Ephesians 2:1-10

You, however, were deprived of life, involved in transgressions and contradiction of His law, in sins and errors, living merely as members of an age, a universe not under God, but under a power working invisibly in the air as ruler of the world by means of a spirit, a leaven that handles the minds and souls of those who exist in disobedience. In this condition which you shared with the rest of the blind world, a condition to which are attached all the desires of the flesh, motions of the will, and of thoughts, belonging not to the children of God, but to the children of the wrath of God, denizens of a misbegotten state — in such a condition the charity and kindness of God which abound beyond all measure, making continual proof of the compassion and mercy that flow from Him, saved you and me from this death, this subjection to sin. The Christ who reigns so gloriously above all that is averse from him, he gave us life — for giving is his law, and by a gift we live. God raised us out of it all with Christ, and He sat us down on the right hand of power with Him and gave us dominion, thus to show in the ages to come the infinite preponderance of love and goodness over all else, revealed in His kindness and the grace and favour conferred on us in Christ Jesus. Always 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, not for anything about which it is possible for us to take credit to ourselves. We 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.