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COLOSSIANS - Christ in you, the hope of glory!
Studies in the Letter of Paul to the Colossians

Introduction


The message of Paul, the apostle to the nations, to the church in Colosse on the Lycus River, a tributary of the Maeander, on which also lay the cities of Laodicea and Hierapolis, sloping west of the high plateau of modern day Turkey in the vicinity Ephesus and Izmir, contains very special features – a fact that gives particular value to this letter.

Paul himself neither founded nor visited the church in Colosse. He also could not have come to know this church following his detention pending trial in Caesarea and before his travel to Rome. He learned of the situation regarding the Christians in this church from the report of Epaphras, one of their elders (Col.1:7-8; 4:12; Phil. 23), who visited him in Rome. Together, they spiritually wrestled for the future of this church. Thus, this letter contains a message of Paul to foreign church members, unknown to him, living in a multi-cultural Hellenistic environment. It also represents, therefore, a message to the churches of our time, in which the apostle lays down foundational principles regarding our faith and way of life amidst temptations and trials.

At the same time this letter reflects the testimony of Paul´s latter years, after he had passed through many perilous encounters, attacks and suffering. The epistle marvellously portrays the paramount reality of Christ, which Paul had been able to experience in a new way during a time of forced rest, brought about by his imprisonment. The letter offers us a summary of the revelations that Paul had received in the thirty years of his missionary endeavour, following the time when the risen Christ had first appeared to him in radiant glory on the road to Damascus. It also offers a summation of all his knowledge, testimony and teaching. As a result of his long experience in service, he knew what new followers of Christ needed for their faith to grow. He also knew where they needed to turn to receive power for this new life to grow and mature.

The peculiar problems of the church in Colosse had to do with the fact that they had most likely been visited by Jewish Christians, who had advised them in the worship of angels, a practice closely tied to abstinence from certain kinds of food. Furthermore, the sectarians had impressed upon the Colossian believers the necessity of circumcision, as well as the keeping of Jewish ceremonies and the Sabbath, that the church might experience the true blessing of God. These demands, however, undermined the completed justification of the sinner by faith alone. They diminished the glory of Christ´s deity, which occasioned in the apostle a fury of pastoral outcry.

The letter to the Colossians was presumably dictated by Paul and Timothy, his co-labourer, to Tychicus, their helper and brother in Christ from Ephesus. It was written while Paul was a prisoner in Rome, sometime between the years 56 and 62 A.D. It was delivered to the church in Colosse by Tychicus and Onesimus, the runaway slave whom Paul had lead to faith in Christ in Rome (Acts 20:4; Eph. 6:21; Col. 4:7; 2 Tim. 4:12; Titus 3:12).

The following meditations, reflections and series of expositions on the letter to the Colossians are the result of Bible studies, sermons and counselling sessions that made up a part of the teaching material on the letters of the Apostle Paul offered by our small Bible school correspondence course in the Arabic language. Questions that arose out of these correspondence courses have been taken into the English text for further reflection by readers.

QUESTION 1: What are some of the special features of the letter of Paul to the Colossians?

We give thanks
to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
praying always for you,
since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus
and of your love for all the saints,
because of the hope which is laid up for you in heaven.

(Colossians 1,3-5)

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