Ephesians 4:1-16

New Testament for Everyone

Live up to your calling!

4 So, then, this is my appeal to you—yes, it’s me, the prisoner in the Lord! You must live up to the calling you received. ² Bear with one another in love; be humble, meek and patient in every way with one another. ³ Make every effort to guard the unity that the spirit gives, with your lives bound together in peace.

⁴ There is one body and one spirit; you were, after all, called to one hope which goes with your call. ⁵ There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism; ⁶ one God and father of all, who is over all, through all and in all.

⁷ But grace was given to each one of us, according to the measure the Messiah used when he was distributing gifts. ⁸ That’s why it says,

⁹ When it says here that “he went up,” what this means is that he also came down into the lower place, that is, the earth. ¹⁰ The one who came down is the one who also “went up”—yes, above all the heavens!—so that he might fill all things.

Grown-up Christianity

¹¹ So these were the gifts that he gave. Some were to be apostles, others prophets, others evangelists, and others pastors and teachers. ¹² Their job is to give God’s people the equipment they need for their work of service, and so to build up the Messiah’s body. ¹³ The purpose of this is that we should all reach unity in our belief and loyalty, and in knowing God’s son. Then we shall reach the stature of the mature Man measured by the standards of the Messiah’s fullness.

¹⁴ As a result, we won’t be babies any longer! We won’t be thrown this way and that on a stormy sea, blown about by every gust of teaching, by human tricksters, by their cunning and deceitful scheming. ¹⁵ Instead, we must speak the truth in love, and so grow up in everything into him—that is, into the Messiah, who is the head. ¹⁶ He supplies the growth that the whole body needs, linked as it is and held together by every joint which supports it, with each member doing its own proper work. Then the body builds itself up in love.