Study Desk

Now do you think I am trying to make people accept me? No, God is the one I am trying to please. Am I trying to please people? If I wanted to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.

So I am not the one living now—it is Christ living in me. I still live in my body, but I live by faith in the Son of God. He is the one who loved me and gave himself to save me.

I am not the one destroying the meaning of God's grace. If following the law is how people are made right with God, then Christ did not have to die.

This is what I am saying: When young children inherit all that their father owned, they are still no different from his slaves. It doesn't matter that they own everything.

Am I now your enemy because I tell you the truth?

It is good for you to work hard, of course, if it is for something good. That's something you should do whether I am there or not.

My little children, I am in pain again over you, like a mother giving birth. I will feel this pain until people can look at you and see Christ.

I wish I could be with you now. Then maybe I could change the way I am talking to you. Now I don't know what to do about you.

My brothers and sisters, I don't teach that a man must be circumcised. If I do teach circumcision, then why am I still being persecuted? If I still taught circumcision, then my message about the cross would not be a problem.

I hope I will never boast about things like that. The cross of our Lord Jesus Christ is my only reason for boasting. Through Jesus' death on the cross the world is dead to me, and I am dead to the world.

Greetings from Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus. I am an apostle because that is what God wanted. To God's holy people living in Ephesus, believers who belong to Christ Jesus.

So I, Paul, am a prisoner because I serve Christ Jesus for you who are not Jews.

I am the least important of all God's people. But he gave me this gift—to tell the non-Jewish people the Good News about the riches Christ has. These riches are too great to understand fully.

That secret truth is very important—I am talking about Christ and the church.

I have the work of speaking for that Good News, and that is what I am doing now, here in prison. Pray that when I tell people the Good News, I will speak without fear as I should.

I am sending you Tychicus, the brother we love. He is a faithful servant of the Lord's work. He will tell you everything that is happening with me. Then you will know how I am and what I am doing.

That's why I am sending him—to let you know how we are and to encourage you.

I am sure that the good work God began in you will continue until he completes it on the day when Jesus Christ comes again.

I know I am right to think like this about all of you because you are so close to my heart. This is because you have all played such an important part in God's grace to me—now, during this time that I am in prison, and whenever I am defending and proving the truth of the Good News.

All the Roman guards and all the others here know that I am in prison for serving Christ.