¹⁴ but ^(A)have stubbornly followed their own hearts and have gone after the Baals, as their fathers taught them.

^24 (A)But they did not obey or incline their ear, ^(B)but walked in their own counsels and ^(C)the stubbornness of their evil hearts, and ^(D)went backward and not forward.

¹⁷ At that time Jerusalem shall be called the throne of the Lord, ^(A)and all nations shall gather to it, ^(B)to the presence of the Lord in Jerusalem, and they shall no more stubbornly follow their own evil heart.

¹⁸ knowing that you ^(A)were ransomed from ^(B)the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold,

The New Life

¹⁷ Now this I say and ^(A)testify in the Lord, ^(B)that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, ^(C)in the futility of their minds. ¹⁸ They ^(D)are darkened in their understanding, ^(E)alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to ^(F)their hardness of heart. ¹⁹ They ^(G)have become callous and ^(H)have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.

³ among whom we all once lived in ^(A)the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body^[a] and the mind, and ^(B)were by nature ^(C)children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.^[b]

¹⁴ And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely ^(A)zealous was I for ^(B)the traditions of my fathers.

²¹ For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they ^(A)became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. ^22 (B)Claiming to be wise, they became fools, ²³ and ^(C)exchanged the glory of ^(D)the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

²⁴ Therefore ^(E)God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to ^(F)the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves,