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1 As for you, you were dead in your trespasses and sins,
2 in which you once walked according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler of the authorities of the air, the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.
3 We all once lived among these as well, in the evil desires of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the body and of the mind. We were by nature children of wrath, just like everyone else.
4 But God is rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us.
5 Even while we were dead in trespasses, he made us alive together in Christ— by grace you have been saved—
6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
7 so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurably great riches of his grace in his kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this did not come from you, it is the gift of God,
9 not from works, so that no one may boast.
10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works that God planned long ago, so that we would walk in them.
11 Therefore remember that once you were Gentiles in the flesh, called “uncircumcised” by those called “circumcised”— in the flesh, performed by human hands.
12 For at that time you were apart from Christ, excluded from the community of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of the promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
14 For he himself is our peace. In his flesh he has made the two one and destroyed the dividing wall of hostility.
15 He abolished the law of commandments contained in regulations so that he might make the two into one new man in himself, making peace,
16 and so that he might reconcile both to God as one body through the cross, putting to death the hostility through that.
17 He came and proclaimed peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near,
18 for through him the two of us have access in one Spirit to the Father.
19 So then, you are no longer strangers and foreigners. Instead, you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of God’ s household.
20 You have been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone,
21 in whom the whole building, being fit together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord,
22 in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God in the Spirit.
The Letter of Paul to the Ephesians