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EPHESIANS
Ephesians 1:1-2
I am writing this to you people of God in Ephesus, asking that God will bless you.
We should praise God for having chosen and redeemed us, having revealed his plan to unite all things under Christ, and causing Christ to rule over all his people.
I thank God for your faith, and pray that you will understand more about how powerfully he works on our behalf, just like he did when he caused Christ to become alive again and made him ruler over everything.
Formerly we were all spiritually dead and were certain to be punished by God, but he acted very kindly toward us and saved us freely as a result of our faith in Christ.
God brought you Gentiles into his family so that now you and Jewish believers both share the same blessings and form one group; you now have peace with each other and can come to God in prayer with the help of the Holy Spirit.
I am in prison because God appointed me to tell non-Jews that Christ is the source of great spiritual blessings for them.
I pray that God’s Spirit will empower you, that you may experience how much Christ loves you, and that God may make you all that he intends for you to be.
Conduct your lives in a way that shows that you are God’s people; do all that you can to keep all the believers united; and remember that Christ has given various abilities to each of his people, in order that you all may be united and grow spiritually and become like Christ.
You should conduct yourselves in a way that matches your new life; so stop doing the harmful things that unbelievers do, and do good things to one another.
Imitate God, do everything in a way that shows love, and do not let anyone persuade you to live immorally, because God will punish those who disobey him.
Live righteously, and expose the evil deeds that evil people do, because when you do that, those people who do those evil things will come to know the truth.
Instructions about how wives and husbands, children and parents, and slaves and masters should behave toward each other.
As you always rely on the Lord to strengthen you, make use of every spiritual resource that God provides to resist the devil and all his powerful evil spirits.
I am sending Tychicus to tell you what is happening here and to encourage you. I pray that God will give you peace and love for each other, and that he will continue to act kindly toward you all.

© 2008-2017 Ellis W. Deibler, Jr.