Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
Love, the law and the coming day
8 Don’t owe anything to anyone, except the debt of mutual love. If you love your neighbor, you see, you have fulfilled the law. 9 Commandments like “don’t commit adultery, don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t covet”—and any other commandment—are summed up in this: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no wrong to its neighbor; so love is the fulfillment of the law.
11 This is all the more important because you know what time it is. The hour has come for you to wake up from sleep. Our salvation, you see, is nearer now than it was when first we came to faith. 12 The night is nearly over, the day is almost here. So let’s put off the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light. 13 Let’s behave appropriately, as in the daytime: not in wild parties and drunkenness, not in orgies and shameless immorality, not in bad temper and jealousy. 14 Instead, put on the Lord Jesus, the Messiah, and don’t make any allowance for the flesh and its lusts.
Reconciliation and prayer in the community
15 “If another disciple sins against you,” Jesus continued, “go and have it out, just between the two of you alone. If they listen to you, you’ve won back a brother or sister. 16 But if they won’t listen, you should take with you one or two others, so that ‘everything may be established from the mouth of two or three witnesses.’ 17 If they won’t listen to them, tell it to the assembly. And if they won’t listen to the assembly, you should treat such a person like you would a Gentile or a tax-collector. 18 I’m telling you the truth: whatever you tie up on earth will have been tied up in heaven; and whatever you untie on earth will have been untied in heaven.
19 “Again, let me tell you the truth: if two of you come to an agreement on earth about any matter that you want to ask, it will be done for you by my father in heaven. 20 Yes: where two or three come together in my name, I’ll be there amongst them.”
Scripture quotations from The New Testament for Everyone are copyright © Nicholas Thomas Wright 2011, 2018, 2019.