²¹ For a person may labor with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then they must leave all they own to another who has not toiled for it. This too is meaningless and a great misfortune. ²² What do people get for all the toil and anxious striving with which they labor under the sun?^{(A) 23} All their days their work is grief and pain;^(B) even at night their minds do not rest.^(C) This too is meaningless.

Living as Those Made Alive in Christ

3 Since, then, you have been raised with Christ,^(A) set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.^{(B) 2} Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.^{(C) 3} For you died,^(D) and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. ⁴ When Christ, who is your^[a] life,^(E) appears,^(F) then you also will appear with him in glory.^(G)

⁵ Put to death,^(H) therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature:^(I) sexual immorality,^(J) impurity, lust, evil desires and greed,^(K) which is idolatry.^(L)

⁹ Do not lie to each other,^(A) since you have taken off your old self^(B) with its practices ¹⁰ and have put on the new self,^(C) which is being renewed^(D) in knowledge in the image of its Creator.^{(E) 11} Here there is no Gentile or Jew,^(F) circumcised or uncircumcised,^(G) barbarian, Scythian, slave or free,^(H) but Christ is all,^(I) and is in all.