Colossians 1

22. A strange place, Cesar’s household, to hold some of those saints. They lived in the palace of the Emperor Nero, not far from that Pretorian camp in which the bonds of Paul were manifest (1: 13). The soldiers of the Pretorian guard knew the imprisoned apostle well; and even some of the retainers of the cruel Emperor had been turned to the Lord. It was not required of them by Paul, nor did they feel bound in their own conscience to surrender their situations and withdraw from Nero’s house. Better that they should shine as lights in that dark place, and walk as saints in Cesar’s household. D. F.—Of the line of Roman Cesars—that race standing apart, of whom it has been well said that there met in them “all the heights and depths which belong to man, all the contrasts of glory and meanness, the extremities of what is highest and lowest in human possibility”—the personage whom Paul speaks of here as having saints in his household was the sixth from the founder. Nero was a prince that as far surpassed others in infamy as Augustus did in royalty; a man who, if every soul besides himself in his household had been a saint, concentrated inhumanity and pollution enough in his person to have darkened all their virtue by the blackness of his unnatural crimes; a man that expended more ingenuity in contriving new modes of dishonoring humanity than most Christians have in serving it, and who earned the reputation of introducing into history as facts crimes so enormous, and combinations of wickedness so revolting, that but for him they would have been held too fabulous for the wildest fancy. In the household of such a man, and such a Cesar, it was that the apostle, himself now a prisoner at Rome, found “saints”—saints that he mentions with special honor when he sends their message in his letter to the friends at Philippi. There and then we can all feel that it was something heroic to be a saint. No wonder Paul thanks God that even then the faith of the Roman Christians was spoken of in all the world. F. D. H.

23. A sentence of commendation to the grace of Christ concludes this holy and beautiful Epistle, which tells us how to live and how to die, how to renounce and how to attain, how to endure and how to rejoice. “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.” D. F.

1. PAUL, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Timotheus our brother, to the 2 saints and faithful brethren in Christ which are at Colosse: Grace be unto you, and peace, 3 from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We give thanks to God and the Father of 4 our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ 5 Jesus, and of the love which ye have to all the saints, for the hope which is laid up for you 6 in heaven, whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel; which is come 7 unto you, as it is in all the world; and bringeth forth fruit, as it doth also in you, since the 8 day ye heard of it, and knew the grace of God in truth: as ye also learned of Epaphras 9 our dear fellowservant, who is for you a faithful minister of Christ; who also declared 10 unto us your love in the Spirit. 9 For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to 10 desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual 11 understanding; that ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in 12 every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might, 13 according to his glorious power, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness; giv- 14 ing thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of 15 the saints in light: who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated 16 us into the kingdom of his dear Son: in whom we have redemption through his blood, even 17 the forgiveness of sins: who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every crea- 18 ture: for by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: and he is before all things, and by him all things con- 18 sist. And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from

19 the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that 20 in him should all fulness dwell; and, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven.

21. And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet 22 now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and un- 23 blameable and unreprovable in his sight: if ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven; whereof I Paul am made a minister; 24 who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions 25 of Christ in my flesh for his body’s sake, which is the church: whereof I am made a minis- ter, according to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you, to fulfil the word of 26 God; even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is 27 made manifest to his saints: to whom God would make known what is the riches of the 28 glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory: whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may pre- 29 sent every man perfect in Christ Jesus: whereunto I also labour, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily.

THE highest kingdom we can conceive to exist is one which aims at the holiness of all that belong to it; which has love for its common principle; which has for its head a Being who unites all human with all divine perfections; who has himself suffered for all the members of this kingdom and in their stead; and who will reign over and within them, not only for this life, but also for that which is to come. In such a kingdom all are bound together by the strongest ties for the highest objects. And such is the kingdom of which Jesus Christ is the Head and redeemed men the body. Beyond the idea of such a system, centering in such a Being, human thought is impotent to advance and the human heart has no- thing real to desire; it satisfies all within us which is not sinful, and it is its crowning glory that it sub- dues our sinfulness itself. Such a system brings together, recapitulates all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are in earth; and by such a Person, “all things are reconciled to God, by him,” the apostle says, “whether they be things in earth or things in heaven.” When I think of the wonders of our Saviour’s person and of the glories of his redemptive work, of all his love, his love for me a sinner, his love to all so great that he could die for all, and of that blessed and perpetual kingdom which his blood has purchased, and of which he is the ever-living Head; when, in some rapt moment, my heart can realize this in all its fullness, then, if ever, is my whole being filled with the profoundest emotions of awe, of gratitude, and of love. Never is the soul so conscious of its full capacities of thought and feeling, never does it throb with such unwonted and divine life, as when it has most fully grasped the majestic reality of the Christian faith as a wondrous and harmonious whole, tending to the highest imaginable end, and centering in that glorious Being who unites divinity with humanity and reconciles heaven with earth. In comparison with the fullness, fitness, and sufficiency of such a system, the most colossal structure which Pantheism ever reared is but a palace of ice, cold and cheerless, contrasted with that heavenly city, whose gates are pearl, whose streets are gold, thronged with a company innumerable and exultant, vocal with the melodies of the redeemed, of which the Lamb is the light, and God the glory. H. B. S.

COLOSSE is a place that has not yet appeared in the records of Paul’s labors. It was an ancient but somewhat decayed city of Phrygia, on the high-road between Ephesus and the Euphrates. It stood on the river Lycus, in the upper basin of the Meander, and in the immediate neighborhood of Laodicea and Hierapolis, cities by whose growth it had been eclipsed. Paul had heard with deep gratitude of the fruits of faith and love wrought among the Co- lossians by the word of gospel truth, which had come to them, as it was taught by Epaphras, a na- tive of the city, who, having been to them a faithful minister of Christ, had now brought to Paul, in his imprisonment, the glad tidings of their love in the Spirit. In writing to congratulate them on their state, and to utter his prayers for their growth in the knowledge of God, the apostle takes occasion, with his never-failing faithfulness, to warn them against evils about which perhaps it was a part of the mission of Epaphras to consult him. S.— Error of a very serious kind by degrees made its way into the little community at Colosse. The neigh- borhood, and indeed the inhabitants of the whole territory of Phrygia, in which it was situated, were prone to mysticism and fanatical superstitions. The heresy afterward known as Gnosticism, the teachers of which professed a higher gnosis, or knowledge, than others, was beginning to spread in various parts of the Eastern Church. We find it at Colosse in strange commixture with a leaning to Jewish obser- vances. With these, and the superstitions with which, they had become corrupted, the Colossian Gnostics also combined a vainly curious search into

Colosse.

the degrees and orders of angelic beings, and a worship of the great hierarchs of the heavenly kingdom. This curious mixture of opinions in the Colossian Church is accounted for partly by the fact, told us by Josephus the Jewish historian, that Alexander the Great sent, in consequence of the disaffection of Lydia and Phrygia, 2,000 Mesopotamian and Babylonian Jews to garrison the towns.

Between six and seven years had elapsed since its founding by Epaphras. During this time the Apostle had passed through all that eventful period of his life related in the last nine chapters of the Acts of the Apostles; had escaped the tumult at Ephesus; had crossed into Greece, and wintered at Corinth; had gone up to Jerusalem with forebodings which caused him to take a solemn farewell of the elders of Ephesus at Miletus; had narrowly escaped with his life from his enemies in the holy City; had lain two years in prison at Cesarea; had accomplished that long and perilous voyage to Rome. There he was now a prisoner, dwelling with the soldier that kept him in his own hired house, receiving all that came to him without let or hindrance, and laboring for the gospel of Christ by his tongue and by his pen. At this time Epaphras comes to Rome and brings him a report from Colosse. He spoke of their Christian faith, and love, and hope; but he also spoke of much which pained the apostle’s tender heart, and roused his jealousy for the pure faith of Christ. Some time after the receipt of this report Paul wrote the Epistle. Probably he waited till near the time when Tychicus, whom he sent with the letter, was ready to depart. A.

The Epistle to the Ephesians and the Epistle to the Colossians import to be two letters written by the same person at, or nearly at, the same time, and upon the same subject, and to have been sent by the same messenger. Now everything in the sentiments, order, and diction of the two writings corresponds with what might be expected from this circumstance. The leading doctrine of both Epistles is the union of Jews and Gentiles under the Christian dispensation; and that doctrine in both is established by the same arguments, or, more properly speaking, illustrated by the same similitudes. “One head,” “one body,” “one new man,” “one temple,” are in both Epistles the figures under which the society of believers in Christ, and their common relation to him as such, are represented. The ancient and as had been thought the indelible distinction between Jew and Gentile, in both Epistles, is declared to be “now abolished by his cross.” Besides this consent in the general tenor of the two Epistles, and in the run also and warmth of thought with which they are composed, we may naturally look for many of the same expressions, and sometimes for whole sentences being alike; since such expressions and sentences would be repeated in the second letter as yet fresh in the author’s mind from the writing of the first. Puley.

—Out of the one hundred and fifty-five verses contained in the so-called Epistle to the Ephesians, seventy-eight verses contain expressions identical with those in the Epistle to the Colossians. The kind of resemblance is just what we might expect to find in the work of a man whose mind was thoroughly imbued with the ideas and expressions of the one Epistle when he wrote the other. C.—The highest characteristic which these two Epistles have in common is that of a presentation of the LORD JESUS CHRIST, fuller and clearer than we find in previous writing, as the HEAD of creation and of mankind. All things created through Christ, all things coherent in him, all things reconciled to the Father by him, the eternal purpose to restore and complete all things in him—such are the ideas which grew richer and more distinct in the mind of the apostle, as he meditated on the gospel which he had been preaching, and the truths implied in it. In the Epistle to the Colossians, this divine Headship of

Christ is maintained as the safeguard against the fancies which filled the heavens with secondary divinities, and which laid down rules for an artificial sanctity of men upon the earth. In the Epistle to the Ephesians, the eternity and universality of God’s redeeming purpose in Christ, and the gathering of men unto him as his members, are set forth as gloriously revealed in the gospel. In both, the application of the truth concerning Christ, as the Image of God and the Head of men, to the common relations of human life—and particularly of husband and wife, parents and children, masters and servants—is dwelt upon in such detail as to form a perfect code of Christian social morals. S.

3-27. After his usual manner, he congratulates the Colossians on the report which Epaphras had brought of their faith, and love, and of hope. With his thanksgiving for this he gradually and delicately interweaves his prayer for their further advance in knowledge and practice; and then almost imperceptibly approaches the great subject of their error and his anxiety. Admirable indeed is the way in which, through the long sentence extending from chapter 1: 9 to chapter 1: 20, the figure of our glorified Lord is made slowly to rise upon the mind’s eye in all its love and majesty, care being taken meantime that every separate clause should do its own work in affirming His truth and impugning their error. Paul uses the very terms which they had adopted for their vain imaginations: as in the case of the word rendered “fullness” in chapter 1: 19, which is the “pleroma” of the Gnostic heretics; he overthrows by anticipation their practice of angel-worship by maintaining the absolute and exclusive preeminence of Christ over all created beings, and that through the blood of his cross. His blood has made peace; and in that peace they who were once God’s enemies are included, provided they continue grounded in the faith, and are not moved away from it. To this end, he, the apostle, is laboring, carrying on, in his work for Christ, the afflictions of Christ to their completion, according to the stewardship of the mystery intrusted to him, which was Christ among them, the hope of the glory to come. A.

8. Love in the Spirit.** Love, purified and made divine, rises and attaches itself to what is invisible and immortal; it becomes at once more tender and more holy, more intimate and more respectful; it loves God in every soul, and loves every soul in God. The believer who sees all things with the very eye of God loves, if we dare so express it, with the very heart of God. A. V.

9. Light is sent in answer to prayer. Paul is so convinced of this, that he not merely writes the Epistles according to the wisdom given unto him, but he tells the churches that he prays for them, that God may enlighten their minds, and give them spiritual understanding and knowledge. And so it is with all spiritual blessings. “Prayer brings all heaven before our eyes,” and within our reach. A. S.

10. Religion is the likeness of God in the soul of man, and a Christian is an imitator of God; hence he is called “to walk worthy of God,” to act as becometh one who professes to bear the divine image. He should be blameless and harmless; a follower only of that which is good; holy in all manner of conversation and godliness: a beautiful specimen of whatsoever is noble, dignified, generous, and useful. The world take us at our word: they accept our profession as the rule of their expectation; and although they often look for too much, considering the present imperfect state of human nature, yet to a certain extent their demands are authorized by our own declarations. J. A. J.

Fruitful. Our Saviour did not undergo all those grievous pains for us merely that we should cease to commit sin. It is not for that sluggish and inglorious virtue that he has prepared the glories of his kingdom. He did not come to reign over the dead; nor was it any part of his purpose to people heaven with drones and sleepers. As his life on earth was active, as he spent his days in working the work of him that sent him, so must all Christians do Christ’s work; and they must strive to do it as cheerfully, as faithfully, and as constantly as Christ did the work of his Father. A. W. H.

Increasing in the knowledge of God. All life expands and comes to perfection with due nutriment seasonably administered. You may starve the divine life as well as choke it. A soul conversant with a few stereotyped thoughts which run for ever in the old grooves can never furnish a home for an expanding spiritual life. And there is nourishment for the souls that have been born into the divine kingdom. God has provided the amplest stores for the healthy development of the children He brings into his kingdom here. And, if our piety is to grow, we must resort to and feed on these stores, all of them. J. D.

11. Unto all patience.** Patience is the Christian’s suffering power; it is passive fortitude, an ability to suffer; and so apprehensive he is of their great need of a full and ample supply of this power, that he prays that they might be strengthened in this kind with might, with all might; that they might be even almighty sufferers; strengthened with a might according and corresponding to the glorious power of God himself. Howe.

12. We must always take such passages as seem to make the discipline of the world an essential part of the preparing of us for glory in conjunction with this other undeniable truth which completes them, that when a man has the love of God in his heart, however feebly, however newly, there and then he is fit for the inheritance. Christian people make vast mistakes sometimes in talking about “being made meet for the inheritance of the saints in light,” about being “ripe for glory,” and the like. “God hath made us meet for the inheritance of the saints in light,” says the apostle. That is a past act. The preparedness for heaven comes when a man turns to Christ. A Christian at any period of his Christian experience, if it please God to take him, is fit for the kingdom. The life is life, whether it be the budding beauty and feebleness of childhood, the strength of manhood, or the maturity and calm peace of old age. Remember that, though the root of the matter, the seed of the kingdom, may be in you, and that though, therefore, you have a right to feel that at any period of your Christian experience if it please God to take you out of this world you are fit for heaven, yet in his mercy he is leaving you here, training you, disciplining you, cleansing you, making you to be polished shafts in his quiver. A. M.

12,13. Light—darkness.** Hell is nothing but the orb of sin and wickedness, the hemisphere of darkness in which all evil moves; and heaven is the opposite hemisphere of light, the bright orb of truth, holiness, and goodness; and we do actually in this life instate ourselves in the possession of one or other of them. Take sin and disobedience out of hell, and it will presently clear up into light, tranquillity, serenity, and shine out into heaven. Every true saint carrieth his heaven about with him in his own heart; and hell, that is without him, can have no power over him. Cudworth.

14. It is certain that the satisfaction and substitution necessary for the atonement of man can take place only through something which is greater than all save God; and also, that he who undertakes this satisfaction and substitution must be greater than all which is not God. This is even God himself, who became man in order to undertake this satisfaction and substitution for us. Anselm.—15. Paul says not merely that our Lord was when on earth the visible image of God, but that he is so still. In Him only God manifests himself to man, and he is still visible to the eye of faith. C.—Notion, conception, image of God, we can form no other than that of Jesus Christ our Lord. He is the image of the invisible God, and in him is represented all the fullness of the Godhead until we shall know even as we are known. T. A.

The first-born of every creature. The difficulty vanishes when we attend to the reason he assigns for giving him that designation. No sooner has he called him the first-born of every creature than he immediately adds, “all things were created by him, and for him.” And, that no room might be left for the remotest suspicion that he himself might have been created, eternity, in the most absolute sense of that word, is directly ascribed to him: “And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.” Surely he who existed before all things, must himself be without beginning, or from everlasting. Hence it appears that this designation, the first-born of every creature, is of the same import with that other form of expression which the apostle useth (Heb. 1: 2), where, having styled him the Son of God, he adds, “whom he hath appointed heir of all things.” And both serve to denote that universal dominion which our Lord hath by inheritance, as the only begotten of the Father, of the same essence with himself, “the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person.” R. W.

17. By him all things subsist.** We shall never understand the Christian thought about God’s universe until we are able to say, Preservation is a continual creation; and beneath all the ordinary workings of nature, as we faithlessly call it, and the apparently dead play of secondary causes, there are welling forth, and energizing, the living love and the blessed power of Christ, the Maker, and Monarch, and Sustainer of all. A. M.

18. Christ is more than the founder of the Church. He pours his own life into it. It is his body. Informing it with his Spirit, the Comforter, he took up a constant abode on earth, in the life of his followers. Laying down his Hebrew body, his soul emancipated itself from all national restrictions, and went forth to make its dwelling in every believing heart. So intimate is the union between the disciple and Jesus. “I am the vine, ye are the branches”; “I in you, and you in me.” F. D. H.

19. The prominent thought in Paul’s mind through the whole Epistle is the elevation, pre-eminence, and all-sufficiency of Christ. He dilates still further on the qualification of our Lord for this glorious supremacy. “All the fullness was pleased to dwell in him.” “In him dwelleth all the fullness of the Deity bodily.” There seem to have been in the Colossian Church, even at this early period, speculations about a pleroma or plenitude of being, such as afterward became so rife among the Gnostics. From this pleroma it was supposed that various beings and agencies issued intermediate between God and man. Paul condemns these speculations, by claiming for the eternal Son all the pleroma, the true plenitude of Deity. D. F.—The Greek has only “Because he was well pleased that in him should all the fullness dwell.” A.

20. Our Lord is here declared to be the grand center, in whom the reconciliation between God and man, between heaven and earth, is effected. There has been separation, but in him is the adjustment; there has been antagonism, but in him is its reconciliation; the reconciliation of all things, of the highest antagonisms, of those between an infinite and holy God and his finite and sinful creatures, is here declared to be consummated in the peace purchased through the blood of the cross of Christ; for it pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell. And this is the evidence of the abounding fullness in Christ, that by him all things are reconciled unto God. There is something very wonderful in the position here assigned to Christ, as the grand Reconciler of all things. No man can grasp it fully; but the more it is studied, the more marvelous, majestic, and elevating does it seem to be; the more does the sacred person of our Lord stand out alone, as the only center of the world, central between God and man, between heaven and earth. His fullness, in its largest sense, is made up of the fullness of heaven and the fullness of earth, gathered together, recapitulated, brought to its crown and its peace, in him who hath made of both one, breaking down the middle wall of partition. H. B. S.

23. Paul of course speaks here hyperbolically, meaning, the teaching which you heard from Epaphras is the same which has been published universally by the apostles. C.—We learn from the most authentic writers and the most ancient records that the gospel was preached within thirty years after the death of Christ in Idumea, Syria, and Mesopotamia; in Media and Parthia, and many parts of Asia Minor; in Egypt, Mauritania, Ethiopia, and other regions of Africa; in Greece and Italy; as far north as Scythia, and as far westward as Spain. P.

24. The Church militant has inherited the condition of Christ, humbled and suffering. Here below it represents its divine chief as Son of man, and will represent him as such to the end of the world. And, while Jesus Christ, the head or chief, reigns in the peace and glory of heaven, the body, which is the Church, remaining upon the earth, suffers upon the earth all that Jesus Christ would suffer if he were still upon the earth. In one sense nothing is wanting to the afflictions of Christ, and in another sense something will always be wanting; there will always be a residue to suffer until the end of the ages which are reserved to the Church and to mankind; the Church is nothing else than the Man of sorrows, perpetuated in the persons of those who are united to him. A. V.—We are told of self-sacrifice, that it is the law or moving power of Christ’s kingdom; it is certainly far from being the law of natural life, yet it seems to stir the heart, even as beauty moves the senses, infallibly, by touching the spring of some hidden sure affinity, lying deeper than the nature with which it seems at present to war. Nothing belonging to Christ’s kingdom tells much upon the world which has not in it the element of sacrifice and of Christlike willingness to participate in pain. Koble.

27. Christ in you.** As really and more intimately than when men beheld his countenance, and listened to his words of love and power, Jesus is with us still. If it would strengthen you in your difficulties and struggles to know that he is near, to hear him speak, to take hold of his strengthening hand—know that he is nearer still than this. Every pure thought that rises in your breast is Christ’s suggestion; every holy desire and resolution the proof that he is at hand; every kindling of the spirit into devotion the unconscious recognition by the spirit of his heavenly presence near. Open the door of the heart to him, and the very mind and soul of Jesus will pass into yours; your spirit will be suffused with his; the very heart of Jesus will be beating within your breast. Caird.—The hope of glory. Heaven begun in the soul is the living proof that makes the heaven to come credible. It is the eagle eye of faith which penetrates the grave, and sees far into the tranquil things of death. He alone can believe in immortality who feels the resurrection in him already. F. W. R.

28. Let the Phrygians boast if they will of their ancient mysteries. Paul has a nobler boast. He deals with a glorious mystery of God, which is no gloomy secret, but a truth brightly revealed, viz., “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” They who dealt with what the ancients called mysteries kept many of their disciples in a position of imperfect development, and admitted only a favored few to a knowledge of their arcsma. On the contrary, the apostle, as a steward of the Christian mystery, proclaims his desire to “present every man complete,” i. e., thoroughly initiated, enlightened, and established in Christ Jesus. D. F.

Whom we preach. CHRIST, as the personal center of the gospel, to whom all ancient prophecies point, whom the narratives record and the apostles demonstrate the Saviour of the world, the one divine Being who has taken upon himself our nature and life, and has manifested the Infinite by whom we are encompassed; Christ, as the author and patron of reform, the perfect example of all loveliness and virtue; in whom the poorest may find friendship, the guiltless forgiveness, and the most defiled an inward cleansing; whom angels worship and saints adore, and whose coming to the earth has crowned its years and lands with glory, and yet who is interested in each of his followers, is their strength in temptation, their solace in sickness, and who comes hereafter to be their Judge; through whom men may be heirs of God, partakers of his nature, partakers of his peace, and after this life participants of his glory. He is to be preached as uniting in himself all the attributes of God, and reconciling them all with the rescue of the sinner; as offering himself with an equal appeal from the cross and from the throne; at once absolute in law and infinite in pardon; the Lord of the world and the Leader to the heavens. R. S. S.

The gospel story is a living and a life-giving story! It is not ancient only, nor modern only, but both, and of all time. It fills the amplitude of eternity; for its author is one who is “the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever”! It links us with Him who was before all worlds, and who will be, and be ours, when he shall have rebuked into annihilation the worlds his word summoned to exist! To preach Christ may then be to preach the facts of a history; but they are the facts of this hour no less than of eighteen centuries ago. What he has done, he is doing; to show him to you, the living impersonation of almighty love, as he walked among us of old, is to show him to you the same quickening spirit of love as he works among us now! W. A. B.