⁸ For you have been delivered by grace through trusting, and even this is not your accomplishment but God’s gift. ⁹ You were not delivered by your own actions; therefore no one should boast. ¹⁰ For we are of God’s making, created in union with the Messiah Yeshua for a life of good actions already prepared by God for us to do.

¹¹ Therefore, remember your former state: you Gentiles by birth — called the Uncircumcised by those who, merely because of an operation on their flesh, are called the Circumcised — ¹² at that time had no Messiah. You were estranged from the national life of Isra’el. You were foreigners to the covenants embodying God’s promise. You were in this world without hope and without God.

¹³ But now, you who were once far off have been brought near through the shedding of the Messiah’s blood. ¹⁴ For he himself is our shalom — he has made us both one and has broken down the m’chitzah which divided us ¹⁵ by destroying in his own body the enmity occasioned by the Torah, with its commands set forth in the form of ordinances. He did this in order to create in union with himself from the two groups a single new humanity and thus make shalom, ¹⁶ and in order to reconcile to God both in a single body by being executed on a stake as a criminal and thus in himself killing that enmity.

¹⁷ Also, when he came, he announced as Good News shalom to you far off and shalom to those nearby,^{[a] 18} news that through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.

¹⁹ So then, you are no longer foreigners and strangers. On the contrary, you are fellow-citizens with God’s people and members of God’s family. ²⁰ You have been built on the foundation of the emissaries and the prophets, with the cornerstone being Yeshua the Messiah himself. ²¹ In union with him the whole building is held together, and it is growing into a holy temple in union with the Lord. ²² Yes, in union with him, you yourselves are being built together into a spiritual dwelling-place for God!

¹³ For it was by one Spirit that we were all immersed into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, slaves or free; and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.