Written by the Apostle Paul
Introduction
Colossians was written from a Roman prison cell around AD 60-62, the same imprisonment that produced Ephesians, Philippians, and Philemon. Paul had never visited Colossae — a small city in the Lycus Valley of what is now western Turkey, about a hundred miles east of Ephesus. The church there had been planted by Epaphras, one of Paul’s converts and coworkers, who had now traveled to Rome with troubling news. A teaching had emerged among the Colossian believers that blended Jewish ritual observance, Greek philosophical speculation, and early elements of what would later develop into full Gnosticism — angelic hierarchies, ascetic practices, visionary experiences, secret knowledge accessible only to initiates. Paul writes to dismantle the whole apparatus, not by refuting each error in turn but by lifting Christ to his proper place. Every false system Colossae was drawn to was, in Paul’s view, too small — too small to hold the Christ who actually is.
The theological center of the letter is the hymn of chapter 1 (vv. 15-20), which scholars regard as possibly another pre-Pauline hymn quoted by Paul — like the Christ-hymn of Philippians 2, but this one focused not on descent-and-ascent but on supremacy and reconciliation. Christ is declared the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, the one through whom and for whom all things were made, the one in whom all things hold together, the head of the body, the church, the firstborn from the dead, the one in whom all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. Against a teaching that placed Christ among a hierarchy of spiritual powers, Paul places Christ over all spiritual powers, as their creator and their master. The hymn alone would have shattered the Colossian heresy; the letter that surrounds it applies that Christology to every practical question — dietary rules, festival observances, angel worship, ascetic severity — and refuses each one on the same ground: Christ is enough, and you are complete in him.
“For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.” — Colossians 1:19-20
The second half of the letter (chapters 3-4) draws the practical consequences. If Christ is cosmic Lord and the believer has been raised with him, then the believer’s life must be re-oriented from below to above — seeking the things where Christ is seated, putting off the old self and putting on the new, submitting all relationships and all work to the Lord Christ. The letter closes with personal greetings that introduce one of the New Testament’s most tender side-documents: Tychicus and Onesimus are named as carriers, and Onesimus is the runaway slave whose story Paul is simultaneously telling in the letter to Philemon, traveling with the same delegation. Colossians and Philemon arrive together, and the Christ-above-all declared in Colossians is the same Christ who is reconciling a runaway slave to his master in the letter folded alongside it.
Chapters in Colossians
• Chapter 1 – The Supremacy of Christ
• Chapter 2 – Warnings Against Deception
• Chapter 3 – Living the New Life
• Chapter 4 – Final Instructions and Greetings