Study Desk

In the past you were spiritually dead because of your sins and the things you did against God.

Yes, in the past your lives were full of those sins. You lived the way the world lives, following the ruler of the evil powers that are above the earth. That same spirit is now working in those who refuse to obey God.

But God is rich in mercy, and he loved us very much.

Yes, it is because we are a part of Christ Jesus that God raised us from death and seated us together with him in the heavenly places.

God did this so that his kindness to us who belong to Christ Jesus would clearly show for all time to come the amazing richness of his grace.

I mean that you have been saved by grace because you believed. You did not save yourselves; it was a gift from God.

God has made us what we are. In Christ Jesus, God made us new people so that we would spend our lives doing the good things he had already planned for us to do.

Remember that in the past you were without Christ. You were not citizens of Israel, and you did not know about the agreements with the promises that God made to his people. You had no hope, and you did not know God.

Yes, at one time you were far away from God, but now in Christ Jesus, you are brought near to him. You are brought near to God through the blood sacrifice of Christ.

Through the cross Christ ended the hate between the two groups. And after they became one body, he wanted to bring them both back to God. He did this with his death on the cross.

Christ came and brought the message of peace to you non-Jews who were far away from God. And he brought that message of peace to those who were near to God.

You believers are like a building that God owns. That building was built on the foundation that the apostles and prophets prepared. Christ Jesus himself is the most important stone in that building.

And in Christ you are being built together with his other people. You are being made into a place where God lives through the Spirit.

Surely you know that God gave me this work through his grace to help you.

God let me know his secret plan by showing it to me. I have already written a little about this.

People who lived in other times were not told that secret truth. But now, through the Spirit, God has made it known to his holy apostles and prophets.

And this is the secret truth: that by hearing the Good News, those who are not Jews will share with the Jews in the blessings God has for his people. They are part of the same body, and they share in the promise God made through Christ Jesus.

And God gave me the work of telling all people about the plan for his secret truth. That secret truth has been hidden in him since the beginning of time. He is the one who created everything.

This agrees with the plan God had since the beginning of time. He did what he planned, and he did it through Christ Jesus our Lord.

In Christ we come before God with freedom and without fear. We can do this because of our faith in Christ.