Having All Things in Christ

⁶ You received Christ Jesus as Lord. So keep on living your lives in him. ⁷ Have your roots in him. Build yourselves up in him. Grow strong in what you believe, just as you were taught. Be more thankful than ever before.

⁸ Make sure no one controls you. They will try to control you by using false reasoning that has no meaning. Their ideas depend on human teachings. They also depend on the basic spiritual powers of this world. They don’t depend on Christ.

⁹ God’s whole nature is living in Christ in human form. ¹⁰ Because you belong to Christ, you have been made complete. He is the ruler over every power and authority. ¹¹ When you received Christ, your circumcision was not done by human hands. Instead, your circumcision was done by Christ. He put away the person you used to be. At that time, sin’s power ruled over you. ¹² When you were baptized, you were buried together with Christ. And you were raised to life together with him when you were baptized. You were raised to life by believing in God’s work. God himself raised Jesus from the dead.

¹³ At one time you were dead in your sins. Your desires controlled by sin were not circumcised. But God gave you new life together with Christ. He forgave us all our sins. ¹⁴ He wiped out what the law said that we owed. The law stood against us. It judged us. But he has taken it away and nailed it to the cross. ¹⁵ He took away the weapons of the powers and authorities. He made a public show of them. He won the battle over them by dying on the cross.