The Unity of the Body

4 So, as a prisoner for the Lord, I beg you to live the way God’s people should live, because he chose you to be his.

The Way You Should Live

¹⁷ I have something from the Lord to tell you. I warn you: Don’t continue living like those who don’t believe. Their thoughts are worth nothing. ¹⁸ They have no understanding, and they know nothing because they refuse to listen. So they cannot have the life that God gives. ¹⁹ They have lost their feeling of shame and use their lives to do what is morally wrong. More and more they want to do all kinds of evil. ²⁰ But that way of life is nothing like what you learned when you came to know Christ. ²¹ I know that you heard about him, and in him you were taught the truth. Yes, the truth is in Jesus. ²² You were taught to leave your old self. This means that you must stop living the evil way you lived before. That old self gets worse and worse, because people are fooled by the evil they want to do. ²³ You must be made new in your hearts and in your thinking. ²⁴ Be that new person who was made to be like God, truly good and pleasing to him.

⁶ I am sure that the good work God began in you will continue until he completes it on the day when Jesus Christ comes again.