Ephesians

⁸Always realise with gratitude that only through God's giving and through faith we reach salvation, not from ourselves, not through any works of our own, ⁹not for anything about which it is possible for us to take credit to ourselves. ¹⁰We are ourselves the work of God, so constituted in Christ Jesus to perform works prepared beforehand, made to walk in them, and to do them as the end of our being for which we exist. ¹¹Your condition as Gentiles was a condition of dependence on the flesh — in that character you were designated as uncircumcised by those tribes of Israel calling themselves the circumcision in allusion to the physical rite so called. ¹²Gentiles you were in every sense of the word, untouched by the Christ, strangers to the commonwealth of Israel, without any part or share in the inheritance promised to others and secured to them or their heirs by document and covenant. ¹³You had no share in all that, you had no hope, no God. But now, not in the world where this unfriended condition was your lot, but in Christ Jesus you that were “far off” have become “near” (Is. lvii. 19) and the blood of the Christ accomplished it. ¹⁴For that “peace” of which the prophet speaks is Christ; he has made one where there were two before, he has removed the barrier,