Chosen

Because I acknowledge that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in me and I in God. I know that I live in him and he in me, because he has given me of his Spirit. Therefore, because I am in Christ, I am a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! If I remain in Jesus and he in me, I will bear much fruit. Apart from him l can do nothing.

In Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and I have been given fullness in Christ, who is the Head over every power and authority. In him I have been enriched in every way - in all my speaking and in all my knowledge.

In love he predestined me to be adopted as his son through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will — to the praise of his glorious grace, which is freely given me in the one he loves. And God raised me up with Christ and seated me with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to me in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace I have been saved through faith — and this is not from myself, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that I cannot boast.

Blessed be the God and Father of my Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed me in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms.

All this is from God, who reconciled me to himself through Christ and gave me the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting my sins against me. And he has committed to me the message of reconciliation. For he chose me in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. For I am God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for me to do.

( l John 4:15, 13; 2 Cor. 5:17; John 15:5; Col. 2:9—10; 1 Cor. 1:4—5; Eph. 1:4—6; 2:6—9; 1:3; 2 Cor. 5:18—19; Eph. 2:10)