It is through union with him and through his blood that we have been delivered and our offenses forgiven,

and in arranging, when the time should have fully come, that everything in heaven and on earth should be unified in Christ??11 the Christ through whom it is our lot to have been predestined by the design of him who in everything carries out the purpose of his will,

to win praise for his glory, by having been the first to believe in Christ.

You also have heard the message of the truth, the good news of your salvation, and believed in him, and through union with him you have been marked with the seal of the holy Spirit that was promised,

he made us, dead as we were through our offenses, live again with the Christ. It is by his mercy that you have been saved.

For it is by his mercy that you have been saved through faith. It is not by your own action, it is the gift of God.

It has not been earned, so that no one can boast of it.

But now through your union with Christ Jesus you who were once far away have through the blood of Christ been brought near.

(which in past ages was not disclosed to mankind as fully as it has now been revealed through the Spirit to his holy apostles and prophets)

To me, the very least of all his people, this favor has been given, of preaching to the heathen the inexhaustible wealth of the Christ,

and making clear how the secret purpose is to be worked out which has been hidden away for ages in God the creator of all things,

But each one of us has been given mercy in Christ's generous measure.

That is not the way you have been taught what Christ means,

at least if you have really become acquainted with him and been instructed in him, and in union with him have been taught the truth as it is found in Jesus.

and put on the new self which has been created in likeness to God, with all the uprightness and holiness that belong to the truth.

You must not offend God's holy Spirit, with which you have been marked for the Day of Redemption.