Yes, He is the exact likeness of the unseen God, His first-born Son who existed before any created thing,

for it was through Him that everything was created in heaven and on earth, the seen and the unseen, thrones, dominions, principalities, authorities; all things have been created through Him and for Him.

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,

Yes, He is the Head of the church as His body. For He is the beginning, the first-born among the dead, so that He alone should stand first in everything.

which reached you, and since it is bearing fruit and growing among you, just as it is all over the world, from the day you first heard of God's favor and in reality came to know it,

We are proclaiming Him, warning everyone and teaching everyone with ample wisdom, in order to present to God everyone mature through union with Christ.

This is why, ever since I heard of it, I have never ceased praying for you and asking God to fill you, through full wisdom and spiritual insight, with a clear knowledge of His will,

he is the very one who told me of the love awakened in you by the Spirit.

as you learned it from Epaphras, our dearly loved fellow-slave. As a faithful minister of Christ for me

I am now glad to be suffering for you, and in my own person I am filling in what is lacking in Christ's sufferings for His body, that is, the church.

to whom God has chosen to make known how glorious are the riches of this open secret among the heathen, namely, Christ in you the hope of your glorification.

and you will always be thanking the Father who has qualified you to share the lot of His people in the realm of light.

So you, who were once estranged from Him, and hostile in disposition as shown by your wrongdoings, He has now reconciled

Paul, by God's will an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Timothy,

by whom we possess the ransom from captivity, which means the forgiveness of our sins.

and that through Him He might reconcile to Himself all things on earth or in heaven, making this peace through the blood He shed On His cross.

It is so because it was the divine choice that all the divine fullness should dwell in Him,

So He existed before all things, and through Him all things are held together.

so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord to His full satisfaction, by perennially bearing fruit in every good enterprise and by a steady growth in fuller knowledge of God;

to the consecrated and faithful brothers at Colossae who are in union with Christ: spiritual blessing and peace to you from God our Father.

For this I am toiling and struggling by His active energy which is mightily working in me.

Every time we pray for you we thank God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,

because of your hope of what is laid up for you in heaven. Long ago you heard of this hope through the message of the good news

if indeed you continue well grounded and firm in faith and never shift from the hope inspired by the good news you heard, which has been preached all over the world, and of which I, Paul, have been made a minister.

the open secret, covered up from the people of former ages and generations, but now uncovered to God's people,

then you will be perfectly empowered by His glorious might for every sort of joyous endurance and forbearance,

by His death in His human body, so as to present you consecrated, faultless, and blameless in His presence,

In it I have been made a minister in accordance with the trusteeship God entrusted to me for you, that I might prove among you the universal message of God,

because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of your love for all God's people,