Book of Common Prayer

³ Let us bless God, the father of our Lord Jesus, the Messiah! He has blessed us in the Messiah with every spirit-inspired blessing in the heavenly realm.

The choice and the plan

⁴ He chose us in him before the world was made, so as to be holy and irreproachable before him in love. ⁵ He foreordained us for himself, to be adopted as sons and daughters through Jesus the Messiah. That’s how he wanted it, and that’s what gave him delight, ⁶ so that the glory of his grace, the grace he poured on us in his beloved one, might receive its due praise.

⁷ In the Messiah, and through his blood, we have deliverance—that is, our sins have been forgiven—through the wealth of his grace ⁸ which he lavished on us. Yes, with all wisdom and insight ⁹ he has made known to us the secret of his purpose, just as he wanted it to be and set it forward in him ¹⁰ as a blueprint for when the time was ripe. His plan was to sum up the whole cosmos in the Messiah—yes, everything in heaven and on earth, in him.

The inheritance and the spirit

¹¹ In him we have received the inheritance! We were foreordained to this, following the intention of the one who does all things in accordance with the counsel of his purpose. ¹² This was so that we, we who first hoped in the Messiah, might live for the praise of his glory. ¹³ In him you too, who heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed it—in him you were marked out with the spirit of promise, the holy one. ¹⁴ The spirit is the guarantee of our inheritance, until the time when the people who are God’s special possession are finally reclaimed and freed. This, too, is for the praise of his glory.

The lamb and the spirit

²⁹ The next day, John saw Jesus coming towards him.

“Look!” he said. “There’s God’s lamb! He’s the one who takes away the world’s sin! ³⁰ He’s the one I was speaking about when I said, ‘There’s a man coming after me who ranks ahead of me, because he was before me!’ ³¹ I didn’t know who it would be, but this was the reason I came to baptize with water—so that he could be revealed to Israel.”

³² So John gave this evidence: “I saw the spirit coming down like a dove out of heaven and remaining on him. ³³ I didn’t know who it would be; but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘When you see the spirit coming down and resting on someone, that’s the person who will baptize with the holy spirit.’ ³⁴ Well, that’s what I saw, and I’ve given you my evidence: he is the son of God.”