1    2   In a word, as God's dear children, try to be like him, and live in love as Christ loved you, and gave himself up on your behalf as an offering and sacrifice whose fragrance is pleasing to God.

3   Fornication and indecency of any kind, or ruthless greed, must not be so much as mentioned among you, as befits the people of God. 4   No coarse, stupid, or flippant talk; these things are out of place; you should rather be thanking God. 5   For be very sure of this: no one given to fornication or indecency, or the greed which makes an idol of gain, has any share in the kingdom of Christ and of God.

6   Let no one deceive you with shallow arguments; it is for all these things that God's dreadful judgement is coming upon his rebel subjects. 7    8   Have no part or lot with them. For though you were once all darkness, now as Christians you are light. Live like men who are at home in daylight, 9   for where light is, there all goodness springs up, all justice and truth. 10   Try to find out what would please the Lord; take no part in the barren deeds of darkness, 11   but show them up for what they are. 12   The things they do in secret it would be shameful even to mention. 13   But everything, when once the light has shown it up, is illumined, and everything thus illumined is all light. 14   And so the hymn says:

  ‘Awake, sleeper,
  rise from the dead,
  and Christ will shine upon you.’

15   Be most careful then how you conduct yourselves: like sensible men, not like simpletons. 16   Use the present opportunity to the full, for these are evil days. 17   So do not be fools, but try to understand what the will of the Lord is. 18   Do not give way to drunkenness and the dissipation that goes with it, but let the Holy Spirit fill you:

The glory of Christ in the church speak to one another in psalms, hymns, and ^note songs; 19   sing and make music in your hearts to the Lord; 20   and in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ give thanks every day for everything to our God and Father.

21   Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.

22    23   Wives, be subject to your husbands as to the Lord; for the man is the head of the woman, just as Christ also is the head of the church. 24   Christ is, indeed, the Saviour of the body; but just as the church is subject to Christ, so must women be to their husbands in everything.

25   Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for it, 26   to consecrate it, cleansing it by water and word, 27   so that he might present the church to himself all glorious, with no stain or wrinkle or anything of the sort, but holy and without blemish. 28   In the same way men also are bound to love their wives, as they love their own bodies. In loving his wife a man loves himself. 29   For no one ever hated his own body: on the contrary, he provides and cares for it; 30   and that is how Christ treats the church, because it is his body, of which we are living parts. 31   Thus it is that (in the words of Scripture) ‘a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’. 32   It is a great truth that is hidden here. I for my part refer it to Christ and to the church, but it applies also individually: 33   each of you must love his wife as his very self; and the woman must see to it that she pays her husband all respect.

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