Colossians 1:13-27

¹³For God has rescued us from the tyranny of darkness, and has removed us into the kingdom of his Son, who is the embodiment of his love,

¹⁴and through whom we have found deliverance in the forgiveness of our sins.

¹⁵For Christ is the incarnation of the invisible God — first-born and head of all creation;

¹⁶for in him was created all that is in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible — angels and archangels and all the powers of heaven.

¹⁷All has been created through him and for him. He was before all things, and all things unite in him;

¹⁸and he is the head of the church, which is his body. The first-born from the dead, he is to the church the Source of its life, that he, in all things, may stand first.

¹⁹For it pleased the Father that in him the divine nature in all its fulness should live,

²⁰and through him to reconcile all things to himself (making peace by the shedding of Christ's blood offered on the cross) — whether on earth or in heaven.

²¹And it pleased God that you, once estranged from him and hostile towards him in your thoughts, intent only on wickedness —

²²But now he has reconciled you to himself by the sacrifice of Christ's earthly body in death — it has pleased God that you should stand in his presence holy, pure, and blameless,

²³if only you remain true to your faith, firm and immovable, never abandoning the hope held out in the good news to which you listened, which has been proclaimed among all created things under heaven, and of which I, Paul, was made an assistant.

²⁴Now at last I can rejoice in my sufferings on your behalf, and in my own person I supplement the afflictions endured by the Christ, for the sake of his body, the church;

²⁵of which I myself became a minister in virtue of the office with which God entrusted me for your benefit, to declare the message of God in all its fulness —

²⁶That truth which has been hidden from former ages and generations. But now it has been revealed to God's people,

²⁷to whom it was his pleasure to make known the surpassing glory of that hidden truth when proclaimed among the Gentiles — ‘Christ among you! Your hope of glory!’