Colossians 1

LITV^{(i) 1} Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God, and Timothy the brother, ² to the saints and faithful brothers in Christ in Colosse: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. ³ We give thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying continually about you, ⁴ hearing of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love toward all the saints, ⁵ because of the hope being laid up for you in Heaven, which you heard before in the Word of the truth of the gospel, ⁶ coming to you, as also in all the world, and it is bearing fruit even also among you, from the day in which you heard and knew the grace of God in truth; ⁷ even as you also learned from Epaphras our beloved fellow-slave, who is a faithful minister of Christ for you, ⁸ he also showing to us your love in the Spirit. ⁹ For this cause also, from the day in which we heard, we do not cease praying on your behalf, and asking that you may be filled with the full knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, ¹⁰ for you to walk worthily of the Lord to all pleasing, bearing fruit in every good work and growing into the full knowledge of God; ¹¹ being empowered with all power according to the might of His glory, to all patience and longsuffering with joy; ¹² giving thanks to the Father, who has made us fit for a share of the inheritance of the saints in light, ¹³ who delivered us out of the authority of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, ¹⁴ in whom we have redemption through His blood, the remission of sins; ¹⁵ who is the image of the invisible God, the First-born of all creation. ¹⁶ For all things were created in Him, the things in the heavens, and the things on the earth, the visible and the invisible; whether thrones, or lordships, or rulers, or authorities, all things have been created through Him and for Him. ¹⁷ And He is before all things, and all things consist in Him. ¹⁸ And He is the Head of the body, the church, who is the Beginning, the First-born from the dead, that He be preeminent in all things; ¹⁹ because all the fullness was pleased to dwell in Him, ²⁰ and through Him making peace by the blood of His cross, to reconcile all things to Himself; through Him, whether the things on the earth, or the things in the heavens. ²¹ And you then being alienated and enemies in your mind by evil works, yet now He reconciled ²² in the body of His flesh, through death, to present you holy and without blemish and without charge before Him, ²³ if indeed you continue in the faith grounded and settled and not being moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard proclaimed in all the creation under Heaven, of which I, Paul, became a minister. ²⁴ who now rejoice in my sufferings on your behalf and fill up in my flesh the things lacking of the afflictions of Christ on behalf of His body, which is the church, ²⁵ of which I became a minister, according to the administration of God given to me for you, to fulfill the Word of God, ²⁶ the mystery having been hidden from the ages and from the generations, but now was revealed to His saints; ²⁷ to whom God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the nations, who is Christ in you, the hope of glory; ²⁸ whom we announce, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man full-grown in Christ Jesus, ²⁹ for which also I labor, struggling according to the working of Him who works in me in power.