who is the down payment of our inheritance, until the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of his glory.

I became a servant of this gospel according to the gift of God’s grace that was given to me by the exercise of his power.

– since the eyes of your heart have been enlightened – so that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what is the wealth of his glorious inheritance in the saints,

if indeed you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace that was given to me for you,

because the husband is the head of the wife as also Christ is the head of the church – he himself being the savior of the body.

And when you heard the word of truth (the gospel of your salvation) – when you believed in Christ – you were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit,

and what is the incomparable greatness of his power toward us who believe, as displayed in the exercise of his immense strength.

So we are no longer to be children, tossed back and forth by waves and carried about by every wind of teaching by the trickery of people who craftily carry out their deceitful schemes.

They are darkened in their understanding, being alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of their hearts.

to the praise of the glory of his grace that he has freely bestowed on us in his dearly loved Son.

in whom we have boldness and confident access to God because of Christ’s faithfulness.

that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, so that, because you have been rooted and grounded in love,

making every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

“that it may go well with you and that you will live a long time on the earth.”

Finally, be strengthened in the Lord and in the strength of his power.

by fitting your feet with the preparation that comes from the good news of peace,

in which you formerly lived according to this world’s present path, according to the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the ruler of the spirit that is now energizing the sons of disobedience,

among whom all of us also formerly lived out our lives in the cravings of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath even as the rest…

that you were at that time without the Messiah, alienated from the citizenship of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God – a mature person, attaining to the measure of Christ’s full stature.