¹² My dear friends, we must not live to satisfy our desires. ¹³ If you do, you will die. But you will live, if by the help of God's Spirit you say “No” to your desires. ¹⁴ Only those people who are led by God's Spirit are his children. ^15 (A)(B) God's Spirit doesn't make us slaves who are afraid of him. Instead, we become his children and call him our Father.^{[a] 16} God's Spirit makes us sure that we are his children. ¹⁷ His Spirit lets us know that together with Christ we will be given what God has promised. We will also share in the glory of Christ, because we have suffered with him.

¹⁹ You Gentiles are no longer strangers and foreigners. You are citizens with everyone else who belongs to the family of God. ²⁰ You are like a building with the apostles and prophets as the foundation and with Christ as the most important stone. ²¹ Christ is the one who holds the building together and makes it grow into a holy temple for the Lord. ²² And you are part of that building Christ has built as a place for God's own Spirit to live.

3 ^(A) Think how much the Father loves us. He loves us so much that he lets us be called his children, as we truly are. But since the people of this world did not know who Christ^[a] is, they don't know who we are.