Colossians 1

₁I, Paul, am an apostle of Jesus Christ because God chose me. Timothy and I ₂are writing this letter to you in the town of Colossae. Friends, you belong to God, you believe in Christ and you also belong to Him. We pray that God our Father will be merciful to you and that He will give you peace.

₃We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, ₄because someone has told us that you believe in Jesus Christ and that you love everyone who belongs to God. ₅You believe and know what God is keeping for you in heaven. They have told you about this from the time when you heard the Good_News, when the message of truth ₆came to you.

More and more people are telling the Good_News to others all over the world and they are doing what God wants. You have also heard the Good_News and you understand the grace and truth of God. ₇Epaphras told you the Good_News. He is working for Christ with us and we love him very much. He works faithfully to help you. ₈He has also told us that the Holy_Spirit is working in you and helping you to love each other.

₉From the time that we heard what Epaphras told us, we have been praying for you every day. We pray and ask God that you will know what He wants you to do. We pray that the Holy_Spirit will help you have wisdom to understand what He wants you to do. ₁₀Then you will live as the Lord wants you to live and that pleases Him. You will do good things and you will know God better and better. ₁₁He is the King, He is powerful and He will make your faith stronger. You will be patient when you suffer. You will rejoice ₁₂and thank God the Father because He has changed your heart and made you part of the people who belong to Him. He has also promised that you will be together with his people in heaven where God is King, the King of light. ₁₃God the Father has saved us from the devil and now we know that his Son, whom He loves very much, is our King. ₁₄Yes, God sent his Son and the Son has made us free. That is how God forgave our sins.

₁₅No one can see God, but God's Son came to show us what God is like.

The Son is the first and the most important of all in heaven and on earth ₁₆because the Son made everything. God, the Father, told Him to do it.

The Son made everything in heaven and on earth, everything that we can see and everything that we can not see, and everyone and everything that wants to rule the world, both in heaven and on earth.

The Son made them all and they are there to serve Him.

₁₇The Son was there before anything else and He gives life and holds everything together.

₁₈The church is the body of the Son and the Son is the Head of the church. He gives life to the church. He is the first, the One who was dead but rose and lives again. That is why He is the most important of all and everything.

₁₉Yes, the Son is the most important because God decided to live completely in his Son.

₂₀The Son of God died. He gave his blood and his life on the cross. And that is how God made everyone right with Himself. Yes, God made peace and took away all the sin on earth and in heaven.

₂₁Long ago you were far away from God. You were God's enemies, you thought about bad things and you did sinful things. ₂₂But now God has changed you. The Son of God became a Man, He died on the cross and God took away your sin so that you can be right with Him. God did this so that you can belong to Him and so that you will have no sin and not be guilty when He judges you. ₂₃But then you must keep on believing, and your faith must be strong. When you heard the Good_News, God helped you to be sure of the things that you believe. All the people on earth have heard this Good_News. You must not stop hoping for the things that you hear in the Good_News that I preach.

₂₄I am glad that I suffer now, because it is for you that I am suffering. Christ has suffered and now I am suffering to continue and finish Christ's suffering. I suffer to help the church, that is Christ's body. ₂₅It was God's plan that I work to help the church. He gave me the work of telling you everything that He wants to say to you. ₂₆For a very long time people did not know anything about the message of Christ. But now God has told it to everyone who belongs to Him. ₂₇God wanted all who belong to Him to know his message. God wanted them to know about the big miracle, that the message of Christ was going to the Gentiles. This was a message that no one knew before. You who are Gentiles must know that Christ is also in you and you can be sure that you will also share in the glory of God.

₂₈We preach about the message of Christ and we use all of our wisdom to warn all the people and to teach them. We want them all to belong to Christ and to do what God wants. ₂₉This is why I am working so hard. It is God who gives me the strength to do it.