Passage

Colossians 1.28

Book: Colossians · NASB95

Immediate context (±2 verses)

ASV

26. even the mystery which hath been hid for ages and generations: but now hath it been manifested to his saints, 27. to whom God was pleased to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory:

28. whom we proclaim, admonishing every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ;

whereunto I labor also, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily. (Colossians 1:26-29, ASV)

WEB

26. the mystery which has been hidden for ages and generations. But now it has been revealed to his saints, 27. to whom God was pleased to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory;

28. whom we proclaim, admonishing every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus;

for which I also labor, striving according to his working, which works in me mightily. (Colossians 1:26-29, WEB)

KJV

26. Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints: 27. To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory: ^{in: or, among}

28. Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus:

Whereunto I also labour, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily. (Colossians 1:26-29, KJV)

YLT

26. the secret that hath been hid from the ages and from the generations, but now was manifested to his saints, 27. to whom God did will to make known what [is] the riches of the glory of this secret among the nations, which is Christ in you, the hope of the glory,

28. whom we proclaim, warning every man, and teaching every man, in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus,

for which also I labour, striving according to his working that is working in me in power. (Colossians 1:26-29, YLT)

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Setting

Speaker: Paul, speaking of his ministry ("we proclaim"), with "Timothy our brother" named in the greeting (1:1). He writes as a prisoner (4:3, 18). Many critical scholars hold that a follower of Paul wrote the letter in his name; others defend Paul's authorship, pointing to its close personal ties with Philemon.
Audience: the church at Colossae in the Lycus valley of Phrygia, founded by Epaphras (1:7). A teaching that promised a higher wisdom (2:3-4, 8, 23) was pressing on them.
Location: an imprisonment, traditionally Rome, with Ephesus and Caesarea as the main alternatives.
Time period: about AD 60-62 if Paul wrote from Rome, or the mid-50s if from Ephesus. Scholars who read the letter as written after Paul's death place it later in the first century.
Literary context: Paul's account of his ministry (1:24-29). The mystery is "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (1:27); verse 28 says what Paul does with it, and verse 29 how: "whereunto I labor also, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily."

Theological reading

Whom we proclaim. The message is a person. "Whom" points back to "Christ in you" (1:27). Paul does not proclaim a system of practices or a ladder of experiences but Christ himself.

Admonishing and teaching. Proclamation takes two forms. Admonishing warns and corrects; teaching instructs. Both are done "in all wisdom." The same pair is given to the whole church in 3:16, "in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another," so the apostle's ministry becomes the church's ministry.

Every man, three times. "Admonishing every man and teaching every man... that we may present every man perfect." The repetition insists that the gospel and its maturity are for each believer. Many interpreters hear it as a deliberate answer to a teaching that offered higher wisdom to a spiritual elite.

Perfect in Christ. "Perfect" (teleios) means mature or complete, not sinless. The goal is to "present" believers before God, the same word used in 1:22. And the maturity is "in Christ," not beyond him: growth means going deeper into the Christ they already have, not moving on to something more.

Key words

Theologically-loaded Greek or Hebrew words in this verse may have entries in the lexicon. Curated to roughly 100 contested terms across the corpus, not every word.

G5046 - teleios, teleios, Strong's G5046
G5547 - christos, christos, Strong's G5547
G2424 - Iesous, Iesous, Strong's G2424
G3956 - pas, pas, Strong's G3956

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Why these four translations

ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the most literal English translations available (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the public domain in the United States, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance.

The four:

ASV (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition.
WEB (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English.
KJV (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base.
YLT (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff.

See Bibles for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.