Read the New Testament in 24 Weeks

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.

Knowing the power of the Messiah

¹⁵ Because of all this, and because I’d heard that you are loyal and faithful to Jesus the master, and that you show love to all God’s holy people, ¹⁶ I never stop giving thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. ¹⁷ I pray that the God of Messiah Jesus our Lord, the father of glory, would give you, in your spirit, the gift of being wise, of seeing things people can’t normally see, because you are coming to know him ¹⁸ and to have the eyes of your inmost self opened to God’s light. Then you will know exactly what the hope is that goes with God’s call; you will know the wealth of the glory of his inheritance in his holy people; ¹⁹ and you will know the outstanding greatness of his power towards us who are loyal to him in faith, according to the working of his strength and power.

²⁰ This was the power at work in the Messiah when God raised him from the dead and sat him at his right hand in the heavenly places, ²¹ above all rule and authority and power and lordship, and above every name that is invoked, both in the present age and also in the age to come. ²² Yes: God has “put all things under his feet,” and has given him to the church as the head over all. ²³ The church is his body; it is the fullness of the one who fills all in all.

Warning signs on the wrong road

2 So where do you come into it all? Well, you were dead because of your offenses and sins! ² That was the road you used to travel, keeping in step with this world’s “present age”; in step, too, with the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is, even now, at work among people whose whole lives consist of disobeying God. ³ Actually, that’s how all of us used to behave, conditioned by physical desires. We used to do what our flesh and our minds were urging us to do. What was the result? We too were subject to wrath in our natural state, just like everyone else.

⁴ But when it comes to mercy, God is rich! He had such great love for us that ⁵ he took us at the very point where we were dead through our offenses, and made us alive together with the Messiah (yes, you are saved by sheer grace!). ⁶ He raised us up with him, and made us sit with him—in the heavenly places, in Messiah Jesus! ⁷ This was so that in the ages to come he could show just how unbelievably rich his grace is, the kindness he has shown us in Messiah Jesus.

Grace, not works

⁸ How has this all come about? You have been saved by grace, through faith! This doesn’t happen on your own initiative; it’s God’s gift. ⁹ It isn’t on the basis of works, so no one is able to boast. ¹⁰ This is the explanation: God has made us what we are. God has created us in Messiah Jesus for the good works that he prepared, ahead of time, as the road we must travel.

Two into one will go

¹¹ So then, remember this! In human terms, that is, in your “flesh,” you are “Gentiles.” You are the people who the so-called “circumcision” refer to as the so-called “uncircumcision”—circumcision, of course, being something done by human hands to human flesh. ¹² Well, once upon a time you were separated from the Messiah. You were detached from the community of Israel. You were foreigners to the covenants which contained the promise. There you were, in the world with no hope and no god!

¹³ But now, in Messiah Jesus, you have been brought near in the Messiah’s blood—yes, you, who used to be a long way away! ¹⁴ He is our peace, you see. He has made the two to be one. He has pulled down the barrier, the dividing wall, that turns us into enemies of each other. He has done this in his flesh, ¹⁵ by abolishing the law with its commands and instructions.

The point of doing all this was to create, in him, one new human being out of the two, so making peace. ¹⁶ God was reconciling both of us to himself in a single body, through the cross, by killing the enmity in him.

Unveiling the new Temple

¹⁷ So the Messiah came and gave the good news. Peace had come! Peace, that is, for those of you who were a long way away, and peace, too, for those who were close at hand. ¹⁸ Through him, you see, we both have access to the father in the one spirit.

¹⁹ This is the result. You are no longer foreigners or strangers. No: you are fellow citizens with God’s holy people. You are members of God’s household. ²⁰ You are built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Messiah Jesus himself as the cornerstone. ²¹ In him the whole building is fitted together, and grows into a holy temple in the Lord. ²² You, too, are being built up together, in him, into a place where God will live by the spirit.