Paul's letter to the Colossians. It was written during one of Paul the apostle's many imprisonments for announcing Jesus as the risen Lord. The letter is addressed to a group of people that Paul had never met who made up a church community that he did not start.
This church in Colossae was started by a co-worker of Paul's named Epaphras who was actually from that city. Epaphras had recently visited Paul in prison and he updated him on how well the Colossians were doing overall. But he also mentioned some of the cultural pressures tempting them to turn away from Jesus.
So Paul wrote this letter to encourage the Colossians to address the issues that Epaphras had raised and then to challenge them to a greater devotion to Jesus. The letter's design and flow of thought are pretty easy to follow. The opening movement focuses on Jesus as the exalted Messiah.
Paul then goes on to show how his suffering in prison is for the exalted Jesus. Then he addresses the pressures tempting the Colossians to turn away from Jesus. After this he explores the new way of life that Jesus's resurrection opened up for them.
The letter opens with two prayers. Paul first thanks God that he learned from Epaphras that the Colossians have been totally faithful to Jesus, showing love for God and their neighbors all because of the hope they have in the new creation that Jesus has in store. He moves on to pray that they would grow in their wisdom and understanding about Jesus.
Then Paul has placed a poem here to help the Colossians and us do exactly that. It is the centerpiece of chapter 1, a poem all about the crucified and exalted Messiah. It has two parallel stanzas.
It is crammed with language and imagery from the books of Genesis and Exodus, from the Psalms and the Proverbs. The first stanza explores how Jesus is the true image of God. In him the full character and purpose of God is embodied in a human.
He is the firstborn, an Old Testament phrase about Jesus' royal status over all creation. He shares in the very identity of the one true creator God. By him, all reality, all powers and authorities, spiritual and human, have been created.
It is in Jesus the Messiah that we discover the very author and king of creation. In the second stanza we discover he is also the one bringing about a new creation. He is the head of a new body, which refers to Jesus' people who were the new humanity of which his own resurrection existence is a prototype.
In him, God's glorious temple presence dwells. So, it is through Jesus's death and resurrection that God has reconciled himself to humanity, to all spiritual powers, to all of creation. It is a remarkable poem and Paul will keep referring back to it as he goes on in the letter.
He first shows how the truth of this poem transforms his own experience of suffering in prison. He is being punished for announcing to the Greek and the Roman world that Jesus is the resurrected Lord and king of all. So his suffering, he thinks, is not a sign of defeat.
It is actually his way of participating in Jesus's own suffering, done as an act of love. So his hardships are actually a cause for joy. He is imprisoned for the surprising news that Israel's resurrected Messiah is creating a new multi-ethnic family.
And more: just as the divine glory dwelt in Jesus, so Jesus dwells in and among his international family. Or, as Paul says, the Messiah is in you all, the hope of glory. Paul then addresses the cultural pressures that are tempting the Colossians to turn away from Jesus.
They were confronted by a combination of mystical polytheism along with a pressure to observe the laws of the Torah. So, all these new Christians had grown up worshipping the various Greek and Roman gods who govern different arenas of human life. Many simply included Jesus as one more deity that they could worship.
There was also a great pressure from the Jewish Christian community for these non-Jews to complete their commitment to the Messiah by following all of the laws found in the Torah. Specifically, he mentions eating a kosher diet, observing sacred days and circumcision. It is very similar to the problem he addressed in the letter to the Galatians.
For Paul, to give in to either of these temptations is compromised. It is a failure to grasp who Jesus really is and what he did on their behalf. The Colossians used to live in fear of spiritual powers and elemental spirits, as Paul calls them, but Jesus triumphed over these through his death and resurrection.
He freed the Colossians from any obligation to them. In the same way, Jesus fulfilled on our behalf all of the laws of the Torah, which never had the power to transform the selfish human heart anyway. So, what Jesus did in his life and death and resurrection lacks nothing.
It doesn't need to be supplemented by following the laws. He is the reality to which all of the laws of the Torah were pointing anyway. Instead of the laws, followers of Jesus have the power of his resurrection to change them, which is what he goes on to explore.
Following Jesus means joining his new humanity because their lives have now been joined to the risen Jesus' life. This is why Paul challenges the Colossians to set their minds on things above, where the Messiah is seated, or rules, at God's right hand. Now Paul does not mean here, think about how you will one day leave Earth and go to heaven.
Rather, the heavens are the transcendent place from which Jesus rules now over all of creation. From there, he will one day return here to transform all things, or, as Paul says, when the Messiah who is your life is revealed, you too will be revealed with him in glory. So, Paul challenges them to live in the present as the kinds of new humans they will one day become.
He uses the image of their old humanity characterized by distorted sexuality and destructive speech. For Christians, that humanity died with Jesus and has been replaced by his own new humanity, which is characterized by mercy and generosity, by forgiveness and love. This humanity transcends the ethnic and social boundary lines of our world to create, in Paul's words, a people where there is no one Greek or Jewish, circumcised or uncircumcised, slave or free, but the Messiah is all and is in all people.
Paul then gets really practical. He shows the Colossians what this new humanity might look like in a first century Roman household, which was a highly authoritarian institution where the male patriarch held the power of life and death over his wife, children and slaves. Not so in a Christian household.
Here the risen Jesus is the true Lord. So in the Lord, the wife allows her husband to become responsible for her. And the husband is subject to Jesus by loving his wife and placing her well-being above his own.
In a home where Jesus is Lord, children are not objects but are called to maturity and to respect. Parents are to raise their children with patience and understanding. Christians who are slaves are to honor their human masters precisely because they are not the real master.
Jesus is. And Christians who have slaves are to understand that this slave is not their property, But rather, a fellow member of Jesus's body to be honored and embraced in love. Paul is walking a very fine line here.
He is reshaping the most basic Roman institution around Jesus, who rules by his self-giving love. So while he does not abolish the household structure outright, the exalted Messiah demands that it be transformed almost beyond the point of recognition for any Roman living in Colossae. You can see this most clearly in the letter's conclusion.
After a request for prayer, Paul applies these instructions about Christian slaves and masters. We discover that Tikecus is the one carrying and reading this letter to the Colossians. He is accompanied by a certain Onesimus who was a former slave to a Colossian Christian named Philemon.
We discover from another letter addressed to Philemon that Onesimus had escaped from his master. It was a crime worthy of imprisonment. But Paul asks the whole church to greet Onesimus as a faithful and beloved brother in the Lord.
In the letter to Philemon, Paul says that he should receive Onesimus no longer as a slave, but as a brother. Talk about ending the letter with a punch! So, in the letter to the Colossians, Paul is inviting us to see that no part of human existence remains untouched by the loving and liberating rule of the risen Jesus.
Our suffering, our temptation to compromise, our moral character, the power dynamics in our homes, all of it must be re-examined and transformed. We are invited to live in the present as if the new creation really arrived when Jesus rose from the dead. And that is what the letter to the Colossians is all about.
