which has reached you as it spreads over all the world with fruit and increase. Such has been your life from the day you learned to know what God's grace really is.

He is the likeness of the unseen God, born first before all the creation ??16 for it was by him that all things were created both in heaven and on earth, both the seen and the unseen, including Thrones, angelic Lords, celestial Powers and Rulers; all things have been created by him and for him;

so as to set you consecrated and unblemished and irreproachable in his presence ??23 that is, if you adhere to the foundations and stability of the faith, instead of moving away from the hope you have learned in the gospel, that gospel which has been preached to every creature under heaven, and of which I Paul was made a minister.

for I am a minister of the church by the divine commission which has been granted me in your interests, to make a full presentation of God's message ??26 of that open secret which, though concealed from ages and generations of old, has now been disclosed to the saints of God.

fixed and founded in him, confirmed in the faith as you have been taught it, and overflowing with thankfulness to God.

in him you have been circumcised with no material circumcision that cuts flesh from the body, but with Christ's own circumcision,

Since then you have been raised with Christ, aim at what is above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God;

Also, let the peace of Christ be supreme within your hearts ??that is why you have been called as members of the one Body. And you must be thankful.

and so does Jesus who is called Justus. These are the only comrades in the work of God's realm, belonging to the circumcised, who have been any comfort to me.

And when this letter has been read to you, see that it is also read in the church of the Laodiceans; also, see that you read the letter that reaches you from Laodicea.