8. He informed us of your love in the Spirit.
9. Because of this, since the day we heard about you, we haven’t stopped praying for you and asking for you to be filled with the knowledge of God’s will, with all wisdom and spiritual understanding.
10. We’re praying this so that you can live lives that are worthy of the Lord and pleasing to him in every way: by producing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God;
11. by being strengthened through his glorious might so that you endure everything and have patience;
12. and by giving thanks with joy to the Father. He made it so you could take part in the inheritance, in light granted to God’s holy people.
13. He rescued us from the control of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son he loves.
14. He set us free through the Son and forgave our sins.
15. The Son is the image of the invisible God, the one who is first over all creation,
16. Because all things were created by him: both in the heavens and on the earth, the things that are visible and the things that are invisible. Whether they are thrones or powers, or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him.
17. He existed before all things, and all things are held together in him.
18. He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the one who is firstborn from among the dead so that he might occupy the first place in everything.
19. Because all the fullness of God was pleased to live in him,