001:001 Paul, an Apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God— and Timothy our brother:

001:002 To the people of God and the believing brethren at Colossae who are in Christ. May grace and peace be granted to you from God our Father.

001:003 We give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
constantly praying for you as we do,

001:004 because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of
the love which you cherish towards all God's people,

001:005 on account of the hope treasured up for you in Heaven.
Of this hope you have already heard in the Message of the truth
of the Good News.

001:006 For it has reached you, and remains with you, just as it has also spread through the whole world, yielding fruit there and increasing, as it has done among you from the day when first you heard it and came really to know the grace of God,

001:007 as you learned it from Epaphras our dearly-loved fellow servant.
He is to you a faithful minister of Christ in our stead,

001:008 and moreover he has informed us of your love, which is inspired
by the Spirit.

001:009 For this reason we also, from the day we first received these tidings, have never ceased to pray for you and to entreat that you may be filled with a clear knowledge of His will accompanied by thorough wisdom and discernment in spiritual things;

001:010 so that your lives may be worthy of the Lord and perfectly
pleasing to Him, while you exhibit the results of right action
of every sort and grow into a fuller knowledge of God.

001:011 Since His power is so glorious, may you be strengthened
with strength of every kind, and be prepared for cheerfully
enduring all things with patience and long-suffering;

001:012 and give thanks to the Father who has made us fit to receive
our share of the inheritance of God's people in Light.

001:013 It is God who has delivered us out of the dominion of darkness,
and has transferred us into the Kingdom of His dearly-loved Son,

001:014 in whom we have our redemption—the forgiveness of our sins.

001:015 Christ is the visible representation of the invisible God, the Firstborn and Lord of all creation.

001:016 For in Him was created the universe of things in heaven and on earth, things seen and things unseen, thrones, dominions, princedoms, powers—all were created, and exist through and for Him.

001:017 And HE IS before all things and in and through Him the universe is a harmonious whole.

001:018 Moreover He is the Head of His Body, the Church. He is the Beginning, the Firstborn from among the dead, in order that He Himself may in all things occupy the foremost place.

001:019 For it was the Father's gracious will that the whole of the divine perfections should dwell in Him.

001:020 And God purposed through Him to reconcile the universe to Himself, making peace through His blood, which was shed upon the Cross— to reconcile to Himself through Him, I say, things on earth and things in Heaven.

001:021 And you, estranged as you once were and even hostile in your minds, amidst your evil deeds,

001:022 He has now, in His human body, reconciled to God by His death, to bring you, holy and faultless and irreproachable, into His presence;

001:023 if, indeed, you are still firmly holding to faith as your foundation, without ever shifting from your hope that rests on the Good News that you have heard, which has been proclaimed in the whole creation under Heaven, and in which I Paul have been appointed to serve.

001:024 Now I can find joy amid my sufferings for you, and I fill up
in my own person whatever is lacking in Christ's afflictions
on behalf of His Body, the Church.

001:025 I have been appointed to serve the Church in the position
of responsibility entrusted to me by God for your benefit,
so that I may fully deliver God's Message—

001:026 the truth which has been kept secret from all ages and generations, but has now been revealed to His people,

001:027 to whom it was His will to make known how vast a wealth
of glory for the Gentile world is implied in this truth—
the truth that `Christ is in you, the hope of glory.'

001:028 Him we preach, admonishing every one and instructing every one,
with all possible wisdom, so that we may bring every one into
God's presence, made perfect through Christ.

001:029 To this end, like an earnest wrestler, I exert all my
strength in reliance upon the power of Him who is mightily
at work within me.

002:001 For I would have you know in how severe a struggle I am engaged
on behalf of you and the brethren in Laodicea and of all
who have not known me personally,

002:002 in order that their hearts may be cheered, they themselves being welded together in love and enjoying all the advantages of a reasonable certainty, till at last they attain the full knowledge of God's truth, which is Christ Himself.

002:003 In Him all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are stored up,
hidden from view.

002:004 I say this to prevent your being misled by any
one's plausible sophistry.

002:005 For although, as you say, I am absent from you in body, yet in spirit I am present with you and am delighted to witness your good discipline and the solid front presented by your faith in Christ.

002:006 As therefore you have received the Christ, even Jesus our Lord, live and act in vital union with Him;

002:007 having the roots of your being firmly planted in Him,
and continually building yourselves up in Him, and always being
increasingly confirmed in the faith as you were taught it,
and abounding in it with thanksgiving.

002:008 Take care lest there be some one who leads you away
as prisoners by means of his philosophy and idle fancies,
following human traditions and the world's crude notions
instead of following Christ.

002:009 For it is in Christ that the fulness of God's nature dwells embodied, and in Him you are made complete,

002:010 and He is the Lord of all princes and rulers.

002:011 In Him also you were circumcised with a circumcision not
performed by hand, when you threw off your sinful nature
in true Christian circumcision;

002:012 having been buried with Him in your baptism, in which you
were also raised with Him through faith produced within you
by God who raised Him from among the dead.

002:013 And to you—dead as you once were in your transgressions and in the uncircumcision of your natural state—He has nevertheless given Life with Himself, having forgiven us all our transgressions.

002:014 The bond, with its requirements, which was in force against us
and was hostile to us, He cancelled, and cleared it out of the way,
nailing it to His Cross.

002:015 And the hostile princes and rulers He shook off from Himself,
and boldly displayed them as His conquests, when by the Cross He
triumphed over them.

002:016 Therefore suffer no one to sit in judgement on you as to
eating or drinking or with regard to a festival, a new moon
or a sabbath.

002:017 These were a shadow of things that were soon to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.

002:018 Let no one defraud you of your prize, priding himself on
his humility and on his worship of the angels, and taking
his stand on the visions he has seen, and idly puffed up
with his unspiritual thoughts.

002:019 Such a one does not keep his hold upon Christ, the Head,
from whom the Body, in all its parts nourished and strengthened
by its points of contact and its connections, grows with
a divine growth.

002:020 If you have died with Christ and have escaped from the world's rudimentary notions, why, as though your life still belonged to the world, do you submit to such precepts as

002:021 "Do not handle this;" "Do not taste that;" "Do not touch
that other thing"—

002:022 referring to things which are all intended to be used up and perish—
in obedience to mere human injunctions and teachings?

002:023 These rules have indeed an appearance of wisdom where self-imposed worship exists, and an affectation of humility and an ascetic severity. But not one of them is of any value in combating the indulgence of our lower natures.

003:001 If however you have risen with Christ, seek the things that
are above, where Christ is, enthroned at God's right hand.

003:002 Give your minds to the things that are above, not to the things
that are on the earth.

003:003 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

003:004 When Christ appears—He is our true Life—then you also will appear with Him in glory.

003:005 Therefore put to death your earthward inclinations— fornication, impurity, sensual passion, unholy desire, and all greed, for that is a form of idolatry.

003:006 It is on account of these very sins that God's anger is coming,

003:007 and you also were once addicted to them, while you were living under their power.

003:008 But now you must rid yourselves of every kind of sin— angry and passionate outbreaks, ill-will, evil speaking, foul-mouthed abuse—so that these may never soil your lips.

003:009 Do not speak falsehoods to one another, for you have stripped off the old self with its doings,

003:010 and have clothed yourselves with the new self which is being
remoulded into full knowledge so as to become like Him
who created it.

003:011 In that new creation there is neither Greek nor Jew,
circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor
free man, but Christ is everything and is in all of us.

003:012 Clothe yourselves therefore, as God's own people holy and
dearly loved, with tender-heartedness, kindness, lowliness
of mind, meekness, long-suffering;

003:013 bearing with one another and readily forgiving each other,
if any one has a grievance against another. Just as the Lord
has forgiven you, you also must forgive.

003:014 And over all these put on love, which is the perfect bond of union;

003:015 and let the peace which Christ gives settle all questionings in your hearts, to which peace indeed you were called as belonging to His one Body; and be thankful.

003:016 Let the teaching concerning Christ remain as a rich treasure in your hearts. In all wisdom teach and admonish one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, and sing with grace in your hearts to God.

003:017 And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, and let it be through Him that you give thanks to God the Father.

003:018 Married women, be submissive to your husbands, as is fitting
in the Lord.

003:019 Married men, be affectionate to your wives, and do not
treat them harshly.

003:020 Children be obedient to your parents in everything;
for that is right for Christians.

003:021 Fathers, do not fret and harass your children, or you may make
them sullen and morose.

003:022 Slaves, be obedient in everything to your earthly masters; not in acts of eye service, as aiming only to please men, but with simplicity of purpose, because you fear the Lord.

003:023 Whatever you are doing, let your hearts be in your work, as a thing done for the Lord and not for men.

003:024 For you know that it is from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. Christ is the Master whose bondservants you are.

003:025 The man who perpetrates a wrong will find the wrong repaid to him;
and with God there are no merely earthly distinctions.

004:001 Masters, deal justly and equitably with your slaves,
knowing that you too have a Master in Heaven.

004:002 Be earnest and unwearied in prayer, being on the alert in it
and in your giving of thanks.

004:003 And pray at the same time for us also, that God may open for us
a door for preaching, for us to tell the truth concerning
Christ for the sake of which I am even a prisoner.

004:004 Then I shall proclaim it fully, as it is my duty to do.

004:005 Behave wisely in relation to the outside world,
buying up your opportunities.

004:006 Let your language be always seasoned with the salt of grace,
so that you may know how to give every man a fitting answer.

004:007 Tychicus, our much-loved brother, a trusty assistant and fellow servant with us in the Lord's work, will give you every information about me.

004:008 And for this very purpose I send him to you that you may know
how we are faring; and that he may cheer your hearts.

004:009 And with him I send our dear and trusty brother Onesimus, who is
one of yourselves. They will inform you of everything here.

004:010 Aristarchus my fellow prisoner sends greeting to you, and so does
Barnabas's cousin Mark. You have received instructions as to him;
if he comes to you, give him a welcome.

004:011 Jesus, called Justus, also sends greeting. These three are Hebrew converts. They alone among such have worked loyally with me for the Kingdom of God—they are men who have been a comfort to me.

004:012 Epaphras, who is one of yourselves, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, sends greetings to you, always wrestling on your behalf in his prayers, that you may stand firm—Christians of ripe character and of clear conviction as to everything which is God's will.

004:013 For I can bear witness to the deep interest he takes in you and in the brethren at Laodicea and in those at Hierapolis.

004:014 Luke, the dearly-loved physician, salutes you, and so does Demas.

004:015 Christian greetings to the brethren at Laodicea, especially to Nymphas, and to the Church that meets at their house.

004:016 And when this Letter has been read among you, let it be read also in the Church of the Laodiceans, and you in turn must read the one I am sending to Laodicea.

004:017 And tell Archippus to discharge carefully the duties devolving
upon him as a servant of the Lord.

004:018 I Paul add with my own hand this final greeting.
Be mindful of me in my imprisonment. Grace be with you.

*****

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