Colossians 1:1-8

1Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,

2To the holy and faithful brothers in Christ at Colosse:

Grace and peace to you from God our Father.

Thanksgiving and Prayer

3We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, 4because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints— 5the faith and love that spring from the hope that is stored up for you in heaven and that you have already heard about in the word of truth, the gospel 6that has come to you. All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God's grace in all its truth. 7You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf, 8and who also told us of your love in the Spirit.



Dig Deeper

Over the span of coaching high school boy’s basketball for eight years, I had winning seasons and losing seasons. Early on each season, it was usually pretty easy to get a fairly good idea of when a team was going to have a winning season or a losing one. In my mind, though, there was always one thing that would demonstrate whether we had a team that was capable of going farther than just winning more games than they lost and actually winning our conference or even the state championship. It wasn’t how impressive they looked, how many dunks they had per game, or even by how many points they won games. What I always looked for as evidence of possible greatness was selflessness. When I saw guys that cared more about passing to a teammate than adding to their scoring totals, or being more concerned with winning games as a team than how many impressive play they made, I knew that the fruit of selflessness was beginning to show and that true greatness would not be far behind. It was of no coincidence, then, that the team that showed the most selflessness did not have the most talent that I ever coached, but did go the farthest.

Paul had heard of the faith that the church in Colosse was demonstrating and he knew that the fruit of the Spirit and the life of Christ had begun to take root in their life. What is interesting is that as evidence of this burgeoning life in Christ, Paul does not cite how evangelistic they were or how holy and pious had they had shown themselves to be. Those were good things, and no doubt, there was evidence of those things, but they were not the real demonstration of growth in Christ. The real demonstration that Paul relishes is the love that they have for one another. When a community in Christ truly has love for one another, that is the evidence that they are bearing fruit in Christ.

It doesn’t appear that there was any specific controversy in Colosse over the legitimacy of Paul’s apostleship, but he begins his letter with his common reminder that he is an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God (1 Cor. 1:1; 2 Cor. 1:1; Eph. 1:1; 2 Tim. 1:1). Whatever position Paul might be in or whatever he was doing in his position as apostle in the church of the Messiah, he was doing it all at the call and will of God. Paul was not, however, writing this letter alone. He includes Timothy as a co-worker and co-writer of this letter. This would also let the church in Colosse know that Paul was not alone and abandoned during his imprisonment in Ephesus.

Paul is writing this letter to the holy and faithful brothers (could also be translated as saints) in Christ at Colosse. When Paul referred to people as saints or holy ones, he is not referring to the degree of holiness to which they have attained, rather he is describing their status in Christ. When we try to stand before God on our own recognizance, we can only stand as filthy rags (Isa. 64:6), but when we die to self and enter into the life of Christ, we become clothed with Christ (Gal. 3:27). Rather than trying to stand before God and cover our shame and nakedness by our own efforts (Gen. 3:7), we can stand confident before God as those who have been covered and properly clothed with the life of Christ, the only thing that will provide us access to God.

Paul gives all praise to God on a consistent basis as he prays for the Colossians. Paul mentions the distinctly Christian insight of God as Father, but he also calls Jesus the Messiah (Christ), Lord. In this context, he is exalting Jesus to the same status and level as God, because the Greek word for "lord," kyrios, was the same Greek word used by the Jews for YHWH. Although kyrios could be used to denote "master," in this context, Paul is clearly reinforcing the idea the Christ was the very deity in whom God Himself was found.

In verses 4 and 5, Paul introduces three concepts that were central to the early Christian view of the Christian life: faith, hope, and love. These are two verse that are easy to scan quickly past, but we can learn a depth of knowledge about the Christian faith from these two short verses. Paul says that their hope is stored up for them in heaven. What is that hope? It is the life of the age to come (eternal life), which is God’s future when He will restore His good creation and make all things new (Rom. 8:19-21). This is the resurrection when all those in Christ will be brought into God’s restored paradise, when the realms of heaven and earth will be brought back together again as in the original creation before sin, and God’s presence will fill the world. Based on incorrect Greek philosophical beliefs of Plato and others, many in our society think that heaven is a location separate from earth where our disembodied souls go to be with God forever after death. The Bible does teach that we do go into God’s heavenly realm when we die, but it is to await resurrection and the new creation. This verse teaches us that this future is being stored in heaven, waiting to break forth into the world we now know (Rev. 21:1-5). Heaven, then, is the place where God’s future is being stored, not our final destination.

Faith is related to this hope, because only those who lay down their own life, realize that they could never enter this future on their own merit, and enter, by faith, into the life of Christ will enter into God’s age to come. Hope and faith are both primarily internal items, though. Love is important because it is the display and evidence that we have entered into the life of Christ. The evidence of the fruit of the Christian life is displayed by how we treat and love fellow believers (John 13:34-35). Both faith in the life of Christ and the badge of love for other believers spring from the great hope of God’s future restored creation, His age to come.

The same gospel, which embodies truth, that came to them was not some isolated event. It was bearing the same kind of fruit all over the world. The fruit of the gospel, though, it should always be remembered, comes not from our own effort or merit. The life of Christ, access to the hope of God’s future, and the ability to truly love one another all come from God’s grace. In this letter, Paul will deal with some heresies which were, evidently, becoming temptations to some of the Colossians. As he begins his letter, he is already laying the foundations and establishing the criterion by which the Colossians can measure the false claims of the heretic teachers. He wants the Colossians to test the claims of these false teachers and is giving them the tools to do so. Any claim of the gospel must contain God’s word of truth. It must produce fruit in peoples’ lives, and it must be a universal message that is the same truth the world over. A perfect example of this would be the modern prosperity gospel. This is a gospel that matches up well with the Old Testament Scriptures but is rife with problems when the New Testament Scriptures are considered. When stacked up against the criterion that Paul provides, it has definite problems. It contradicts many truths of the New testament; it produces questionable fruit in people’s lives; and it is certainly not universal (it plays well in the United States but doesn’t really work in places like Haiti or the Sudan).



Devotional Thought

The Scriptures are clear that the way we love one another demonstrates our love for God (Jn 13:34-35; Matt. 25:40, 45). To claim that we love God and then to not be loyal to other believers is to deceive ourselves. If you were to truly assess your love for God by the way you love His people, how would you grade yourself right now?