which reached you, and since it is bearing fruit and growing among you, just as it is all over the world, from the day you first heard of God's favor and in reality came to know it,

Yes, He is the Head of the church as His body. For He is the beginning, the first-born among the dead, so that He alone should stand first in everything.

In it I have been made a minister in accordance with the trusteeship God entrusted to me for you, that I might prove among you the universal message of God,

to whom God has chosen to make known how glorious are the riches of this open secret among the heathen, namely, Christ in you the hope of your glorification.