Study Desk

God used to raise Christ from the dead and put him at his right side in the heavenly world.

God put everything under his power and made him the head over everything for the church,

so that for all future time he could show the very great riches of his grace by being kind to us in Christ Jesus.

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

Christ himself is our peace. He made both Jewish people and those who are not Jews one people. They were separated as if there were a wall between them, but Christ broke down that wall of hate by giving his own body.

The Jewish law had many commands and rules, but Christ ended that law. His purpose was to make the two groups of people become one new people in him and in this way make peace.

It was also Christ's purpose to end the hatred between the two groups, to make them into one body, and to bring them back to God. Christ did all this with his death on the cross.

Surely you have heard that God gave me this work to tell you about his grace.

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

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

By God's special gift of grace given to me through his power, I became a servant to tell that Good News.

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

His purpose was that through the church all the rulers and powers in the heavenly world will now know God's wisdom, which has so many forms.

This agrees with the purpose God had since the beginning of time, and he carried out his plan through Christ Jesus our Lord.

I ask the Father in his great glory to give you the power to be strong inwardly through his Spirit.

So Jesus came down, and he is the same One who went up above all the heaven. Christ did that to fill everything with his presence.

This work must continue until we are all joined together in the same faith and in the same knowledge of the Son of God. We must become like a mature person, growing until we become like Christ and have his perfection.

In the same way, husbands should love their wives as they love their own bodies. The man who loves his wife loves himself.

No one ever hates his own body, but feeds and takes care of it. And that is what Christ does for the church,

because we are parts of his body.