¹² “Well, let’s be going,” Esau said. “My men and I will stay with you and lead the way.”

¹³ But Jacob replied, “As you can see,^[a] some of the children are small, and the flocks and herds have their young, and if they are driven too hard, they will die. ¹⁴ So you go on ahead of us and we’ll follow at our own pace and meet you at Seir.”

¹⁶ But Ruth replied, “Don’t make me leave you, for I want to go wherever you go and to live wherever you live; your people shall be my people, and your God shall be my God; ¹⁷ I want to die where you die and be buried there. May the Lord do terrible things to me if I allow anything but death to separate us.”

¹⁸ And when Naomi saw that Ruth had made up her mind and could not be persuaded otherwise, she stopped urging her.

²¹ My prayer for all of them is that they will be of one heart and mind, just as you and I are, Father—that just as you are in me and I am in you, so they will be in us, and the world will believe you sent me.

²² “I have given them the glory you gave me—the glorious unity of being one, as we are— ²³ I in them and you in me, all being perfected into one—so that the world will know you sent me and will understand that you love them as much as you love me. ²⁴ Father, I want them with me—these you’ve given me—so that they can see my glory. You gave me the glory because you loved me before the world began!

²⁵ “O righteous Father, the world doesn’t know you, but I do; and these disciples know you sent me. ²⁶ And I have revealed you to them and will keep on revealing you so that the mighty love you have for me may be in them, and I in them.”

²⁸ We are no longer Jews or Greeks or slaves or free men or even merely men or women, but we are all the same—we are Christians; we are one in Christ Jesus.

¹¹ Never forget that once you were heathen and that you were called godless and “unclean” by the Jews. (But their hearts, too, were still unclean, even though they were going through the ceremonies and rituals of the godly, for they circumcised themselves as a sign of godliness.) ¹² Remember that in those days you were living utterly apart from Christ; you were enemies of God’s children, and he had promised you no help. You were lost, without God, without hope.

¹³ But now you belong to Christ Jesus, and though you once were far away from God, now you have been brought very near to him because of what Jesus Christ has done for you with his blood.

¹⁴ For Christ himself is our way of peace. He has made peace between us Jews and you Gentiles by making us all one family,^[a] breaking down the wall of contempt that used to separate us. ¹⁵ By his death he ended the angry resentment between us, caused by the Jewish laws that favored the Jews and excluded the Gentiles, for he died to annul that whole system of Jewish laws. Then he took the two groups that had been opposed to each other and made them parts of himself; thus he fused us together to become one new person, and at last there was peace. ¹⁶ As parts of the same body, our anger against each other has disappeared, for both of us have been reconciled to God. And so the feud ended at last at the cross. ¹⁷ And he has brought this Good News of peace to you Gentiles who were very far away from him, and to us Jews who were near. ¹⁸ Now all of us, whether Jews or Gentiles, may come to God the Father with the Holy Spirit’s help because of what Christ has done for us.

¹⁹ Now you are no longer strangers to God and foreigners to heaven, but you are members of God’s very own family, citizens of God’s country, and you belong in God’s household with every other Christian.

²⁰ What a foundation you stand on now: the apostles and the prophets; and the cornerstone of the building is Jesus Christ himself! ²¹ We who believe are carefully joined together with Christ as parts of a beautiful, constantly growing temple for God. ²² And you also are joined with him and with each other by the Spirit and are part of this dwelling place of God.

²¹ Honor Christ by submitting to each other. ²² You wives must submit to your husbands’ leadership in the same way you submit to the Lord. ²³ For a husband is in charge of his wife in the same way Christ is in charge of his body the Church. (He gave his very life to take care of it and be its Savior!) ²⁴ So you wives must willingly obey your husbands in everything, just as the Church obeys Christ.

²⁵ And you husbands, show the same kind of love to your wives as Christ showed to the Church when he died for her, ²⁶ to make her holy and clean, washed by baptism and God’s Word;^{[a] 27} so that he could give her to himself as a glorious Church without a single spot or wrinkle or any other blemish, being holy and without a single fault. ²⁸ That is how husbands should treat their wives, loving them as parts of themselves. For since a man and his wife are now one, a man is really doing himself a favor and loving himself when he loves his wife! ^29-30 No one hates his own body but lovingly cares for it, just as Christ cares for his body the Church, of which we are parts.

³¹ (That the husband and wife are one body is proved by the Scripture, which says, “A man must leave his father and mother when he marries so that he can be perfectly joined to his wife, and the two shall be one.”) ³² I know this is hard to understand, but it is an illustration of the way we are parts of the body of Christ.

³³ So again I say, a man must love his wife as a part of himself; and the wife must see to it that she deeply respects her husband—obeying, praising, and honoring him.

6 Children, obey your parents; this is the right thing to do because God has placed them in authority over you. ² Honor your father and mother. This is the first of God’s Ten Commandments that ends with a promise. ³ And this is the promise: that if you honor your father and mother, yours will be a long life, full of blessing.

⁴ And now a word to you parents. Don’t keep on scolding and nagging your children, making them angry and resentful. Rather, bring them up with the loving discipline the Lord himself approves, with suggestions and godly advice.

⁵ Slaves, obey your masters; be eager to give them your very best. Serve them as you would Christ. ^6-7 Don’t work hard only when your master is watching and then shirk when he isn’t looking; work hard and with gladness all the time, as though working for Christ, doing the will of God with all your hearts. ⁸ Remember, the Lord will pay you for each good thing you do, whether you are slave or free.

⁹ And you slave owners must treat your slaves right, just as I have told them to treat you. Don’t keep threatening them; remember, you yourselves are slaves to Christ; you have the same Master they do, and he has no favorites.