Book of Common Prayer

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.

The Word made flesh

1 In the beginning was the Word. The Word was close beside God, and the Word was God. ² In the beginning, he was close beside God.

³ All things came into existence through him; not one thing that exists came into existence without him. ⁴ Life was in him, and this life was the light of the human race. ⁵ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

⁶ There was a man called John, who was sent from God. ⁷ He came as evidence, to give evidence about the light, so that everyone might believe through him. ⁸ He was not himself the light, but he came to give evidence about the light.

⁹ The true light, which gives light to every human being, was coming into the world. ¹⁰ He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world did not know him. ¹¹ He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. ¹² But to anyone who did accept him, he gave the right to become God’s children; yes, to anyone who believed in his name. ¹³ They were not born from blood, or from fleshly desire, or from the intention of a man, but from God.

¹⁴ And the Word became flesh, and lived among us. We gazed upon his glory, glory like that of the father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

¹⁵ John gave evidence about him, loud and clear.

“This is the one,” he said, “that I was speaking about when I told you, ‘The one who comes after me ranks ahead of me, because he was before me.’ ”

¹⁶ Yes; it’s out of his fullness that we have all received, grace indeed on top of grace. ¹⁷ The law, you see, was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus the Messiah. ¹⁸ Nobody has ever seen God. The only-begotten God, who is intimately close to the father—he has brought him to light.