For it has reached you, and remains with you, just as it has also spread through the whole world, yielding fruit there and increasing, as it has done among you from the day when first you heard it and came really to know the grace of God,

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;

In Him also you were circumcised with a circumcision not performed by hand, when you threw off your sinful nature in true Christian circumcision;

having been buried with Him in your baptism, in which you were also raised with Him through faith produced within you by God who raised Him from among the dead.

When Christ appears--He is our true Life--then you also will appear with Him in glory.

and you also were once addicted to them, while you were living under their power.

bearing with one another and readily forgiving each other, if any one has a grievance against another. Just as the Lord has forgiven you, you also must forgive.

And pray at the same time for us also, that God may open for us a door for preaching, for us to tell the truth concerning Christ for the sake of which I am even a prisoner.

Jesus, called Justus, also sends greeting. These three are Hebrew converts. They alone among such have worked loyally with me for the Kingdom of God--they are men who have been a comfort to me.

And when this Letter has been read among you, let it be read also in the Church of the Laodiceans, and you in turn must read the one I am sending to Laodicea.