Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

Christian liberty does not mean moral licence

^12-17 As a Christian I may do anything, but that does not mean that everything is good for me. I may do everything, but I must not be a slave of anything. Food was meant for the stomach and the stomach for food; but God has no permanent purpose for either. But you cannot say that our physical body was made for sexual promiscuity; it was made for God, and God is the answer to our deepest longings. The God who raised the Lord from the dead will also raise us mortal men by his power. Have you realised the almost incredible fact that your bodies are integral parts of Christ himself? Am I then to take parts of Christ and join them to a prostitute? Never! Don’t you realise that when a man joins himself to a prostitute he makes with her a physical unity? For God says, ‘the two shall be one flesh’. On the other hand the man who joins himself to God is one with him in spirit.

^18-20 Avoid sexual looseness like the plague! Every other sin that a man commits is done outside his own body, but this is an offence against his own body. Have you forgotten that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you, and that you are not the owner of your own body? You have been bought, and at what a price! Therefore bring glory to God both in your body and your spirit, for they both belong to him.

^43-45 The following day Jesus decided to go into Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me!” Philip was a man from Bethsaida, the town that Andrew and Peter came from. Now Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have discovered the man whom Moses wrote about in the Law and about whom the Prophets wrote too. He is Jesus, the son of Joseph and comes from Nazareth.”

⁴⁶ “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” retorted Nathanael. “You come and see,” replied Philip.

⁴⁷ Jesus saw Nathanael coming towards him and remarked, “Now here is a true man of Israel; there is no deceit in him!”

⁴⁸ “How can you know me?” returned Nathanael. “When you were underneath that fig-tree,” replied Jesus, “before Philip called you, I saw you.”

⁴⁹ At which Nathanael exclaimed, “Master, you are the Son of God, you are the king of Israel!”

^50-51 “Do you believe in me,” replied Jesus, “because I said I had seen you underneath that fig-tree? You are going to see something greater than that! Believe me,” he added, “I tell you all that you will see Heaven wide open and God’s angels ascending and descending around the Son of Man!”