Study Desk

And to our God and Father be the glory throughout the Ages of the Ages! Amen.

Paul, an Apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God--and Timothy our brother:

To the people of God and the believing brethren at Colossae who are in Christ. May grace and peace be granted to you from God our Father.

We give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, constantly praying for you as we do,

For it has reached you, and remains with you, just as it has also spread through the whole world, yielding fruit there and increasing, as it has done among you from the day when first you heard it and came really to know the grace of God,

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.

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,

Christ is the visible representation of the invisible God, the Firstborn and Lord of all creation.

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.

He has now, in His human body, reconciled to God by His death, to bring you, holy and faultless and irreproachable, into His presence;

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--

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.

For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

Let the teaching concerning Christ remain as a rich treasure in your hearts. In all wisdom teach and admonish one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, and sing with grace in your hearts to God.

And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, and let it be through Him that you give thanks to God the Father.

The man who perpetrates a wrong will find the wrong repaid to him; and with God there are no merely earthly distinctions.

And pray at the same time for us also, that God may open for us a door for preaching, for us to tell the truth concerning Christ for the sake of which I am even a prisoner.

Jesus, called Justus, also sends greeting. These three are Hebrew converts. They alone among such have worked loyally with me for the Kingdom of God--they are men who have been a comfort to me.

Paul, Silas, and Timothy: To the Church of the Thessalonians which is in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. May grace and peace be granted to you.

We continually give thanks to God because of you all, while we make mention of you in our prayers.