Then you will be able to live represents the infinitive of the verb “to walk,” expressing the result or purpose of being filled with the knowledge of God’s will. The Greek verb is often used in the metaphorical sense of manner of life (as the Heb hālak). Paul always uses it in a figurative sense: Col 2.6, 3.7, 4.5, 1 Thes 2.12, 4.1.

The transitional adverb then is not so much temporal as conditional, for example, “if then that is so” or “that being so.”

Able to live is not a reference to a standard of living but to a manner of life or behavior. This may be expressed in some cases as “able to conduct yourself,” or “able to do,” or “able to carry on.”

As the Lord wants is an adverbial phrase “worthily of the Lord,” that is, in a manner that is required by their status as the Lord’s people (see “to walk … worthily of God” in 1 Thes 2.12). Jerusalem Bible has “the kind of life which the Lord expects of you”; Phillips “your lives … may bring credit to your master’s name”; Biblia Dios Habla Hoy “that you conduct yourselves as people should who belong to the Lord”; Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch “so to live as to bring honor to the Lord.”

Always do what pleases him: the noun areskeia occurs only here in the NT; the verb areskō, with God or the Lord as object, is found in Rom 8.8, 1 Cor 7.32, 1 Thes 2.15 (not pleasing God), and 1 Thes 4.1, which offers the closest parallel: “to walk and to please God.” “To please a person” may be expressed in some languages as “to cause a person to be happy.” On the basis of such an expression, one may translate the latter part of the first sentence of verse 10 as “will always do what causes God to be happy.”

All kinds of good deeds is joined to produce in Good News Translation and others (so Revised Standard Version “bearing fruit in every good work”), but it may be connected with the preceding to live. The literary figure known as chiasmus (a-b-b-a) is here employed: “in every good deed bearing fruit, and growing in the knowledge of God.” The first line is attributive and verb, the second line verb and attributive.

It may not be possible to say “your lives will produce all kinds of good deeds.” It is not literally the life which produces such deeds but the individual himself. Therefore, one may say “because of the way in which you live, you will produce all kinds of good deeds.” The phrase all kinds of good deeds may be rendered as “you will do good in all different ways.”

Your knowledge of God: God is the object of knowledge, not the subject.

A verb meaning “grow” may seem to be very strange in combination with a phrase such as “your knowledge of God.” What is meant here is simply an increase of knowledge, and therefore one may say “and you will know God more and more” or “your experience of God will be greater and greater.”

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on Paul’s Letter to the Colossians. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1977. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .