1 Therefore I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God.
2 Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love.
3 Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace.
4 For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future.
5 There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
6 and one God and Father, who is over all and in all and living through all.
7 However, he has given each one of us a special gift through the generosity of Christ.
8 That is why the Scriptures say, “When he ascended to the heights, he led a crowd of captives and gave gifts to his people.”
9 Notice that it says “he ascended.” This clearly means that Christ also descended to our lowly world.
10 And the same one who descended is the one who ascended higher than all the heavens, so that he might fill the entire universe with himself.
11 Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers.
12 Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ.
13 This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.
14 Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth.
15 Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church.
16 He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.
GOOD NEWS TRANSLATION
1 I urge you, then—I who am a prisoner because I serve the Lord: live a life that measures up to the standard God set when he called you.
2 Be always humble, gentle, and patient. Show your love by being tolerant with one another.
3 Do your best to preserve the unity which the Spirit gives by means of the peace that binds you together.
4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as there is one hope to which God has called you.
5 There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism;
6 there is one God and Father of all people, who is Lord of all, works through all, and is in all.
7 Each one of us has received a special gift in proportion to what Christ has given.
8 As the scripture says, “When he went up to the very heights, he took many captives with him; he gave gifts to people.”
9 Now, what does “he went up” mean? It means that first he came down to the lowest depths of the earth.
10 So the one who came down is the same one who went up, above and beyond the heavens, to fill the whole universe with his presence.
11 It was he who “gave gifts to people”; he appointed some to be apostles, others to be prophets, others to be evangelists, others to be pastors and teachers.
12 He did this to prepare all God's people for the work of Christian service, in order to build up the body of Christ.
13 And so we shall all come together to that oneness in our faith and in our knowledge of the Son of God; we shall become mature people, reaching to the very height of Christ's full stature.
14 Then we shall no longer be children, carried by the waves and blown about by every shifting wind of the teaching of deceitful people, who lead others into error by the tricks they invent.
15 Instead, by speaking the truth in a spirit of love, we must grow up in every way to Christ, who is the head.
16 Under his control all the different parts of the body fit together, and the whole body is held together by every joint with which it is provided. So when each separate part works as it should, the whole body grows and builds itself up through love.
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