15”If
you love me, you will keep my commandments.
Acts 17:22-31
22Then Paul
stood in front of the Areopagus and said,
“Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. 23For
as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your
worship,
I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’
What
therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24The
God
who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and
earth,
does not live in shrines made by human hands, 25nor is he
served by
human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to
all
mortals life and breath and all things. 26From one ancestor
he made
all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of
their
existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, 27so
that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find
him—though
indeed he is not far from each one of us. 28For ‘In him we
live and
move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said,
‘For we too
are his offspring.’ 29Since we are God’s offspring, we
ought not to
think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed
by the
art and imagination of mortals. 30While God has overlooked
the times
of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31because
he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in
righteousness by a
man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by
raising
him from the dead.”
Psalm 66:
8-20
8Bless our
God, O peoples, let the
sound of his praise be heard,
9who has
kept us among the living, and
has not let our feet slip.
10For you, O
God, have tested us; you
have tried us as silver is tried.
11You
brought us into the net; you laid
burdens on our backs;
12you let
people ride over our heads; we
went through fire and through water; yet you have brought us out to a
spacious
place.
13I will
come into your house with burnt
offerings; I will pay you my vows,
14those that
my lips uttered and my
mouth promised when I was in trouble.
15I will
offer to you burnt offerings of
fatlings, with the smoke of the sacrifice of rams; I will make an
offering of
bulls and goats. Selah
16Come and
hear, all you who fear God,
and I will tell what he has done for me.
17I cried
aloud to him, and he was
extolled with my tongue.
18If I had
cherished iniquity in my
heart, the Lord would not have listened.
19But truly
God has listened; he has
given heed to the words of my prayer.
20Blessed be
God, because he has not
rejected my prayer or removed his steadfast love from me.
13Now who
will harm you if you are eager to do what is
good? 14But even if you do suffer for doing what is right,
you are
blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, 15but
in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your
defense to
anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; 16yet
do it with gentleness and reverence. Keep your conscience clear, so
that, when
you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ
may be
put to shame. 17For it is better to suffer for doing good,
if
suffering should be God’s will, than to suffer for doing evil. 18For
Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the
unrighteous,
in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but
made alive
in the spirit, 19in which also he went and made a
proclamation to
the spirits in prison, 20who in former times did not obey,
when God
waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark,
in which
a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. 21And
baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt
from the
body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the
resurrection
of Jesus Christ, 22who has gone into heaven and is at the
right hand
of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.
15”If you love me, you
will keep my commandments. 16And
I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be
with you
forever. 17This is the Spirit of
truth, whom the world cannot
receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him,
because he
abides with you, and he will be in you. 18”I will not leave you
orphaned; I am coming to you. 19In a little while the
world will no
longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.
20On
that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in
you. 21They
who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those
who
love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal
myself to
them.”
