Chapter 2

  and you, being dead in your offences and sins --  

  in which ye once walked according to the age of this world, according to the ruler of the authority of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience:  

  among whom we also all once had our conversation in the lusts of our flesh, doing what the flesh and the thoughts willed to do, and were children, by nature, of wrath, even as the rest:  

  but God, being rich in mercy, because of his great love wherewith he loved us,  

  (we too being dead in offences,) has quickened us with the Christ, (ye are saved by grace,)  

  and has raised [us] up together, and has made [us] sit down together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus,  

  that he might display in the coming ages the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.  

  For ye are saved by grace, through faith; and this not of yourselves; it is God's gift:  

  not on the principle of works, that no one might boast.  

  For we are his workmanship, having been created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God has before prepared that we should walk in them.  

  Wherefore remember that ye, once nations in [the] flesh, who [are] called uncircumcision by that called circumcision in [the] flesh done with the hand;  

  that ye were at that time without Christ, aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world:  

  but now in Christ Jesus ye who once were afar off are become nigh by the blood of the Christ.  

  For he is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of enclosure,  

  having annulled the enmity in his flesh, the law of commandments in ordinances, that he might form the two in himself into one new man, making peace;  

  and might reconcile both in one body to God by the cross, having by it slain the enmity;  

  and, coming, he has preached the glad tidings of peace to you who [were] afar off, and [the glad tidings of] peace to those [who were] nigh.  

  For through him we have both access by one Spirit to the Father.  

  So then ye are no longer strangers and foreigners, but ye are fellow-citizens of the saints, and of the household of God,  

  being built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the corner-stone,  

  in whom all [the] building fitted together increases to a holy temple in the Lord;  

  in whom ye also are built together for a habitation of God in [the] Spirit.