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

⁹ For this reason we also, from the day we first received these tidings, have never ceased to pray for you and to entreat that you may be filled with a clear knowledge of His will accompanied by thorough wisdom and discernment in spiritual things; ¹⁰ so that your lives may be worthy of the Lord and perfectly pleasing to Him, while you exhibit the results of right action of every sort and grow into a fuller knowledge of God. ¹¹ Since His power is so glorious, may you be strengthened with strength of every kind, and be prepared for cheerfully enduring all things with patience and long-suffering; ¹² and give thanks to the Father who has made us fit to receive our share of the inheritance of God's people in Light. ¹³ 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, ¹⁴ in whom we have our redemption--the forgiveness of our sins.

¹⁵ Christ is the visible representation of the invisible God, the Firstborn and Lord of all creation. ¹⁶ For in Him was created the universe of things in heaven and on earth, things seen and things unseen, thrones, dominions, princedoms, powers--all were created, and exist through and for Him. ¹⁷ And HE IS before all things and in and through Him the universe is a harmonious whole. ¹⁸ Moreover He is the Head of His Body, the Church. He is the Beginning, the Firstborn from among the dead, in order that He Himself may in all things occupy the foremost place. ¹⁹ For it was the Father's gracious will that the whole of the divine perfections should dwell in Him. ²⁰ And God purposed through Him to reconcile the universe to Himself, making peace through His blood, which was shed upon the Cross--to reconcile to Himself through Him, I say, things on earth and things in Heaven.

²¹ And you, estranged as you once were and even hostile in your minds, amidst your evil deeds, ²² He has now, in His human body, reconciled to God by His death, to bring you, holy and faultless and irreproachable, into His presence; ²³ if, indeed, you are still firmly holding to faith as your foundation, without ever shifting from your hope that rests on the Good News that you have heard, which has been proclaimed in the whole creation under Heaven, and in which I Paul have been appointed to serve.