Paul, by God's will an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Timothy,

We never pray for you without thanking God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,

for what we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, and of the love you have for all God's people,

and really came to know it, in the form in which Epaphras, my dear fellow-slave, taught it to you. He is my faithful representative as a servant of Christ,

At present I am glad to be suffering in your interest, and I am making up in my own person what is lacking in Christ's sufferings for the church, which is his body.

to whom God has chosen to make known among the heathen how glorious this mystery of Christ in you, the promise of glorification, really is.

that your hearts may be cheered. I want you to be united by love, and to have all the benefit of assured knowledge in coming to know Christ??3 that divine mystery in which all treasures of wisdom and knowledge are to be found.

For though I am absent from you in person I am with you in spirit, and I am glad to observe your harmony and the solidity of your faith in Christ.

So just as you once accepted the Christ, Jesus, as your Lord, you must live in vital union with him.

Take care that nobody exploits you through the pretensions of philosophy, guided by human tradition, following material ways of looking at things, instead of following Christ.

Through your relation to him you have received not a physical circumcision, but a circumcision effected by Christ, in stripping you of your material nature,

Yes, you who were dead through your misdeeds and physically uncircumcised, God raised to life with Christ. He forgave us all our misdeeds,

That was all only the shadow of something that was to follow; the reality is found in Christ.

If you have died with Christ to material ways of looking at things, why do you act as though you still belonged to the world, and submit to rules like

If, then, you have been raised to life with Christ, set your hearts on the things that are where Christ is, above, seated at God's right hand.

For you have died, and your life now lies hidden with Christ in God.

When Christ, who is our true life, shall make his appearance, then you also will appear glorified with him.

Here, what matters is not "Greek" and "Jew," the circumcised and the uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, freeborn, but Christ is everything and in us all.

Let the ruling principle in your hearts be Christ's peace, for in becoming members of one body you have been called under its sway. And you must be thankful.

Let the message of Christ live in your hearts in all its wealth of wisdom. Teach it to one another and train one another in it with thankfulness, with psalms, hymns, and sacred songs, and sing to God with all your hearts.

for you know that it is from him that you are to receive that inheritance which is to be your reward. Think of Christ as the master you are working for.

Pray for me too, that God may give me an opening for the message, and let me tell the secret of Christ on account of which I am kept in prison

Epaphras, one of your own number, a slave of Christ Jesus, wishes to be remembered to you. He is always standing up for you in his prayers that you may stand fast, like men of mature convictions, whatever God's will for you may be.