Book of Common Prayer

Blessings on the sovereign God!

1 From Paul, one of Messiah Jesus’ apostles through God’s purpose, to the holy ones in Ephesus who are also loyal believers in Messiah Jesus: ² may God our father and the Lord Jesus, the Messiah, give you grace and peace!

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 preaching of John the Baptist

1 This is where the good news starts—the good news of Jesus the Messiah, God’s son.

² Isaiah the prophet put it like this (“Look! I am sending my messenger ahead of me; he will clear the way for you!”):

³ “A shout goes up in the desert: Make way for the Lord! Clear a straight path for him!”

⁴ John the Baptizer appeared in the desert. He was announcing a baptism of repentance, to forgive sins. ⁵ The whole of Judaea, and everyone who lived in Jerusalem, went out to him; they confessed their sins and were baptized by him in the river Jordan. ⁶ John wore camel-hair clothes, with a leather belt round his waist. He used to eat locusts and wild honey.

⁷ “Someone a lot stronger than me is coming close behind,” John used to tell them. “I don’t deserve to squat down and undo his sandals. ⁸ I’ve plunged you in the water; he’s going to plunge you in the holy spirit.”

Jesus’ baptism

⁹ This is how it happened. Around that time, Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee, and was baptized by John in the river Jordan. ¹⁰ That very moment, as he was coming out of the water, he saw the heavens open, and the spirit coming down like a dove onto him. ¹¹ Then there came a voice out of the heavens: “You are my son! You are the one I love! You make me very glad.”

¹² All at once the spirit pushed him out into the desert. ¹³ He was in the desert forty days, and the satan tested him there. He was with the wild beasts, and angels waited on him.