Moff COL Chapter 1

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1 Paul, by God's will an apostle of Christ Jesus, and brother Timotheus, 2 to the consecrated and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae: grace and peace to you from God our Father.

3 We always thank the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ when we pray for you, 4 since we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and your love for all the saints, 5 due to the hope which is laid up for you in heaven. You heard of this hope originally in the message of the Truth, in that gospel 6 which has reached you as it spreads over all the world with fruit and increase. Such has been your life from the day you learned to know what God's grace really is. 7 You got that lesson from our beloved fellow-servant Epaphras, a minister of Christ who is faithful to your interests; 8 and it is he who has informed us of your love in the Spirit.

9 Hence, from the day we heard of it, we have never ceased to pray for you, asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and insight, 10 so that you may lead a life that is worthy of the Lord and give him entire satisfaction. May you be fruitful and increase in the doing of all good, as you thus know God! 11 May his glorious might nerve you with full power to endure and to be patient cheerfully, whatever comes, 12 thanking the Father who has qualified us to share the lot of the saints in the Light, 13 rescuing us from the power of the Darkness and transferring us to the realm of his beloved Son! 14 In him we enjoy our redemption, that is, the forgiveness of sins. 15 He is the likeness of the unseen God, born first before all the creation-- 16 for it was by him that all things were created both in heaven and on earth, both the seen and the unseen, including Thrones, angelic Lords, celestial Powers and Rulers; all things have been created by him and for him; 17 he is prior to all, and all coheres in him. 18 Also, he is the head of the Body, that is, of the church, in virtue of his primacy as the first to be born from the dead — that gives him pre-eminence over all. 19 For it was in him that the divine Fulness willed to settle without limit, 20 and by him it willed to reconcile in his own person all on earth and in heaven alike, in a peace made by the blood of his cross. 21 Once you were estranged yourselves, your hearts hostile to him in evildoing; but now he has reconciled you by dying in his mortal body, 22 so as to set you consecrated and unblemished and irreproachable in his presence-- 23 that is, if you adhere to the foundations and stability of the faith, instead of moving away from the hope you have learned in the gospel, that gospel which has been preached to every creature under heaven, and of which I Paul was made a minister. 24 I am suffering now on your behalf, but I rejoice in that; I would make up the full sum of all that Christ has to suffer in my person on behalf of the church, his Body; 25 for I am a minister of the church by the divine commission which has been granted me in your interests, to make a full presentation of God's message — 26 of that open secret which, though concealed from ages and generations of old, has now been disclosed to the saints of God. 27 It is His will that they should understand the glorious wealth which this secret holds for the Gentiles, in the fact of Christ's presence among you as your hope of glory.

28 This is the Christ we proclaim; we train everyone and teach everyone the full scope of this knowledge, in order to set everyone before God mature in Christ; 29 I labour for that end, striving for it with the divine energy which is a power within me.

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