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,
When he went up on high
he led bondage itself into bondage
and he gave gifts to people.
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.
15 “If you love me,” he went on, “you will keep my commands. 16 Then I will ask the father, and he will give you another helper, to be with you forever. 17 This other helper is the spirit of truth. The world can’t receive him, because it doesn’t see him or know him. But you know him, because he lives with you, and will be in you.
18 “I’m not going to leave you bereft. I am coming to you. 19 Not long from now, the world won’t see me anymore; but you will see me. Because I live, you will live too. 20 On that day you will know that I am in my father, and you in me, and I in you.
21 “Anyone who has my commandments and keeps them—that’s the person who loves me. Anyone who loves me will be loved by my father, and I will love them and show myself to them.”
My peace I give to you
22 Judas spoke up. (This was the other Judas, not Iscariot.)
“Master,” he said, “how will it be that you will show yourself to us and not to the world?”
23 “If anyone loves me,” Jesus replied, “they will keep my word. My father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. 24 Anyone who doesn’t love me won’t keep my word. And the word which you hear isn’t mine. It comes from the father, who sent me.
25 “I’ve said all this to you while I’m here with you. 26 But the helper, the holy spirit, the one the father will send in my name, he will teach you everything. He will bring back to your mind everything I’ve said to you.
27 “I’m leaving you peace. I’m giving you my own peace. I don’t give gifts in the way the world does. Don’t let your hearts be troubled; don’t be fearful. 28 You heard that I said to you, ‘I’m going away, and I’m coming back to you.’ If you loved me, you would be happy that I’m going to the father—because the father is greater than me. 29 And now I’ve told you before it happens, so that when it does happen, you may believe.
30 “I haven’t got much more to say to you. The ruler of the world is coming. He has nothing to do with me. 31 But all this is happening so that the world may know that I love the father, and that I’m doing what the father has told me to do.
“Get up. Let’s be going.”
Scripture quotations from The New Testament for Everyone are copyright © Nicholas Thomas Wright 2011, 2018, 2019.