| 1:1 | PAUL, messenger of Christ Jesus by God's will, to all faithful Christians at Ephesus: |
| 1:2 | grace and peace be to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. |
| 1:3 | Praised be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ for giving us through Christ every spiritual benefit as citizens of Heaven. |
| 1:4 | For consider what he has donebefore the foundation of the world he chose us to be, in Christ, his children, holy and blameless in his sight. |
| 1:5 | He planned, in his love, that we should be adopted as his own children through Jesus Christthis was his will and pleasure |
| 1:6 | that we might praise that glorious generosity of his which he granted to us in his Beloved. |
| 1:7 | It is through him, at the cost of his own blood, that we are redeemed, freely forgiven through that free and generous grace |
| 1:8 | which has overflowed into our lives and given us wisdom and insight. |
| 1:9 | For God has allowed us to know the secret of his plan, and it is this: he purposed long ago in his sovereign will |
| 1:10 | that all human history should be consummated in Christ, that everything that exists in Heaven or earth should find its perfection and fulfillment in him. |
| 1:11 | In Christ we have been given an inheritance, since we were destined for this, by the One who works out all his purposes according to the design of his own will. |
| 1:12 | So that we, in due time, as the first to put our hope in Christ, may bring praise to his glory! |
| 1:13 | And you too trusted him, when you had heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. And after you gave your confidence to him you were, so to speak, stamped with the promised Holy Spirit |
| 1:14 | as a pledge of our inheritance, until the day when God completes the redemption of what is his own; and that will again be to the praise of his glory. |
| 1:15 | This is why since I heard of this faith of yours in the Lord Jesus and the love which you bear towards fellowChristians, |
| 1:16 | I thank God continually for you and I never give up praying for you; and this is my prayer. |
| 1:17 | That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the allglorious Father, will give you spiritual wisdom and the insight to know more of him: |
| 1:18 | that you may receive that inner illumination of the spirit which will make you realize how great is the hope to which he is calling youthe magnificence and splendor of the inheritance promised to Christians |
| 1:19 | and how tremendous is the power available to us who believe in God. That power is the same divine energy |
| 1:20 | which was demonstrated in Christ when he raised him from the dead and gave him the place of highest honour in Heaven |
| 1:21 | a place that is infinitely superior to any command, authority, power or control, and which carries with it a name far beyond any name that could ever be used in this world or the world to come. |
| 1:22 | God has placed everything under the power of Christ and has set him up as supreme head to the Church. |
| 1:23 | For the Church is his body, and in that body lives fully the One who fills the whole wide universe. |
Efesus 1 - Philips NT in Modern English
