Colossians 1:9-23 - Prayer For Maturity Based On Christ's Preeminence

⁹ That is why, from the day I first heard of it, I have never given up praying for you and asking God to fill you, through full spiritual wisdom and insight, with a clear knowledge of what his will is, ¹⁰ so that the lives you live may be worthy of your Master and wholly pleasing to him, and you may be fruitful in all kinds of good deeds, and may grow into fuller knowledge of God. ¹¹ Then, so mighty is his majesty, he will nerve you perfectly with strength for the cheerful exercise of endurance and forbearance in every situation, ¹² and you will thank the Father who has entitled you to share the lot of God's people in the realm of light. ¹³ He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness, and has transferred us into the realm of his dear Son, ¹⁴ by whom we have been ransomed from captivity through having our sins forgiven.

¹⁵ He is a likeness of the unseen God, born before any creature, ¹⁶ for it was through him that everything was created in heaven and on earth, the seen and the unseen, angelic thrones, dominions, principalities, authorities??ll things were created through him and for him. ¹⁷ He existed before all things and he sustains and embraces them all. ¹⁸ He is the head of the church, it is his body; for he is the beginning, the firstborn from among the dead??hat he might come to stand first in everything. ¹⁹ For all the divine fulness chose to dwell in him, ²⁰ and through him to reconcile to God all things on earth or in heaven, making this peace through his blood shed on the cross.

²¹ And it has brought you, who were once estranged from him, hostile in attitude and engaged in doing wrong (though now he has reconciled you ²² through dying in his human body) in holiness, and free from reproach or blame, into God's presence??23 if at least you continue firm and steadfast in the exercise of faith, and never shift from the hope held out in the good news to which you listened, which has been preached all over the world, and for which I, Paul, became a worker.