Paul, an Apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God--and Timothy our brother:

To the people of God and the believing brethren at Colossae who are in Christ. May grace and peace be granted to you from God our Father.

We give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, constantly praying for you as we do,

because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love which you cherish towards all God's people,

on account of the hope treasured up for you in Heaven. Of this hope you have already heard in the Message of the truth of the Good News.

For it has reached you, and remains with you, just as it has also spread through the whole world, yielding fruit there and increasing, as it has done among you from the day when first you heard it and came really to know the grace of God,

so that your lives may be worthy of the Lord and perfectly pleasing to Him, while you exhibit the results of right action of every sort and grow into a fuller knowledge of God.

and give thanks to the Father who has made us fit to receive our share of the inheritance of God's people in Light.

It is God who has delivered us out of the dominion of darkness, and has transferred us into the Kingdom of His dearly-loved Son,

Christ is the visible representation of the invisible God, the Firstborn and Lord of all creation.

And God purposed through Him to reconcile the universe to Himself, making peace through His blood, which was shed upon the Cross--to reconcile to Himself through Him, I say, things on earth and things in Heaven.

He has now, in His human body, reconciled to God by His death, to bring you, holy and faultless and irreproachable, into His presence;

if, indeed, you are still firmly holding to faith as your foundation, without ever shifting from your hope that rests on the Good News that you have heard, which has been proclaimed in the whole creation under Heaven, and in which I Paul have been appointed to serve.

I have been appointed to serve the Church in the position of responsibility entrusted to me by God for your benefit, so that I may fully deliver God's Message--

Him we preach, admonishing every one and instructing every one, with all possible wisdom, so that we may bring every one into God's presence, made perfect through Christ.

in order that their hearts may be cheered, they themselves being welded together in love and enjoying all the advantages of a reasonable certainty, till at last they attain the full knowledge of God's truth, which is Christ Himself.

For although, as you say, I am absent from you in body, yet in spirit I am present with you and am delighted to witness your good discipline and the solid front presented by your faith in Christ.

For it is in Christ that the fulness of God's nature dwells embodied, and in Him you are made complete,

having been buried with Him in your baptism, in which you were also raised with Him through faith produced within you by God who raised Him from among the dead.

If however you have risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, enthroned at God's right hand.

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

It is on account of these very sins that God's anger is coming,

Clothe yourselves therefore, as God's own people holy and dearly loved, with tender-heartedness, kindness, lowliness of mind, meekness, long-suffering;

Let the teaching concerning Christ remain as a rich treasure in your hearts. In all wisdom teach and admonish one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, and sing with grace in your hearts to God.

And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, and let it be through Him that you give thanks to God the Father.

The man who perpetrates a wrong will find the wrong repaid to him; and with God there are no merely earthly distinctions.

And pray at the same time for us also, that God may open for us a door for preaching, for us to tell the truth concerning Christ for the sake of which I am even a prisoner.

Jesus, called Justus, also sends greeting. These three are Hebrew converts. They alone among such have worked loyally with me for the Kingdom of God--they are men who have been a comfort to me.

Epaphras, who is one of yourselves, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, sends greetings to you, always wrestling on your behalf in his prayers, that you may stand firm--Christians of ripe character and of clear conviction as to everything which is God's will.