Galatians 6

Nothing but the Cross

1 Live creatively, friends. If someone falls into sin, forgivingly restore him, saving your critical comments for yourself. You might be needing forgiveness before the day's out.2 Stoop down and reach out to those who are oppressed. Share their burdens, and so complete Christ's law.3 If you think you are too good for that, you are badly deceived.

4 Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don't be impressed with yourself. Don't compare yourself with others.5 Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.

6 Be very sure now, you who have been trained to a self-sufficient maturity, that you enter into a generous common life with those who have trained you, sharing all the good things that you have and experience.

7 Don't be misled: No one makes a fool of God. What a person plants, he will harvest. The person who plants selfishness, ignoring the needs of others-ignoring God! -8 harvests a crop of weeds. All he'll have to show for his life is weeds! But the one who plants in response to God, letting God's Spirit do the growth work in him, harvests a crop of real life, eternal life.

9 So let's not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don't give up, or quit.10 Right now, therefore, every time we get the chance, let us work for the benefit of all, starting with the people closest to us in the community of faith.

11 Now, in these last sentences, I want to emphasize in the bold scrawls of my personal handwriting the immense importance of what I have written to you.12 These people who are attempting to force the ways of circumcision on you have only one motive: They want an easy way to look good before others, lacking the courage to live by a faith that shares Christ's suffering and death. All their talk about the law is gas.13 They themselves don't keep the law! And they are highly selective in the laws they do observe. They only want you to be circumcised so they can boast of their success in recruiting you to their side. That is contemptible!

14 For my part, I am going to boast about nothing but the Cross of our Master, Jesus Christ. Because of that Cross, I have been crucified in relation to the world, set free from the stifling atmosphere of pleasing others and fitting into the little patterns that they dictate.15 Can't you see the central issue in all this? It is not what you and I do-submit to circumcision, reject circumcision. It is what God is doing, and he is creating something totally new, a free life!16 All who walk by this standard are the true Israel of God-his chosen people. Peace and mercy on them!

17 Quite frankly, I don't want to be bothered anymore by these disputes. I have far more important things to do-the serious living of this faith. I bear in my body scars from my service to Jesus.

18 May what our Master Jesus Christ gives freely be deeply and personally yours, my friends. Oh, yes!

Ephesians 1

1 I, Paul, am under God's plan as an apostle, a special agent of Christ Jesus, writing to you faithful Christians in Ephesus.2 I greet you with the grace and peace poured into our lives by God our Father and our Master, Jesus Christ. The God of Glory

The God of Glory

3 How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He's the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him.4 Long before he laid down earth's foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love.5 Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!)6 He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.

7 Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we're a free people-free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free!8 He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need,9 letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making. He set it all out before us in Christ,10 a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth.

11 It's in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living,12 part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone.

13 It's in Christ that you, once you heard the truth and believed it (this Message of your salvation), found yourselves home free-signed, sealed, and delivered by the Holy Spirit.14 This signet from God is the first installment on what's coming, a reminder that we'll get everything God has planned for us, a praising and glorious life.

15 That's why, when I heard of the solid trust you have in the Master Jesus and your outpouring of love to all the Christians,16 I couldn't stop thanking God for you-every time I prayed, I'd think of you and give thanks.17 But I do more than thank. I ask-ask the God of our Master, Jesus Christ, the God of glory-to make you intelligent and discerning in knowing him personally,18 your eyes focused and clear, so that you can see exactly what it is he is calling you to do, grasp the immensity of this glorious way of life he has for Christians,19 oh, the utter extravagance of his work in us who trust him-endless energy, boundless strength!

20 All this energy issues from Christ: God raised him from death and set him on a throne in deep heaven,21 in charge of running the universe, everything from galaxies to governments, no name and no power exempt from his rule. And not just for the time being, but forever.22 He is in charge of it all, has the final word on everything. At the center of all this, Christ rules the church.23 The church, you see, is not peripheral to the world; the world is peripheral to the church. The church is Christ's body, in which he speaks and acts, by which he fills everything with his presence.

Ephesians 2

He Tore Down the Wall

1 It wasn't so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin.2 You let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience.3 We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It's a wonder God didn't lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us.4 Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love,5 he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us!6 Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.

7 Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus.8 Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It's God's gift from start to finish!9 We don't play the major role. If we did, we'd probably go around bragging that we'd done the whole thing!10 No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.

11 But don't take any of this for granted. It was only yesterday that you outsiders to God's ways12 had no idea of any of this, didn't know the first thing about the way God works, hadn't the faintest idea of Christ. You knew nothing of that rich history of God's covenants and promises in Israel, hadn't a clue about what God was doing in the world at large.13 Now because of Christ-dying that death, shedding that blood-you who were once out of it altogether are in on everything.

14 The Messiah has made things up between us so that we're now together on this, both non-Jewish outsiders and Jewish insiders. He tore down the wall we used to keep each other at a distance.15 He repealed the law code that had become so clogged with fine print and footnotes that it hindered more than it helped. Then he started over. Instead of continuing with two groups of people separated by centuries of animosity and suspicion, he created a new kind of human being, a fresh start for everybody.

16 Christ brought us together through his death on the Cross. The Cross got us to embrace, and that was the end of the hostility.17 Christ came and preached peace to you outsiders and peace to us insiders.18 He treated us as equals, and so made us equals. Through him we both share the same Spirit and have equal access to the Father.

19 That's plain enough, isn't it? You're no longer wandering exiles. This kingdom of faith is now your home country. You're no longer strangers or outsiders. You belong here, with as much right to the name Christian as anyone. God is building a home. He's using us all-irrespective of how we got here-in what he is building.20 He used the apostles and prophets for the foundation. Now he's using you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone21 that holds all the parts together. We see it taking shape day after day-a holy temple built by God,22 all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home.