Colossians 2:1-13 ▼

1 For I would have you know in how severe a struggle I am engaged on behalf of you and the brethren in Laodicea and of all who have not known me personally,

2 in order that their hearts may be cheered, they themselves being welded together in love and enjoying all the advantages of a reasonable certainty, till at last they attain the full knowledge of God's truth, which is Christ Himself.

3 In Him all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are stored up, hidden from view.

4 I say this to prevent your being misled by any one's plausible sophistry.

5 For although, as you say, I am absent from you in body, yet in spirit I am present with you and am delighted to witness your good discipline and the solid front presented by your faith in Christ.

6 As therefore you have received the Christ, even Jesus our Lord, live and act in vital union with Him;

7 having the roots of your being firmly planted in Him, and continually building yourselves up in Him, and always being increasingly confirmed in the faith as you were taught it, and abounding in it with thanksgiving.

8 Take care lest there be some one who leads you away as prisoners by means of his philosophy and idle fancies, following human traditions and the world's crude notions instead of following Christ.

9 For it is in Christ that the fulness of God's nature dwells embodied, and in Him you are made complete,

10 and He is the Lord of all princes and rulers.

11 In Him also you were circumcised with a circumcision not performed by hand, when you threw off your sinful nature in true Christian circumcision;

12 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.

13 And to you--dead as you once were in your transgressions and in the uncircumcision of your natural state--He has nevertheless given Life with Himself, having forgiven us all our transgressions.