Ephesians 4:1–16

¹I, the prisoner in the Lord, exhort you therefore to walk worthy of the calling wherewith ye have been called,

²with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, bearing with one another in love; ³using diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the uniting bond of peace. ⁴There is one body and one Spirit, as ye have been also called in one hope of your calling; ⁵one Lord, one faith, one baptism; ⁶one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in us all. ⁷But to each one of us has been given grace according to the measure of the gift of the Christ. ⁸Wherefore he says, Having ascended up on high, he has led captivity captive, and has given gifts to men. ⁹But that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended into the lower parts of the earth? ¹⁰He that descended is the same who has also ascended up above all the heavens, that he might fill all things; ¹¹and he has given some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some shepherds and teachers, ¹²for the perfecting of the saints; with a view to the work of the ministry, with a view to the edifying of the body of Christ; ¹³until we all arrive at the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, at the full-grown man, at the measure of the stature of the fulness of the Christ; ¹⁴in order that we may be no longer babes, tossed and carried about by every wind of that teaching which is in the sleight of men, in unprincipled cunning with a view to systematized error; ¹⁵but, holding the truth in love, we may grow up to him in all things, who is the head, the Christ: ¹⁶from whom the whole body, fitted together, and connected by every joint of supply, according to the working in its measure of each one part, works for itself the increase of the body to its self-building up in love.