Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

³ Praise God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! He has blessed us in Christ with every blessing which is in heaven, such as the Spirit gives us.

⁴ Before the world was made, God chose us in Christ. He chose us that we should be holy and good before him.

⁵ Because he loved us, he planned that we should be his own children. It is through Jesus Christ that we are God's children. That is the way God wanted it to be.

⁶ Praise him! His kindness is great and wonderful. We have been accepted by God through Jesus Christ, whom he loves so much.

⁷ Jesus Christ has given his blood [died] to make us free. He has forgiven us for our wrong ways. We have been put right with God freely because of his great kindness.

⁸ He has given us blessing after blessing in his wisdom and understanding.

⁹ He has shown us the plan he had. This plan was what he wanted to do through Christ.

¹⁰ When the right time came, God planned to bring together everything in heaven and on earth, and make Christ head of them all.

¹¹ In and through Christ we will have a share in all that belongs to him. Long ago God chose us for this. And he makes things happen that he wants to do.

¹² We believed in Christ first, so we will praise him because he is so great and wonderful.

¹³ You also believed in Christ when you heard the true message. That message is the good news by which you were saved. You received the Holy Spirit whom God had promised. You were marked as belonging to him.

¹⁴ The Holy Spirit is the first part of what we are to receive from God. This proves that we will get all God has promised. Some day we shall have them all. Praise God! He is very great and wonderful. 15,

1 The Word already was, way back before anything began to be. The Word and God were together. The Word was God.

² Before anything began to be, the Word was there with God.

³ God made everything by the Word. Nothing has been made without him.

⁴ Life was in the Word. That life was Light for people.

⁵ The Light shone where it was dark and the darkness did not stop the Light from shining.

⁶ God sent a man named John.

⁷ He came to talk about the Light, so that all people might believe in the Light by what he said.

⁸ He himself was not that Light, but he was sent to talk about the Light.

⁹ The true Light which gives light to every person who comes into the world.

¹⁰ He, the Word, was in the world. Yes, he even made the world. And yet the world did not know him.

¹¹ He came into the world that was his own, but his own people did not receive him.

¹² But there were people who did believe in his name. They did receive him. He gave all those who received him and believed him the right to become children of God.

¹³ They were born into God's family by God. That is, they were not born into his family in the way a person is born into this world. It was not by any person's will.

¹⁴ The Word became man and he lived among us. We saw with our own eyes that he is great. He is great the way God the Father made his only Son great. We saw that he is full of loving kindness and truth.

¹⁵ John talked about him. He called out saying, `Here is the man I told you about. I said that the one who is coming after me is greater than I am, because he lived before I lived.'

¹⁶ He was full of loving kindness, and we have all received so much kindness from him.

¹⁷ Moses gave the law, but Jesus Christ gave this loving kindness and truth.

¹⁸ No one has ever seen God. But his only Son is very near to his Father's heart. He has told us plainly about God.