to the saints in Colosse and the faithful brothers in Christ. Grace be to you and peace from God our Father.

which is present with you as also in all the world, and is fruitful and increases, as also with you, from the day that you heard and knew the grace of God in truth;

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

Therefore we also, from the day that we heard, cease not to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding,

who delivered us from the power of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love,

and he is the head of the body, the church; who is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that he might himself be preeminent in all things,

if indeed you continue founded and established in the faith, and not moved from the hope of the gospel which you heard, which was preached in all the creation under heaven; of which I, Paul, was made a minister.

the mystery concealed from ages and from generations, but now it has been manifested to his saints,

having been buried with him in baptism, in which you have also been raised together through the effectual faith of God who raised him from the dead;

having blotted out what was written by the hand in ordinances which was against us, and has taken it away from between [us], having nailed it to the cross;

and not holding the head, from which all the body being supplied and compacted by means of joints and tendons grows with an increase of God.

If therefore you died with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why do you practice ordinances as living in the world,??21 you shall not touch, you shall not taste, you shall not feel,??22 all which are to perish in the using??ccording to the commandments and instructions of men?

knowing that you will receive from the Lord the recompense of the inheritance. You serve Christ the Lord;

And when this letter has been read with you, cause that it be also read by the church of the Laodiceans; and do you also read that from Laodicea.