Which of the two did his father’s will?” They said, “The first.” ¹  Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, ²  tax collectors ³  and prostitutes will go ahead of you into the kingdom of God!

I tell you the truth, ¹  if someone says to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him.

But the person who hears and does not put my words into practice ¹  is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When ²  the river burst against that house, ³  it collapsed immediately, and was utterly destroyed!” ⁴ 

So you too, when you have done everything you were commanded to do, should say, ‘We are slaves undeserving of special praise; ¹  we have only done what was our duty.’” ² 

Moses said, ‘The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your brothers. You must obey ¹  him in everything he tells you. ² 

But now we have been released from the law, because we have died ¹  to what controlled us, so that we may serve in the new life of the Spirit and not under the old written code. ² 

Thanks be ¹  to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, ²  I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but ³  with my flesh I serve ⁴  the law of sin.

But just as it is written, “Things that no eye has seen, or ear heard, or mind imagined, ¹  are the things God has prepared for those who love him.” ² 

Nevertheless, ¹  as the Lord has assigned to each one, as God has called each person, so must he live. I give this sort of direction in all the churches.

Is the law therefore opposed to the promises of God? ¹  Absolutely not! For if a law had been given that was able to give life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law. ² 

among whom ¹  all of us ²  also ³  formerly lived out our lives in the cravings of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath ⁴  even as the rest… ⁵ 

and be found in him, not because I have my own righteousness derived from the law, but because I have the righteousness that comes by way of Christ’s faithfulness ¹  – a righteousness from God that is in fact ²  based on Christ’s ³  faithfulness. ⁴ 

But those who have believing masters must not show them less respect ¹  because they are brothers. Instead they are to serve all the more, because those who benefit from their service are believers and dearly loved. ² Teach them and exhort them about these things. ³ 

For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any double-edged sword, piercing even to the point of dividing soul from spirit, and joints from marrow; it is able to judge the desires and thoughts of the heart.

“For this is the covenant that I will establish with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will put ¹  my laws in their minds ²  and I will inscribe them on their hearts. And I will be their God and they will be my people. ³ 

But the one who peers into the perfect law of liberty and fixes his attention there, ¹  and does not become a forgetful listener but one who lives it out – he ²  will be blessed in what he does. ³ 

Because you have kept ¹  my admonition ²  to endure steadfastly, ³  I will also keep you from the hour of testing that is about to come on the whole world to test those who live on the earth.

But to Adam ¹  he said, “Because you obeyed ²  your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ cursed is the ground ³  thanks to you; ⁴  in painful toil you will eat ⁵  of it all the days of your life.

“The elders ¹  will listen ²  to you, and then you and the elders of Israel must go to the king of Egypt and tell him, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met ³  with us. So now, let us go ⁴  three days’ journey into the wilderness, so that we may sacrifice ⁵  to the Lord our God.’

Keep his statutes and commandments that I am setting forth ¹  today so that it may go well with you and your descendants and that you may enjoy longevity in the land that the Lord your God is about to give you as a permanent possession.