Colossians:1

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* Paul , an apostle of Jesus Christ , by the will of God , and Timothy our brother , * to the holy and believing brothers in Christ who are in Colosse . Grace to you , and peace , from God our Father . * Whenever I pray for you I am continually thanking God , the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ * (since I heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and your love to all the saints ) * because of the hope laid up for you in heaven . Long ago you heard of this hope in the message which came to you of the truth of the gospel . * And just as it is spreading through the whole world , bearing fruit and increasing , so also is it among you , from the day in which you heard it , and came truly to know the grace of God , * as you learned it from Epaphras , our dearly loved fellow slave . He is a faithful minister of Jesus Christ in your behalf , * and it is he who has told me of your love for me in the spirit . * For this reason from the day I heard of it I have never ceased to pray for you , asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will with every kind of wisdom and spiritual insight ; * that you may walk worthy of the Lord in every kind of pleasing ; that you may be fruitful in every kind of good work , and may increase in the knowledge of God ; * that you may be strengthened in every kind of strength by the might of his glory for every kind of patience and fortitude with good cheer . * I ask that you may give thanks to the Father who has made us fit to receive our share of the heritage of the saints in the light . * For he has delivered us out of the dominion of the darkness , and transplanted us into the kingdom of his dear Son , * in whom we have redemption , the forgiveness of our sins . * He is a visible image of the invisible God , the firstborn of all creation ; * for in him was the universe created , things in heaven and on earth , the seen and the unseen , thrones , or dominions , or principalities , or powers ; by him and for him all have been created ; * and HE IS before all , and in him all things subsist . * He is the head of his Body , the Church . He is the beginning , the firstborn from the dead , in order that in all things he may become preeminent . * For in him all the divine fulness chose to dwell ; * and by him it chose to reconcile all things alike on earth or in heaven to himself ; making peace by him , through the blood of his cross . * And you , alienated as you once were , hostile at heart in your evil deeds , * he has now in his human body reconciled to God by his death , in order that he may bring you into his presence , holy and unblemished and irreproachable . * And this he will do if , indeed , you continue in the faith , firmly founded and stedfast , and never moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard , and which has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven , that gospel of which I , Paul , was made a minister . * I am now rejoicing in my sufferings on your behalf ; and I am filling up in my own body what is yet lacking of the sufferings of Christ in behalf of the church , his Body . * It is of this I was made a minister , according to the stewardship entrusted to me by God for you , fully to declare Gods message ; * that secret truth , which , although hidden from ages and generations of old , has now been made manifest to his saints . * To them God willed to make known among the Gentiles how glorious are the riches of that secret truth , which is "Christ in you , the hope of glory ." * Him I am ever proclaiming , warning every one and teaching every one , in all wisdom ; that I may bring every man into his presence , full grown in Christ . * For that end I am ever toiling , wrestling with all that energy of his which is mightily at work within me .

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