Illustrated New TestamentColossians 1

In all the world; that is, very generally throughout the then known world.

Epaphras. Epaphras seems to have gone from Colosse to Rome, to confer with Paul: possibly he was the bearer of the Epistle of the Laodiceans, mentioned in this Epistle. (4:16.) A person named Epaphroditus was sent by the Philippians to Paul. Notwithstanding the similarity of the name, however, this last was probably, but perhaps not certainly, a different person.

Your love in the Spirit; your Christian fellowship and affection.

With all might; with all spiritual strength.

Made us meet to be; prepared us to be.

Translated us; transferred us.

Through his blood; through his atoning sufferings.

The image of the invisible God; imbodying, and manifesting to men, the attributes and characteristics of God; or, as it is expressed in 1 Tim. 3:16, God manifest in the flesh.—The first-born of every creature, the head of the whole creation; the expression "the first-born" denoting the chief or head.

By him; by his agency or instrumentality.

The first-born from the dead; the first who rose from death to immortality. (1 Cor. 15:20.)

All fulness; every mark and token of preëminence.

The blood of his cross; the blood shed upon the cross; that is, the sufferings endured in that death.—To reconcile all things; to open the door of reconciliation for all.

Sometime; formerly.

In the body of his flesh; in his earthly body.—Through death, through the sufferings and death which he endured in that body.

That which is behind of the afflictions of Christ; that which remains to me of affliction to be endured in the cause of Christ.

The mystery which hath been hid; the doctrine of free salvation to all, through faith in Christ. This truth is often designated as a mystery; the knowledge of it having long been withheld from mankind.

The riches of, &c.—among the Gentiles; that is, the exceeding preciousness and value of it to the Gentiles, who were before considered beyond the reach of salvation.