¹ As God's dear children, then, take him as your pattern,

² and follow Christ by loving as he loved you, giving himself up for us as an offering and a sweet-smelling sacrifice to God.

³ Among you there must be not even a mention of sexual vice or impurity in any of its forms, or greed: this would scarcely become the holy people of God!

⁴ There must be no foul or salacious talk or coarse jokes -- all this is wrong for you; there should rather be thanksgiving.

⁵ For you can be quite certain that nobody who indulges in sexual immorality or impurity or greed -- which is worshipping a false god -- can inherit the kingdom of God.

⁶ Do not let anyone deceive you with empty arguments: it is such behaviour that draws down God's retribution on those who rebel against him.

⁷ Make sure that you do not throw in your lot with them.

⁸ You were darkness once, but now you are light in the Lord; behave as children of light,

⁹ for the effects of the light are seen in complete goodness and uprightness and truth.

¹⁰ Try to discover what the Lord wants of you,

¹¹ take no part in the futile works of darkness but, on the contrary, show them up for what they are.

¹² The things which are done in secret are shameful even to speak of;

¹³ but anything shown up by the light will be illuminated

¹⁴ and anything illuminated is itself a light. That is why it is said: Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.

¹⁵ So be very careful about the sort of lives you lead, like intelligent and not like senseless people.

¹⁶ Make the best of the present time, for it is a wicked age.

¹⁷ This is why you must not be thoughtless but must recognise what is the will of the Lord.

¹⁸ Do not get drunk with wine; this is simply dissipation; be filled with the Spirit.

¹⁹ Sing psalms and hymns and inspired songs among yourselves, singing and chanting to the Lord in your hearts,

²⁰ always and everywhere giving thanks to God who is our Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

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

²² Wives should be subject to their husbands as to the Lord,

²³ since, as Christ is head of the Church and saves the whole body, so is a husband the head of his wife;

²⁴ and as the Church is subject to Christ, so should wives be to their husbands, in everything.

²⁵ Husbands should love their wives, just as Christ loved the Church and sacrificed himself for her

²⁶ to make her holy by washing her in cleansing water with a form of words,

²⁷ so that when he took the Church to himself she would be glorious, with no speck or wrinkle or anything like that, but holy and faultless.

²⁸ In the same way, husbands must love their wives as they love their own bodies; for a man to love his wife is for him to love himself.

²⁹ A man never hates his own body, but he feeds it and looks after it; and that is the way Christ treats the Church,

³⁰ because we are parts of his Body.

³¹ This is why a man leaves his father and mother and becomes attached to his wife, and the two become one flesh.

³² This mystery has great significance, but I am applying it to Christ and the Church.

³³ To sum up: you also, each one of you, must love his wife as he loves himself; and let every wife respect her husband.

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The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) is a Catholic translation of the Bible published in 1985. The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) has become the most widely used Roman Catholic Bible outside of the United States. It has the imprimatur of Cardinal George Basil Hume.

Like its predecessor, the Jerusalem Bible, the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) version is translated "directly from the Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic." The 1973 French translation, the Bible de Jerusalem, is followed only "where the text admits to more than one interpretation." Introductions and notes, with some modifications, are taken from the Bible de Jerusalem.

Source: The Very Reverend Dom (Joseph) Henry Wansbrough, OSB, MA (Oxon), STL (Fribourg), LSS (Rome), a monk of Ampleforth Abbey and a biblical scholar. He was General Editor of the New Jerusalem Bible. "New Jerusalem Bible, Regular Edition", pg. v.

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