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

⁹ On this account we also, from the day we heard of it, cease not to pray for you, and to ask that ye may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; ¹⁰ that ye may walk worthily of the Lord so as to please him in all things, bearing fruit in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God; ¹¹ endued with all power according to the might of his glory unto all patience and longsuffering with joy; ¹² giving thanks to the Father, who enabled us to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light; ¹³ who rescued us from the empire of darkness, and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son; ¹⁴ in whom we have our redemption, the forgiveness of our sins;

¹⁵ who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of the whole creation; ¹⁶ for in him were created all things, those in the heavens, and those on the earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers, all things have been created through him and for him; ¹⁷ and he is before all things, and in him all things subsist. ¹⁸ And he is the head of the body, the church; since he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that he may be in all things preeminent; ¹⁹ for God was pleased that in him all the fullness should dwell, and by him to reconcile all things to himself, ²⁰ having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him, I say, whether the things on earth, or those in the heavens.

²¹ And you, that were once alienated, and enemies in your mind in wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled ²² in the body of his flesh through his death, to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable in his sight; ²³ if ye indeed continue in the faith grounded and settled, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which ye heard, which hath been preached in the whole creation under heaven; of which I Paul became a minister.