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

²⁴ Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but, in the stubbornness of their evil will, they walked in their own counsels and looked backward rather than forward.^(A)

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

¹⁸ You know that you were ransomed from the futile conduct inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold

The Old Life and the New

¹⁷ Now this I affirm and insist on in the Lord: you must no longer walk as the^[a] gentiles walk, in the futility of their minds;^{(A) 18} they are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance and hardness of heart.^{(B) 19} They have lost all sensitivity and have abandoned themselves to licentiousness, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.

³ All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, doing the will of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else,^(A)

¹⁴ I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors.^(A)

²¹ for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless hearts were darkened.^{(A) 22} Claiming to be wise, they became fools, ²³ and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.^(B)

²⁴ Therefore God gave them over in the desires of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves.^(C)

⁵ The Lord saw that the wickedness of humans was great in the earth and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.^(A)