true life with Christ,
you must look for the things
that are in heaven, where Christ is,
sitting at God's right hand.
Let your thoughts be on heavenly things,
not on the things that are on the earth,
because you have died,
and now the life you have is hidden with Christ in God.
But when Christ is revealed and he is your life
you too will be revealed
in all your glory with him.
That is why you must kill everything in you
that belongs only to earthly life:
fornication, impurity, guilty passion,
evil desires and especially greed,
which is the same thing as worshipping a false god;
all this is the
sort of behaviour that makes God angry.
And it is the way in which you used to live
when you were surrounded by
people doing the same thing,
but now you, of all people,
must give all these things up:
getting angry, being bad-tempered, spitefulness,
abusive language and dirty talk;
and never tell each other lies.
You have stripped off your old
behaviour with your old self,
and you have put on a new self which will
progress towards true knowledge
the more it is renewed
in the image of its creator;
and in that image there is no room
for distinction between Greek and Jew,
between the circumcised or the uncircumcised,
or between barbarian and Scythian, slave and free man.
There is only Christ:
he is everything and he is in everything.*
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