Parallel Bible results for "ephesians 3"

Ephesians 3

The Message Bible MSG

1 This is why I, Paul, am in jail for Christ, having taken up the cause of you outsiders, so-called.

2 I take it that you're familiar with the part I was given in God's plan for including everybody.

3 I got the inside story on this from God himself, as I just wrote you in brief.

4 As you read over what I have written to you, you'll be able to see for yourselves into the mystery of Christ.

5 None 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.

6 The 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.

7 This 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.

8 When 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.

9 My 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.

10 Through Christians like yourselves gathered in churches, this extraordinary plan of God is becoming known and talked about even among the angels!

11 All this is proceeding along lines planned all along by God and then executed in Christ Jesus.

12 When we trust in him, we're free to say whatever needs to be said, bold to go wherever we need to go.

13 So don't let my present trouble on your behalf get you down. Be proud!

14 My response is to get down on my knees before the Father,

15 this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth.

16 I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit - not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength -

17 that 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,

18 you'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!

19 Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.

20 God 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.

21 Glory to God in the church! Glory to God in the Messiah, in Jesus! Glory down all the generations! Glory through all millennia! Oh, yes!

New American Standard Bible NAS

1 For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles -

2 if indeed you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace which was given to me for you;

3 that by revelation there was made known to me the mystery, as I wrote before in brief.

4 By referring to this, when you read you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ,

5 which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit;

6 to be specific, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel,

7 of which I was made a minister, according to the gift of God's grace which was given to me according to the working of His power.

8 To me, the very least of all saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ,

9 and to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things;

10 so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.

11 This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord ,

12 in whom we have boldness and confident access through faith in Him.

13 Therefore I ask you not to lose heart at my tribulations on your behalf, for they are your glory.

14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,

15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name,

16 that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man,

17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love,

18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,

19 and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

20 Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us,

21 to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.