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New Testament Reading - The New Life in Christ

¹Since you became alive again, so to speak, when Christ arose from the dead, now set your sights on the rich treasures and joys of heaven where he sits beside God in the place of honor and power. ²Let heaven fill your thoughts; don’t spend your time worrying about things down here. ³You should have as little desire for this world as a dead person does. Your real life is in heaven with Christ and God. ⁴And when Christ who is our real life comes back again, you will shine with him and share in all his glories.

⁵Away then with sinful, earthly things; deaden the evil desires lurking within you; have nothing to do with sexual sin, impurity, lust, and shameful desires; don’t worship the good things of life, for that is idolatry. ⁶ God’s terrible anger is upon those who do such things. ⁷You used to do them when your life was still part of this world; ⁸but now is the time to cast off and throw away all these rotten garments of anger, hatred, cursing, and dirty language.

⁹Don’t tell lies to each other; it was your old life with all its wickedness that did that sort of thing; now it is dead and gone. ¹⁰You are living a brand new kind of life that is continually learning more and more of what is right, and trying constantly to be more and more like Christ who created this new life within you. ¹¹In this new life one’s nationality or race or education or social position is unimportant; such things mean nothing. Whether a person has Christ is what matters, and he is equally available to all.