BibleWare/BibWare.bin/bibtrans/weymouth.exe/COL.WNT

Text File | 1993-06-07 | 14KB | 269 lines

1:1 Paul, an Apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God--and
 Timothy our brother:
1:2 To the people of God and the believing brethren at /1
 Colossae who are in Christ. May grace and peace be granted to
 you from God our Father.
1:3 We give thanks /2 to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus
 Christ, constantly praying for you as we do,
1:4 because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of
 the love which you cherish towards all God's people,
1:5 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.
1:6 For it has reached you, and remains with you, just as /3 it
 has also spread through the whole world, yielding fruit there
 and increasing, as it has done among you from the day when /4
 first you heard it and came really to know the grace of God,
1:7 as you learned it from Epaphras our dearly-loved fellow
 servant. He is to you a faithful minister of Christ in our
 stead,
1:8 and moreover he has informed us of your love, which is
 inspired by the Spirit.
1:9 For this reason we also, from the day we /4 first received
 these tidings, /5 have never ceased to pray for you and to
 entreat that you may be filled with a clear knowledge of His
 will accompanied by thorough wisdom and discernment in
 spiritual things;
1:10 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.

1:11 Since His power is so glorious, may you be strengthened
 with strength of every kind, and be prepared for cheerfully
 enduring all things with patience and long-suffering;
1:12 and give thanks to the Father who has made us fit to
 receive our share of the inheritance of God's people in Light.
1:13 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,
1:14 in whom we have our redemption--the forgiveness of our
 sins.
1:15 Christ is the /1 visible representation of the invisible
 God, /2 the Firstborn and Lord of all creation.
1:16 For /3 in Him was created the universe of things in heaven
 and on earth, things seen and things unseen, /4 thrones,
 dominions, princedoms, powers--all were created, /5 and exist
 through and for Him.
1:17 And /6 HE IS before all things and in and through Him the
 universe is a harmonious whole.
1:18 Moreover He is the Head of His Body, the Church. He is the
 Beginning, the Firstborn from among the dead, in order that He
 Himself may in all things occupy the foremost place.
1:19 For it was the Father's gracious will that the whole of the
 divine perfections should dwell in Him.
1:20 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.
1:21 And you, estranged as you once were and even hostile in
 your minds, amidst your evil deeds,
1:22 /7 He has now, in His human body, reconciled to God by His
 death, to bring you, holy and faultless and irreproachable,
 into His presence;
1:23 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.

1:24 Now I can find joy amid my sufferings for you, and I fill
 up in my own person whatever is lacking in Christ's afflictions
 on behalf of His Body, the Church.
1:25 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--
1:26 the truth which has been kept secret from all ages and
 generations, but has now been revealed to His people,
1:27 to whom it was His will to make known how vast a wealth of
 glory for the Gentile world is implied in this truth--the truth
 that `Christ is in you, the hope of glory.'
1:28 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.
1:29 To this end, like an earnest wrestler, I exert all my
 strength in reliance upon the power of Him who is mightily at
 work within me.
2:1 For I would have you know in how severe a struggle I am
 engaged on behalf of you and the brethren in Laodicea and of
 all who have not known me personally,
2:2 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.
2:3 In Him all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are stored
 up, hidden from view.
2:4 I say this to prevent your being misled by any one's
 plausible sophistry.
2:5 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 /1 discipline and the /1 solid front presented by
 your faith in Christ.
2:6 As therefore you have received the Christ, even Jesus our
 Lord, /2 live and act in vital union with Him;

2:7 having the roots of your being firmly planted in Him, and
 continually building yourselves up in Him, and always being
 increasingly confirmed in the faith as you were taught it, and
 abounding /1 in it with thanksgiving.
2:8 Take care lest there be some one who leads you away as
 prisoners by means of his philosophy and idle fancies,
 following human traditions and the world's crude notions
 instead of following Christ.
2:9 For it is in Christ that the fulness of God's nature dwells
 embodied, and in Him you are made complete,
2:10 and He is the /2 Lord of all /3 princes and rulers.
2:11 In Him also you were circumcised with a circumcision not
 performed by hand, when you threw off your sinful nature in
 true Christian circumcision;
2:12 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.
2:13 And to you--dead as you once were in your transgressions
 and in the uncircumcision of your natural state--He has
 nevertheless given Life with Himself, having forgiven us all
 our transgressions.
2:14 The bond, /4 with its requirements, which was in force
 against us and was hostile to us, He cancelled, and cleared it
 out of the way, nailing it to His Cross.
2:15 /5 And the hostile princes and rulers He shook off from
 Himself, and boldly displayed them as His conquests, when by
 the Cross He triumphed over them.
2:16 /6 Therefore suffer no one to sit in judgement on you as to
 eating or drinking or with regard to a festival, a new moon or
 a sabbath.
2:17 These were a shadow of things that were soon to come, but
 the substance belongs to Christ.
2:18 Let no one defraud you of your prize, /7 priding himself on
 his humility and on his worship of the angels, and taking his
 stand on the visions he has seen, and idly puffed up with his
 unspiritual thoughts.

2:19 Such a one does not keep his hold upon Christ, the Head,
 from whom the Body, in all its parts nourished and strengthened
 by its points of contact and its connections, grows with a
 divine growth.
2:20 If you have died with Christ and have escaped from the
 world's rudimentary notions, why, as though your life still
 belonged to the world, do you submit to such precepts as
2:21 "Do not handle this;" "Do not taste that;" "Do not touch
 that other thing" --
2:22 referring to things which are all intended to be used up
 and perish--in obedience to mere human injunctions and
 teachings?
2:23 These rules have indeed an appearance of wisdom where
 self-imposed worship exists, and an affectation of humility and
 an ascetic severity. But not one of them is of any value in
 combating the indulgence of our lower natures.
3:1 /1 If however you /2 have rise