³We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, in our prayers for you. ⁴We thank God because we have heard about your faith in Christ Jesus and your love for all of God’s people. ⁵You have these because of the hope which is kept safe for you in heaven. Some time ago you heard about this hope in the Good News which is the message of truth. ⁶This Good News is present with you now. It is producing results and spreading all over the world as it did among you from the first day you heard it. At that time you came to know what God’s kindness^btruly means. ⁷You learned about this Good News from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant. He is taking your place here as a trustworthy deaconfor Christ ⁸and has told us about the love that the Spirit has given you.

⁹For this reason we have not stopped praying for you since the day we heard about you. We ask ⸤God⸥ to fill you with the knowledge of his will through every kind of spiritual wisdom and insight. ¹⁰We ask this so that you will live the kind of lives that prove you belong to the Lord. Then you will want to please him in every way as you grow in producing every kind of good work by this knowledge about God. ¹¹We ask him to strengthen you by his glorious might with all the power you need to patiently endure everything with joy. ¹²You will also thank the Father, who has made you able to share the light, which is what God’s people inherit.

What God Has Done through Christ

¹³God has rescued us from the power of darkness and has brought us into the kingdom of his Son, whom he loves. ¹⁴His Son paid the price to free us, which means that our sins are forgiven.

¹⁵He is the image of the invisible God,

the firstborn of all creation.

¹⁶He created all things in heaven and on earth,

visible and invisible.

Whether they are kings or lords,

rulers or powers—

everything has been created through him and for him.

¹⁷He existed before everything

and holds everything together.

¹⁸He is also the head of the church, which is his body.

He is the beginning,

the first to come back to life

so that he would have first place in everything.

¹⁹God was pleased to have all of himself live in Christ. ²⁰God was also pleased to bring everything on earth and in heaven back to himself through Christ. He did this by making peace through Christ’s blood sacrificed on the cross.

²¹Once you were separated from God. The evil things you did showed your hostile attitude. ²²But now Christ has brought you back to God by dying in his physical body. He did this so that you could come into God’s presence without sin, fault, or blame. ²³This is on the condition that you continue in faith without being moved from the solid foundation of the hope that the Good News contains. You’ve heard this Good News of which I, Paul, became a servant. It has been spread throughout all creation under heaven.

Paul Describes His Work

²⁴I am happy to suffer for you now. In my body I am completing whatever remains of Christ’s sufferings. I am doing this on behalf of his body, the church. ²⁵I became a servant of the church when God gave me the work of telling you his entire message. ²⁶In the past God hid this mystery, but now he has revealed it to his people. ²⁷God wanted his people throughout the world to know the glorious riches of this mystery—which is Christ living in you, giving you the hope of glory.

²⁸We spread the message about Christ as we instruct and teach everyone with all the wisdom there is. We want to present everyone as mature Christian people. ²⁹I work hard and struggle to do this while his mighty power works in me.

2ND CHAPTER

¹I want you to know how hard I work for you, for the people of Laodicea, and for people I have never met. ²Because they are united in love, I work so that they may be encouraged by all the riches that come from a complete understanding of Christ. He is the mystery of God. ³God has hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge in Christ. ⁴I say this so that no one will mislead you with arguments that merely sound good. ⁵Although I’m absent from you physically, I’m with you in spirit. I’m happy to see how orderly you are and how firm your faith in Christ is.

⁶You received Christ Jesus the Lord, so continue to live as Christ’s people. ⁷Sink your roots in him and build on him. Be strengthened by the faith that you were taught, and overflow with thanksgiving.

Beware of Requirements Invented by Humans

⁸Be careful not to let anyone rob you ⸤of this faith⸥ through a shallow and misleading philosophy. Such a person follows human traditions and the world’s way of doing things rather than following Christ.

⁹All of God lives in Christ’s body, ¹⁰and God has made you complete in Christ. Christ is in charge of every ruler and authority. ¹¹In him you were also circumcised. It was not a circumcision performed by human hands. But it was a removal of the corrupt nature in the circumcision performed by Christ. ¹²This happened when you were placed in the tomb with Christ through baptism. In baptism you were also brought back to life with Christ through faith in the power of God,^awho brought him back to life.

¹³You were once dead because of your failures and your uncircumcised corrupt nature. But God made you alive with Christ when he forgave all our failures. ¹⁴He did this by erasing the charges that were brought against us by the written laws God had established. He took the charges away by nailing them to the cross. ¹⁵He stripped the rulers and authorities ⸤of their power⸥ and made a public spectacle of them as he celebrated his victory in Christ.

¹⁶Therefore, let no one judge you because of what you eat or drink or about the observance of annual holy days, New Moon Festivals, or weekly days of rest—holy days. ¹⁷These are a shadow of the things to come, but the body ⸤that casts the shadow⸥ belongs to Christ.

¹⁸Let no one who delights in ⸤false⸥ humility and the worship of angels tell you that you don’t deserve a prize. Such a person, whose sinful mind fills him with arrogance, gives endless details of the visions he has seen. ¹⁹He doesn’t hold on to ⸤Christ,⸥ the head. Christ makes the whole body grow as God wants it to, through support and unity given by the joints and ligaments.

²⁰If you have died with Christ to the world’s way of doing things, why do you let others tell you how to live? It’s as though you were still under the world’s influence. ²¹People will tell you, “Don’t handle this! Don’t taste or touch that!” ²²All of these things deal with objects that are only used up anyway. ²³These things look like wisdom with their self-imposed worship, ⸤false⸥ humility, and harsh treatment of the body. But they have no value for holding back the constant desires of your corrupt nature.

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Footnotes

a 1:2 Or “Grace.”
b 1:6 Or “grace.”
a 2:12 Or “through faith produced by God.”