1Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,
2To the holy and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ at Colossae: May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace.
3We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you.
4We thank him because we have heard about your faith in Christ Jesus and the love you have for all of God’s people.
5This faith and love come from the hope stored up for you in heaven. You first heard about this hope through the true message of the Good News,
6which has come to you. This Good News is spreading and producing fruit all over the world, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard and truly understood God’s grace.
7You learned this from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf,
8and he also told us about your love that the Spirit gives.
9Because of this, ever since we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives.
10Then you will live a life that honors the Lord and pleases him in every way. You will produce fruit in every good work and grow in the knowledge of God.
11May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully
12give thanks to the Father, who has made you fit to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the light.
13He has rescued us from the power of darkness and brought us into the Kingdom of his dear Son,
14in whom we have our freedom and the forgiveness of our sins.
15Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
16For through him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or authorities or rulers or powers. All things were created through him and for him.
17He existed before all things, and in him all things hold together.
18He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the first to be raised from the dead, so that he might be first in everything.
19For God was pleased for all of his fullness to live in him,
20and through him God wanted to bring everything back to himself. He made peace through the blood of Christ’s cross—peace with everything on earth and in heaven.
21In the past, you were separated from God and were his enemies in your minds because of your evil actions.
22Yet now, through death, he has made you his friends again in his physical body, so that he can present you to himself holy, without fault, and innocent.
23That is, if you continue in your faith, firm and steady, and not pushed away from the hope offered in the Good News that you heard. This Good News has been preached to everyone in all creation under heaven, and I, Paul, became a servant to spread it.
24Now I am happy in my suffering for your sake. I am completing in my own body what is still left of Christ's troubles, for the sake of his body, which is the church.
25I became a servant of this church because of the responsibility God gave me to serve you, to fully carry out the word of God.
26This is the secret that has been hidden for ages and generations, but now it has been shown to his holy people.
27God wanted to make known to them how rich and glorious this secret is among the non-Jewish people. This secret is Christ living in you, giving you the hope of glory.
28We announce Christ to everyone, warning and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ Jesus.
29For this goal, I also work hard, struggling with all his energy, which powerfully works within me.