Study Desk

For to you it has been granted for Christ's sake, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer on His behalf,

for it is God who is at work in you, both to desire and to work for His good pleasure.

But you know of his proven character, that he served with me in the furtherance of the gospel like a child serving his father.

because he came close to death for the work of Christ, risking his life to compensate for your absence in your service to me.

that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death;

who will transform the body of our lowly condition into conformity with His glorious body, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.

And my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

For this reason we also, since the day we heard about it, have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding,

strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all perseverance and patience; joyously

For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son,

and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.

yet He has now reconciled you in His body of flesh through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach—

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am supplementing what is lacking in Christ's afflictions in behalf of His body, which is the church.

that is, the mystery which had been hidden from the past ages and generations, but now has been revealed to His saints,

For this purpose I also labor, striving according to His power which works mightily within me.

Take care that no one keeps defrauding you of your prize by delighting in humility and the worship of the angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind,

Aristarchus, my fellow prisoner, sends you his greetings; and also Barnabas' cousin Mark (about whom you received instructions; if he comes to you, welcome him);

Epaphras, who is one of your own, a bond-servant of Christ Jesus, sends you his greetings, always striving earnestly for you in his prayers, that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God.

Luke, the beloved physician, sends you his greetings, and Demas does also.

knowing, brothers and sisters, beloved by God, His choice of you;