and died without children. ³⁰ The second ³¹ and the third married her, and then each of the seven, and they died without children. ³² Finally the woman died as well. ³³ So, in the resurrection, whose wife will the woman be? The seven all had her as their wife.”

³⁴ “The children of this age,” replied Jesus, “marry and are given in marriage. ³⁵ But those who are counted worthy of a place in the age to come, and of the resurrection of the dead, don’t marry, and they are not given in marriage. ³⁶ This is because they can no longer die; they are the equivalent of angels. They are children of God, since they are children of the resurrection.

³⁷ “But when it comes to the dead being raised, Moses too declares it, in the passage about the burning bush, where scripture describes the Lord as ‘the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ ³⁸ God is God, not of the dead, but of the living. They are all alive to him.”