Letter to the Ephesians
By grace you have been saved!
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1 You were dead through the faults and sins. 
2 Once you lived through them according to this world and followed the Sovereign Ruler who reigns between heaven and earth and who goes on working in those who resist the faith. 3 All of us belonged to them at one time and we followed human greed; we obeyed the urges of our human nature and consented to its desires. By ourselves, we went straight to the judgment like the rest of humankind. 4 But God, who is rich in mercy, revealed his immense love. 5 As we were dead through our sins, he gave us life with Christ. By grace you have been saved! 6 And he raised us to life with Christ, gi ving us a place with him in heaven. 7 In showing us such kindness in Christ Jesus, God willed to reveal and unfold in the coming ages the extraordinary riches of his grace. 8 By the grace of God you have been saved through faith. This has not come from you: it is God’s gift. 9 This was not the result of your works, so you are not to feel proud. 10 What we are is God’s work. He has created us in Christ Jesus for the good works he has prepared that we should devote ourselves to them.
10 What we are is God’s work. He has created us in Christ Jesus for the good works he has prepared that we should devote ourselves to them. Christ is our Peace
11 Remember that you were pagans even in your flesh and the Jews, who call themselves Circum cised (because of a sur gical circumcision), called you Un circumcised. 12 At that time you were with out Christ, you did not belong to the community of Israel; the covenants of God and his promises were not for you; you had no hope and were without God in this world. 13 But now, in Christ Jesus and by his blood, you who were once far off have come near. 14 For Christ is our peace, he who has made the two peoples one, 15 destroying in his own flesh the wall – the hatred – which separated us. He abolished the Law with its commands and precepts. He made peace in uniting the two peoples in him, creating out of the two one New Man. 16 He destroyed hatred and reconciled us both to God through the cross, making the two one body. 17 He came to proclaim peace; peace to you who were far off, peace to the Jews who were near. 18 Through him we – the two peo ples – approach the Father in one Spirit. 19 Now you are no longer strangers or guests, but fellow citizens of the holy people: you are of the household of God. You are the house 20 whose foundations are the apostles and proph ets, and whose cornerstone is Christ Jesus. 21 In him the whole structure is joined together and rises to be a holy temple in the Lord. 22 In him you too are being built to become the spiritual sanctuary of God.