Read the New Testament in 24 Weeks

1 From: Sha’ul, by God’s will an emissary of the Messiah Yeshua, and brother Timothy

² To: God’s people in Colosse, faithful brothers in the Messiah:

Grace to you and shalom from God our Father.

³ Whenever we pray, we always give thanks for you to God, the Father of our Lord Yeshua the Messiah. ⁴ For we have heard of your trust in the Messiah Yeshua and of the love you have for all God’s people. ⁵ Both spring from the confident hope that you will receive what is stored up for you in heaven. You heard of this earlier in the message about the truth. This Good News ⁶ has made its presence felt among you, just as it is also being fruitful and multiplying^[a] throughout the world in the same way as it has among you since the day you heard and understood the grace of God as it really is. ⁷ You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow-slave and a faithful worker for the Messiah on your behalf; ⁸ and he has told us about the love which the Spirit has given you.

⁹ Therefore, from the day we heard of it, we have not stopped praying for you, asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will in all the wisdom and understanding which the Spirit gives; ¹⁰ so that you may live lives worthy of the Lord and entirely pleasing to him, being fruitful in every good work and multiplying in the full knowledge of God. ¹¹ We pray that you will be continually strengthened with all the power that comes from his glorious might; so that you will be able to persevere and be patient in any situation, joyfully ¹² giving thanks to the Father for having made you fit to share in the inheritance of his people in the light. ¹³ He has rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son.

¹⁴ It is through his Son that we have redemption — that is, our sins have been forgiven. ¹⁵ He is the visible image of the invisible God. He is supreme over all creation, ¹⁶ because in connection with him were created all things — in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, lordships, rulers or authorities — they have all been created through him and for him. ¹⁷ He existed before all things, and he holds everything together.

¹⁸ Also he is head of the Body, the Messianic Community — he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might hold first place in everything. ¹⁹ For it pleased God to have his full being live in his Son ²⁰ and through his Son to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace through him, through having his Son shed his blood by being executed on a stake.

²¹ In other words, you, who at one time were separated from God and had a hostile attitude towards him because of your wicked deeds, ²² he has now reconciled in the Son’s physical body through his death; in order to present you holy and without defect or reproach before himself — ²³ provided, of course, that you continue in your trusting, grounded and steady, and don’t let yourselves be moved away from the hope offered in the Good News you heard.

This is the Good News that has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven; and I, Sha’ul, have become a servant of it. ²⁴ I rejoice in my present sufferings on your behalf! Yes, I am completing in my own flesh what has been lacking of the Messiah’s afflictions, on behalf of his Body, the Messianic Community. ²⁵ I became a servant of the Good News because God gave me this work to do for your benefit. The work is to make fully known the message from God, ²⁶ the secret hidden for generations, for ages, but now made clear to the people he has set apart for himself. ²⁷ To them God wanted to make known how great among the Gentiles is the glorious richness of this secret. And the secret is this: the Messiah is united with you people! In that rests your hope of glory! ²⁸ We, for our part, proclaim him; we warn, confront and teach everyone in all wisdom; so that we may present everyone as having reached the goal, united with the Messiah. ²⁹ It is for this that I toil, striving with all the energy that he stirs up in me so mightily.

2 For I want you to know how hard I work for you, for those in Laodicea, and for the rest of those who have not met me personally. ² My purpose is that they may be encouraged, that they may be joined together in love, and that they may have all the riches derived from being assured of understanding and fully knowing God’s secret truth, which is — the Messiah! ³ It is in him that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden.

⁴ I say this so that no one will fool you with plausible but specious arguments. ⁵ For although I am away from you physically, I am with you in spirit, rejoicing as I see the disciplined and resolute firmness of your trust in the Messiah. ⁶ Therefore, just as you received the Messiah Yeshua as Lord, keep living your life united with him. ⁷ Remain deeply rooted in him; continue being built up in him and confirmed in your trust, the way you were taught, so that you overflow in thanksgiving.

⁸ Watch out, so that no one will take you captive by means of philosophy and empty deceit, following human tradition which accords with the elemental spirits of the world but does not accord with the Messiah. ⁹ For in him, bodily, lives the fullness of all that God is. ¹⁰ And it is in union with him that you have been made full — he is the head of every rule and authority.

¹¹ Also it was in union with him that you were circumcised with a circumcision not done by human hands, but accomplished by stripping away the old nature’s control over the body. In this circumcision done by the Messiah, ¹² you were buried along with him by being immersed; and in union with him, you were also raised up along with him by God’s faithfulness that worked when he raised Yeshua from the dead. ¹³ You were dead because of your sins, that is, because of your “foreskin,” your old nature. But God made you alive along with the Messiah by forgiving you all your sins. ¹⁴ He wiped away the bill of charges against us. Because of the regulations, it stood as a testimony against us; but he removed it by nailing it to the execution-stake. ¹⁵ Stripping the rulers and authorities of their power, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by means of the stake.

¹⁶ So don’t let anyone pass judgment on you in connection with eating and drinking, or in regard to a Jewish festival or Rosh-Hodesh or Shabbat. ¹⁷ These are a shadow of things that are coming, but the body is of the Messiah.

¹⁸ Don’t let anyone deny you the prize by insisting that you engage in self-mortification or angel-worship. Such people are always going on about some vision they have had, and they vainly puff themselves up by their worldly outlook. ¹⁹ They fail to hold to the Head, from whom the whole Body, receiving supply and being held together by its joints and ligaments, grows as God makes it grow. ²⁰ If, along with the Messiah, you died to the elemental spirits of the world, then why, as if you still belonged to the world, are you letting yourselves be bothered by its rules? — ²¹ “Don’t touch this!” “Don’t eat that!” “Don’t handle the other!” ²² Such prohibitions are concerned with things meant to perish by being used [not by being avoided!], and they are based on man-made rules and teachings.^{[b] 23} They do indeed have the outward appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed religious observances, false humility and asceticism; but they have no value at all in restraining people from indulging their old nature.