Colossians 1:5

1:5 Your faith and love have arisen ¹  from the hope laid up ²  for you in heaven, which you have heard about in the message of truth, the gospel ³ 

Colossians 1:25

1:25 I became a servant of the church according to the stewardship ⁴  from God – given to me for you – in order to complete ⁵  the word of God,

Colossians 2:1

2:1 For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you, ⁶  and for those in Laodicea, and for those who have not met me face to face. ⁷ 

Colossians 2:12

2:12 Having been buried with him in baptism, you also have been raised with him through your ⁸  faith in the power ⁹  of God who raised him from the dead.

Colossians 3:1

Exhortations to Seek the Things Above

3:1 Therefore, if you have been raised with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.

Colossians 3:13

3:13 bearing with one another and forgiving ¹⁰  one another, if someone happens to have ¹¹  a complaint against anyone else. Just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also forgive others. ¹² 

[1:5]  ¹ tn Col 1:3-8 form one long sentence in the Greek text and have been divided at the end of v. 4 and v. 6 and within v. 6 for clarity, in keeping with the tendency in contemporary English toward shorter sentences. Thus the phrase “Your faith and love have arisen from the hope” is literally “because of the hope.” The perfect tense “have arisen” was chosen in the English to reflect the fact that the recipients of the letter had acquired this hope at conversion in the past, but that it still remains and motivates them to trust in Christ and to love one another.

[1:5]  ² tn BDAG 113 s.v. ἀπόκειμαι 2 renders ἀποκειμένην (apokeimenhn) with the expression “reserved” in this verse.

[1:5]  ³ tn The term “the gospel” (τοῦ εὐαγγελίου, tou euangeliou) is in apposition to “the word of truth” (τῷ λόγῳ τῆς ἀληθείας, tw logw th" alhqeia") as indicated in the translation.

[1:25]  ⁴ tn BDAG 697 s.v. οἰκονομία 1.b renders the term here as “divine office.”

[1:25]  ⁵ tn See BDAG 828 s.v. πληρόω 3. The idea here seems to be that the apostle wants to “complete the word of God” in that he wants to preach it to every person in the known world (cf. Rom 15:19). See P. T. O’Brien, Colossians, Philemon (WBC), 82.

[2:1]  ⁷ tn Or “I want you to know how hard I am working for you…”

[2:1]  ⁸ tn Grk “as many as have not seen my face in the flesh.”

[2:12]  ¹⁰ tn The article with the genitive modifier τῆς πίστεως (th" pistew") is functioning as a possessive pronoun (ExSyn 215).

[2:12]  ¹¹ tn The genitive τῆς ἐνεργείας (th" energeia") has been translated as an objective genitive, “faith in the power.”

[3:13]  ¹³ tn For the translation of χαριζόμενοι (carizomenoi) as “forgiving,” see BDAG 1078 s.v. χαρίζομαι 3. The two participles “bearing” (ἀνεχόμενοι, anecomenoi) and “forgiving” (χαριζόμενοι) express the means by which the action of the finite verb “clothe yourselves” is to be carried out.

[3:13]  ¹⁴ tn Grk “if someone has”; the term “happens,” though not in the Greek text, is inserted to bring out the force of the third class condition.

[3:13]  ¹⁵ tn The expression “forgive others” is not in the Greek text, but is implied. It is included in the translation to make the sentence complete and more comprehensible to the English reader.