Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

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 Word made flesh

1 In the beginning was the Word. The Word was close beside God, and the Word was God. ² In the beginning, he was close beside God.

³ All things came into existence through him; not one thing that exists came into existence without him. ⁴ Life was in him, and this life was the light of the human race. ⁵ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

⁶ There was a man called John, who was sent from God. ⁷ He came as evidence, to give evidence about the light, so that everyone might believe through him. ⁸ He was not himself the light, but he came to give evidence about the light.

⁹ The true light, which gives light to every human being, was coming into the world.

¹⁰ He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world did not know him. ¹¹ He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. ¹² But to anyone who did accept him, he gave the right to become God’s children; yes, to anyone who believed in his name. ¹³ They were not born from blood, or from fleshly desire, or from the intention of a man, but from God.

¹⁴ And the Word became flesh, and lived among us. We gazed upon his glory, glory like that of the father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

¹⁵ John gave evidence about him, loud and clear.

“This is the one,” he said, “that I was speaking about when I told you, ‘The one who comes after me ranks ahead of me, because he was before me.’ ”

¹⁶ Yes; it’s out of his fullness that we have all received, grace indeed on top of grace. ¹⁷ The law, you see, was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus the Messiah. ¹⁸ Nobody has ever seen God. The only-begotten God, who is intimately close to the father—he has brought him to light.