Their end is destruction, their bellies are their God, their glory is in their shame, and their minds are devoted to earthly things.

Yes, and I beg you also, my faithful yoke-fellow, to help these women who have shared my toil in connection with the Good News, together with Clement and the rest of my fellow labourers, whose names are recorded in the Book of Life.

Do not be over-anxious about anything, but by prayer and earnest pleading, together with thanksgiving, let your request be unreservedly made known in the presence of God.

And then the peace of God, which transcends all our powers of thought, will be a garrison to guard your hearts and minds in union with Christ Jesus.

Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever wins respect, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovable, whatever is of good repute--if there is any virtue or anything deemed worthy of praise--cherish the thought of these things.

The doctrines and the line of conduct which I taught you--both what you heard and what you saw in me-- hold fast to them; and God who gives peace will be with you.

And you men and women of Philippi also know that at the first preaching of the Good News, when I had left Macedonia, no other Church except yourselves held communication with me about giving and receiving;

I have enough of everything--and more than enough. My wants are fully satisfied now that I have received from the hands of Epaphroditus the generous gifts which you sent me--they are a fragrant odor, an acceptable sacrifice, truly pleasing to God.

But my God--so great is His wealth of glory in Christ Jesus--will fully supply every need of yours.

And to our God and Father be the glory throughout the Ages of the Ages! Amen.

My Christian greetings to every one of God's people. The brethren who are with me send their greetings.

All God's people here greet you--especially the members of Caesar's household.

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.

Paul, Silas, and Timothy: To the Church of the Thessalonians which is in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. May grace and peace be granted to you.

We continually give thanks to God because of you all, while we make mention of you in our prayers.

For we never fail to remember your works of faith and labours of love and your persistent and unwavering hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of our God and Father;

knowing as we do, brethren, that you are beloved by God and that He has chosen you.

The Good News that we brought you did not come to you in words only, but also with power and with the Holy Spirit and with much certainty, for you know the sort of men we became among you, as examples for your sakes.

For it was not only from you that the Master's Message sounded forth throughout Macedonia and Greece; but everywhere your faith in God has become known, so that it is unnecessary for us to say anything about it.

For when others speak of us they report the reception we had from you, and how you turned from your idols to God, to be bondservants of the true and ever-living God,

and to await the return from Heaven of His Son, whom He raised from among the dead--even Jesus, our Deliverer from God's coming anger.

But, as you will remember, after we had already met with suffering and outrage at Philippi, we summoned up boldness, by the help of our God, to tell you God's Good News amid much opposition.

But as God tested and approved us before entrusting us with His Good News, so in what we say we are seeking not to please men but to please God, who tests and approves our motives.

For, as you are well aware, we have never used the language of flattery nor have we found pretexts for enriching ourselves--God is our witness;

Seeing that we were thus drawn affectionately towards you, it would have been a joy to us to have imparted to you not only God's Good News, but to have given our very lives also, because you had become very dear to us.

For you remember, brethren, our labour and toil: how, working night and day so as not to become a burden to any one of you, we came and proclaimed among you God's Good News.

You yourselves are witnesses--and God is witness--how holy and upright and blameless our dealings with you believers were.

and imploring you to live lives worthy of fellowship with God who is inviting you to share His own Kingship and glory.

And for this further reason we render unceasing thanks to God, that when you received God's Message from our lips, it was as no mere message from men that you embraced it, but as--what it really is--God's Message, which also does its work in the hearts of you who believe.

For you, brethren, followed the example of the Churches of God in Christ Jesus which are in Judaea; seeing that you endured the same ill-treatment at the hands of your countrymen, as they did at the hands of the Jews.

Those Jewish persecutors killed both the Lord Jesus and the Prophets, and drove us out of their midst. They are displeasing to God, and are the enemies of all mankind;

for they still try to prevent our preaching to the Gentiles so that they may find salvation. They thus continually fill up the measure of their own sins, and God's anger in its severest form has overtaken them.

and sent Timothy our brother and God's minister in the service of Christ's Good News, that he might help you spiritually and encourage you in your faith;

For what thanksgiving on your behalf can we possibly offer to God in return for all the joy which fills our souls before our God for you,

But may our God and Father Himself--and our Lord Jesus--guide us on our way to you;

Thus He will build up your characters, so that you will be faultlessly holy in the presence of our God and Father at the Coming of our Lord Jesus with all His holy ones.

Moreover, brethren, as you learnt from our lips the lives which you ought to live, and do live, so as to please God, we beg and exhort you in the name of the Lord Jesus to live them more and more truly.

For this is God's will--your purity of life, that you abstain from fornication;

that you be not overmastered by lustful cravings, like the Gentiles who have no knowledge of God;

God has not called us to an unclean life, but to one of purity.

Therefore a defiant spirit in such a case provokes not man but God, who puts His Holy Spirit into your hearts.

But on the subject of love for the brotherhood it is unnecessary for me to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another;

For if we believe that Jesus has died and risen again, we also believe that, through Jesus, God will bring with Him those who shall have passed away.

For the Lord Himself will come down from Heaven with a loud word of command, and with an archangel's voice and the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

For God has not pre-destined us to meet His anger, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ;

See to it that no one ever repays another with evil for evil; but always seek opportunities of doing good both to one another and to all the world.

In every circumstance of life be thankful; for this is God's will in Christ Jesus respecting you.

but test all such, and retain hold of the good.

And may God Himself who gives peace, make you entirely holy; and may your spirits, souls and bodies be preserved complete and be found blameless at the Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul, Silas, and Timothy: To the Church of the Thessalonians which is in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

May grace and peace be granted to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Unceasing thanks are due from us to God on your behalf, brethren. They are appropriate because your faith is growing greatly, and the love of every one of you for all the others goes on increasing.

It so increases that we ourselves make honourable mention of you among the Churches of God because of your patience and faith amid all your persecutions and amid the afflictions which you are enduring.

For these are a plain token of God's righteous judgement, which has in view your being deemed worthy of admission to God's Kingdom, for the sake of which, indeed, you are sufferers.

A plain token of God's righteous judgement, I say, since it is a righteous thing for Him to requite with affliction those who are now afflicting you;

He will come in flames of fire to take vengeance on those who have no knowledge of God, and do not obey the Good News as to Jesus, our Lord.

It is with this view also that we continually pray to our God for you, asking that He will count you worthy of His call, and by His mighty power fully gratify your every desire for what is truly good and make your work of faith complete;

in order that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and that you may be glorified in Him--so wonderful is the grace of our God and of the Lord Jesus Christ!

and exalts himself above, every so-called 'god' or object of worship, and goes the length of taking his seat in the very temple of God, giving it out that he himself is God.

And for this reason God sends them a misleading influence that they may believe the lie;

And from us thanks are always due to God on your behalf--brethren whom the Lord loves--because God from the beginning has chosen you for salvation through the Spirit's sanctifying influence and your belief in the truth.

To this blessing God has called you by our Good News, so that you may have a share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself--and God our Father who has loved us and has given us in His grace eternal consolation and a bright hope--

comfort your hearts and make you stedfast in every good work and word.

And may the Lord guide your hearts into the love of God and into the patience of Christ.

Paul, an Apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God our Saviour and Christ Jesus our hope:

To Timothy, my own true son in the faith. May grace, mercy and peace be granted to you from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

and the attention they bestow on mere fables and endless pedigrees, such as lead to controversy rather than to a true stewardship for God, which only exists where there is faith. And I make the same request now.

Now we know that the Law is good, if a man uses it in the way it should be used,

and is not in accordance with the Good News of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.

Now to the immortal and invisible King of the Ages, who alone is God, be honour and glory to the Ages of the Ages! Amen.

This is the charge which I entrust to you, my son Timothy, in accordance with the inspired instructions concerning you which were given me long ago, that being equipped with them as your armour you may be continually fighting the good fight,