The Message
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Chapter 2
He Tore Down the Wall
1It wasn't so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. 2You 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. 3We 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. 4Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, 5he 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! 6Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah. 7Now 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. 8Saving 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! 9We don't play the major role. If we did, we'd probably go around bragging that we'd done the whole thing! 10No, 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. 11But don't take any of this for granted. It was only yesterday that you outsiders to God's ways 12had 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. 13Now because of Christ-dying that death, shedding that blood-you who were once out of it altogether are in on everything. 14The 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 He tore down the wall we used to keep each other at a distance. 15He repealed the law code that had become so clogged with fine print and footnotes that it hindered more than it helped.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. 16Christ brought us together through his death on the Cross. The Cross got us to embrace, and that was the end of the hostility. 17Christ came and preached peace to you outsiders and peace to us insiders. 18He treated us as equals, and so made us equals. Through him we both share the same Spirit and have equal access to the Father. 19That'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. 20He 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 cornerstone 21that holds all the parts together. We see it taking shape day after day-a holy temple built by God, 22all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home. Chapter 3
The Secret Plan of God
1This is why I, Paul, am in jail for Christ, having taken up the cause of you outsiders, so-called. 2I take it that you're familiar with the part I was given in God's plan for including everybody. 3I got the inside story on this from God himself, as I just wrote you in brief. 4As you read over what I have written to you, you'll be able to see for yourselves into the mystery of Christ. 5None of our ancestors understood this. Only in our time has it been made clear by God's Spirit through his holy apostles and prophets of this new order. 6The mystery is that people who have never heard of God and those who have heard of him all their lives (what I've been calling outsiders and insiders) stand on the same ground before God. They get the same offer, same help, same promises in Christ Jesus. The Message is accessible and welcoming to everyone, across the board. 7This is my life work: helping people understand and respond to this Message. It came as a sheer gift to me, a real surprise, God handling all the details. 8When it came to presenting the Message to people who had no background in God's way, I was the least qualified of any of the available Christians. God saw to it that I was equipped, but you can be sure that it had nothing to do with my natural abilities. And so here I am, preaching and writing about things that are way over my head, the inexhaustible riches and generosity of Christ. 9My task is to bring out in the open and make plain what God, who created all this in the first place, has been doing in secret and behind the scenes all along. 10Through Christians like yourselves gathered in churches, this extraordinary plan of God is becoming known and talked about even among the angels! 11All this is proceeding along lines planned all along by God and then executed in Christ Jesus. 12When we trust in him, we're free to say whatever needs to be said, bold to go wherever we need to go. 13So don't let my present trouble on your behalf get you down. Be proud! 14My response is to get down on my knees before the Father, 15this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth. 16I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit-not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength- 17that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in. And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, 18you'll be able to take in with all Christians the extravagant dimensions of Christ's love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! 19Live full lives, full in the fullness of God. 20God can do anything, you know-far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us. 21Glory to God in the church! Glory to God in the Messiah, in Jesus! Glory down all the generations! Glory through all millennia! Oh, yes! Chapter 4
To Be Mature
1In light of all this, here's what I want you to do. While I'm locked up here, a prisoner for the Master, I want you to get out there and walk-better yet, run!-on the road God called you to travel. I don't want any of you sitting around on your hands. I don't want anyone strolling off, down some path that goes nowhere. 2And mark that you do this with humility and discipline-not in fits and starts, but steadily, pouring yourselves out for each other in acts of love, 3alert at noticing differences and quick at mending fences. 4You were all called to travel on the same road and in the same direction, so stay together, both outwardly and inwardly. 5You have one Master, one faith, one baptism, 6one God and Father of all, who rules over all, works through all, and is present in all. Everything you are and think and do is permeated with Oneness. 7But that doesn't mean you should all look and speak and act the same. Out of the generosity of Christ, each of us is given his own gift. 8The text for this is, He climbed the high mountain, He captured the enemy and seized the booty, He handed it all out in gifts to the people. 9It's true, is it not, that the One who climbed up also climbed down, down to the valley of earth? 10And the One who climbed down is the One who climbed back up, up to highest heaven. He handed out gifts above and below, filled heaven with his gifts, 11filled earth with his gifts. He handed out gifts of apostle, prophet, evangelist, and pastor-teacher 12to train Christians in skilled servant work, working within Christ's body, the church, 13until we're all moving rhythmically and easily with each other, efficient and graceful in response to God's Son, fully mature adults, fully developed within and without, fully alive like Christ. 14No prolonged infancies among us, please. We'll not tolerate babes in the woods, small children who are an easy mark for impostors. 15God wants us to grow up, to know the whole truth and tell it in love-like Christ in everything. We take our lead from Christ, who is the source of everything we do. 16He keeps us in step with each other. His very breath and blood flow through us, nourishing us so that we will grow up healthy in God, robust in love. The Old Way Has to Go
17And so I insist-and God backs me up on this-that there be no going along with the crowd, the empty-headed, mindless crowd. 18They've refused for so long to deal with God that they've lost touch not only with God but with reality itself. 19They can't think straight anymore. Feeling no pain, they let themselves go in sexual obsession, addicted to every sort of perversion. 20But that's no life for you. You learned Christ! 21My assumption is that you have paid careful attention to him, been well instructed in the truth precisely as we have it in Jesus. 22Since, then, we do not have the excuse of ignorance, everything-and I do mean everything-connected with that old way of life has to go. It's rotten through and through. Get rid of it! And then take on an entirely new way of life-a God-fashioned life, 23a life renewed from the inside 24and working itself into your conduct as God accurately reproduces his character in you. 25What this adds up to, then, is this: no more lies, no more pretense. Tell your neighbor the truth. In Christ's body we're all connected to each other, after all. When you lie to others, you end up lying to yourself. 26Go ahead and be angry. You do well to be angry-but don't use your anger as fuel for revenge. And don't stay angry. Don't go to bed angry. 27Don't give the Devil that kind of foothold in your life. 28Did you used to make ends meet by stealing? Well, no more! Get an honest job so that you can help others who can't work. 29Watch the way you talk. Let nothing foul or dirty come out of your mouth. Say only what helps, each word a gift. 30Don't grieve God. Don't break his heart. His Holy Spirit, moving and breathing in you, is the most intimate part of your life, making you fit for himself. Don't take such a gift for granted. 31Make a clean break with all cutting, backbiting, profane talk. 32Be gentle with one another, sensitive. Forgive one another as quickly and thoroughly as God in Christ forgave you.
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