The Word Made Fresh
1Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the Lord’s will, and Timothy our brother; 2to the saints and faithful friends in Christ in Colossae:
Grace and peace be yours from God our Father.
3We always thank God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, 4for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and your love for all the saints. 5We thank God for the hope stored away for you in heaven. You have already heard of this hope in the gospel 6you have received. The gospel has been gaining believers all over the world just as it did among you from the day you heard it and fully understood the grace of God. 7Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant is a faithful minister of Christ for your sake, 8and has let us know of your love in the Spirit.
9Since the day we learned of this we have continued to pray for you, asking that you be filled with the knowledge of God’s will, with spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10so that you may live fully pleasing the Lord, bearing fruit in every good deed as you grow in the knowledge of God. 11May you be given all the strength of God’s amazing power, and be prepared to endure all things patiently. 12Thank the Father with joy for calling us to share the saints’ inheritance of the light. 13God has saved us from the power of darkness, and placed us in the kingdom of his beloved Son 14in whom we have been redeemed through the forgiveness of our sins.
15Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He is the firstborn of everything that was created. 16Everything in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, was created through him – including thrones and nations and rulers and other powers. They were created by him and for him. 17He was before everything, and everything holds together through him. 18He is the head of the church and he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead so that he might have first place in everything. 19God decided that his full nature would reside in the Son. 20God wanted to conform everything to himself in heaven and on earth by bringing peace through his blood that was given on the cross.
21And you, who were put aside because of your hostility and wicked deeds, 22have now been reconciled in his body through his death, so that you have been restored and can be presented to him holy and blameless. 23But you must remain secure and steadfast in the faith. You must not step away from the hope you have heard in the gospel, the hope that has been announced to every creature under heaven. I, Paul, became a servant of this good news.
24But I am celebrating my suffering on your behalf. I am completing in my own body what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, which is now the church. 25I became a servant of the church because God committed me to help you, so that you will know the fullness of God’s word, 26the great mystery hidden through all the ages and generations but now made known to his sacred ones. 27God has chosen them to know the richness of the glories of this mystery, because Christ is in you, and has given you the hope of glory. 28So, we proclaim Christ. We warn everyone, and teach everyone this wisdom so that we might present all of them mature in Christ. 29I work hard for this end with all the energy that Christ inspires in me.
Commentary
Colossae was situated on the Lycus River in southwest Asia Minor (Turkey), about 100 miles east of Ephesus. So far as we know Paul did not start the church there and never visited it. Some commentators believe it was the hometown of Philemon because at the end of the letter Paul says he is sending Onesimus there (4:9), but of course it is impossible to know whether it might be the same Onesimus mentioned in his letter to Philemon.
The reason for the letter is to head off a developing heresy which has been brought to Paul’s attention, perhaps by Epaphras (who is mentioned at 1:7 and 4:12). The authorship of the letter has been called into question by those who believe the vocabulary is not authentically Pauline, but I see no damage to our understanding or interpretation of it if we take the letter to be from Paul’s hand.
The letter contains only a few hints that might help us locate Paul’s whereabouts when it was written.
1-2: A typical greeting, purporting to be from Paul and Timothy (as is the case in 2 Corinthians, Philippians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians).
3-8: First, he gives thanks to God for their faith, as reported to him by Epaphras who apparently was one of the leaders in, and perhaps even the founder of, the church in Colossae.
9-14: We see in this paragraph the first hints of the heresy mentioned above: Paul emphasizes his desire that they have spiritual wisdom and understanding and lead lives worthy of the Lord, and that they be strong in the faith and prepared to endure “everything with patience.” Verse 13 contains the only occurrence of the phrase, “the power of darkness.”
15-20: He emphasizes now the divinity of Christ, that in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, leading scholars to speculate that the heresy brewing in Colossae may have had to do with a denial that Christ was God’s Son.
21-23: Next, Paul emphasizes the humanity of Christ, that he died and that his death resulted in the reconciliation of believers to God, leading scholars to speculate that the heresy brewing in Colossae may have had to do with a denial that Christ was truly human and therefore did not really suffer death.
24-29: He wants them to understand that his mission, his burning desire, is to bring Gentiles to faith, a mature faith, in Christ.
Takeaway
Christ paid the penalty for our sins by dying on the cross. When we accept Christ as our Lord and Savior we accept his suffering on our behalf. He paid the price for us. We will all die, of course, but there is now no longer any need to worry about what will happen to us when we breathe our last.