001:006 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,
001:007 as you learned it from Epaphras our dearly-loved fellow servant.
He is to you a faithful minister of Christ in our stead,
001:008 and moreover he has informed us of your love, which is inspired
by the Spirit.
001:009 For this reason we also, from the day we first received these tidings, 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;
001:010 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.
001:011 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;
001:012 and give thanks to the Father who has made us fit to receive
our share of the inheritance of God's people in Light.
001:013 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,
001:014 in whom we have our redemption—the forgiveness of our sins.
001:015 Christ is the visible representation of the invisible God, the Firstborn and Lord of all creation.