to the holy and faithful brethren in Christ which are in Colosse. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and Lord Jesus Christ.

which are come to you, as they are in all the world, and are bearing fruit and growing, even as also among you, from the day ye heard them and knew indeed the grace of God, in truth:

even as ye learned from Epaphras our beloved fellow-bondman, who is a faithful minister of Christ for you,

For this reason we also, from the day we heard of your faith and love, do not cease praying and asking for you, to the end that ye may be filled with the full knowledge of his will, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding,

who has delivered us from the authority of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love:

And he is the head of the body, the assembly; who is the beginning, firstborn from among the dead, that he might have the first place in all things:

if indeed ye abide in the faith founded and firm, and not moved away from the hope of the glad tidings, which ye have heard, which have been proclaimed in the whole creation which is under heaven, of which I Paul became minister.

the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but has now been made manifest to his saints;

buried with him in baptism, in which ye have been also raised with him through faith of the working of God who raised him from among the dead.

and not holding fast the head, from whom all the body, ministered to and united together by the joints and bands, increases with the increase of God.

If ye have died with Christ from the elements of the world, why as if alive in the world do ye subject yourselves to ordinances?

And when the letter has been read among you, cause that it be read also in the assembly of Laodiceans, and that ye also read that from Laodicea.