Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

God the Protector of His People^[a]

The End of the Flood

8 God had not forgotten Noah and all the animals with him in the boat; he caused a wind to blow, and the water started going down. ² The outlets of the water beneath the earth and the floodgates of the sky were closed. The rain stopped, ³ and the water gradually went down for 150 days. ⁴ On the seventeenth day of the seventh month the boat came to rest on a mountain in the Ararat range. ⁵ The water kept going down, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains appeared.

⁶ After forty days Noah opened a window ⁷ and sent out a raven. It did not come back, but kept flying around until the water was completely gone. ⁸ Meanwhile, Noah sent out a dove to see if the water had gone down, ⁹ but since the water still covered all the land, the dove did not find a place to light. It flew back to the boat, and Noah reached out and took it in. ¹⁰ He waited another seven days and sent out the dove again. ¹¹ It returned to him in the evening with a fresh olive leaf in its beak. So Noah knew that the water had gone down. ¹² Then he waited another seven days and sent out the dove once more; this time it did not come back.

¹³ When Noah was 601 years old, on the first day of the first month, the water was gone. Noah removed the covering of the boat, looked around, and saw that the ground was getting dry. ¹⁴ By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry.

¹⁵ God said to Noah, ¹⁶ “Go out of the boat with your wife, your sons, and their wives. ¹⁷ Take all the birds and animals out with you, so that they may reproduce and spread over all the earth.” ¹⁸ So Noah went out of the boat with his wife, his sons, and their wives. ¹⁹ All the animals and birds went out of the boat in groups of their own kind.

Dead to Sin but Alive in Union with Christ

6 What shall we say, then? Should we continue to live in sin so that God's grace will increase? ² Certainly not! We have died to sin—how then can we go on living in it? ³ For surely you know that when we were baptized into union with Christ Jesus, we were baptized into union with his death. ^4 (A)By our baptism, then, we were buried with him and shared his death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from death by the glorious power of the Father, so also we might live a new life.

⁵ For since we have become one with him in dying as he did, in the same way we shall be one with him by being raised to life as he was. ⁶ And we know that our old being has been put to death with Christ on his cross, in order that the power of the sinful self might be destroyed, so that we should no longer be the slaves of sin. ⁷ For when we die, we are set free from the power of sin. ⁸ Since we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. ⁹ For we know that Christ has been raised from death and will never die again—death will no longer rule over him. ¹⁰ And so, because he died, sin has no power over him; and now he lives his life in fellowship with God. ¹¹ In the same way you are to think of yourselves as dead, so far as sin is concerned, but living in fellowship with God through Christ Jesus.