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

⁹ For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, cease not praying for you, and asking that ye may be filled with the full knowledge of His will, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, ¹⁰ to walk worthily of the Lord to all pleasing, bearing fruit in every good work, and growing in the knowledge of God; ¹¹ strengthened with all power, according to the might of His glory, unto all patience and long-suffering with joy; ¹² giving thanks to the Father, Who made us meet for the portion of the inheritance of the saints in light; ¹³ Who delivered us out of the dominion of darkness, and translated us into the Kingdom of the Son of His love; ¹⁴ in Whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins;

¹⁵ Who is the image of the invisible God, Primal Source of all creation; ¹⁶ because in Him were all things created, in the heavens, and upon the earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers??ll things have been created through Him, and for Him; ¹⁷ and He is before all things, and in Him all things have held together. ¹⁸ And He is the Head of the body, the assembly; Who is the Beginning, the First-born from the dead, that in all things He may be preeminent; ¹⁹ because it was pleasing that in Him all the fulness should dwell; ²⁰ and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, whether the things on the earth, or the things in the heavens.

²¹ And you, being in time past alienated and enemies in your mind in evil works, ²² yet now did He reconcile in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and without blemish, and irreproachable, before Him; ²³ if, at least, ye continue in the faith, founded and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the Gospel, which ye heard, which was preached in all creation under the heaven, of which I, Paul, was made a minister.