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¹ And I wish you to know, what a struggle I have for you, and for them of Laodicea, and for the others who have not seen my face in the flesh;² that their hearts may be comforted, and that they, by love, may come to all the riches of assurance, and to the understanding of the knowledge of the mystery of God the Father, and of the Messiah,³ in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and of knowledge.

⁴ And this I say, lest any one should mislead you by the persuasiveness of words.⁵ For though I am separated from you in the flesh, yet I am with you in spirit; and I rejoice at beholding your good order, and the stability of your faith in the Messiah.⁶ As therefore ye have received Jesus the Messiah our Lord, walk ye in him,⁷ strengthening your roots and building up yourselves in him, and establishing yourselves in the faith which ye have learned, in which may ye abound in thanksgiving.⁸ Beware, lest any man make you naked by philosophy, and by vain deception, according to the doctrines of men, according to the rudiments of the world, and not according to the Messiah,⁹ in whom dwelleth all the fullness of the Divinity corporeally.¹⁰ And in him ye are also complete, because he is the head of all principalities and authorities.¹¹ And in him ye have been circumcised with a circumcision without hands, by casting off the flesh of sins, by a circumcision of the Messiah.¹² And ye have been buried with him, by baptism; and by it ye have risen with him; while ye believed in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.

¹³ And you, who were dead in your sins, and by the uncircumcision of your flesh, he hath vivified with him; and he hath forgiven us all our sins:¹⁴ and, by his mandates, he blotted out the handwriting of our debts, which [fn] existed against us, and took [fn] from the midst, and affixed [fn] to his cross. ¹⁵ And, by yielding up his body, he showed contempt for principalities and authorities; and put them to shame, openly, in his own person.

¹⁶ Let no one therefore disquiet you about food and drink, or about the distinctions of festivals, and new moons, and sabbaths;¹⁷ which were shadows of the things then future; but the body is the Messiah.¹⁸ And let no one wish, by abasing the mind, to bring you under bonds, that ye subject yourselves to the worship of angels; while he is prying into that which he hath not seen, and is vainly inflated in his fleshly mind,¹⁹ and holdeth not the head, from which the whole body is framed and constructed, with joints and members, and groweth with the growth [fn] of God. ²⁰ For if ye are dead with the Messiah from the rudiments of the world, why are ye judged as if ye were living in the world?²¹ But, touch thou not, and taste thou not, and handle thou not:²² for these things perish in the using; and they are the commandments and doctrines of men.²³ And they seem to have a kind of wisdom, in a show of humility, and of the fear of God, and of not sparing the body; not in any thing of excellence, but in things subservient to the body.