COLOSSIANS 4
(1) The Fullness of Christ (2:8-10)
8 See to it that no one carries you away captive through philosophy and empty illusion, according to human tradition, according to the elemental forces of the world, and not according to Christ;
9 because it is in him that all the fullness of deity resides in bodily reality,
10 and you have found your fullness in him—in him, who is head of every principality and power.
8 Having encouraged his readers to remain firmly anchored to Christ and the gospel, Paul now warns them not to be shifted from this impregnable position by any plausible form of persuasion. It is not necessary to infer from his language that he has one particular teacher in view;35 he warns them against any attempt to lead them astray by imposing arguments. The verb rendered “carries . . . away captive” (a rare one)36 has been variously translated “rob” or “kidnap”: does the apostle mean “Don’t let anyone plunder you” or “Don’t let anyone carry you off as plunder”? On the whole, the latter and more forcible alternative is preferable: they are in danger of being carried off into captivity, and must be put on the alert lest they become the prey of those who wish to take away their freedom. The spiritual confidence-tricksters against whom they are put on their guard did not inculcate a godless or immoral way of life: the error of such teaching would have been readily exposed. Their teaching was rather a blend of the highest elements of religion known to Judaism and paganism; it was, in fact, a philosophy. Paul does not condemn philosophy as such, but a philosophy of this kind—one which seduces believers from the simplicity of their faith in Christ. “Everything that had to do with theories about God and the world and the meaning of human life was called ’philosophy’ at that time, not only in the pagan schools but also in the Jewish schools of the Greek cities.”37
For all its attractiveness, this philosophy was but empty illusion.38If the Colossians embraced it, they would be the losers and not the gainers thereby. Those who knew what they were about when they “received Christ Jesus the Lord” could not find it acceptable; it was a human tradition39 which overthrew the essential truths of Christian faith and life. It sounded good, it appealed to natural religious instincts, but there was nothing in it for Christians. It was not a teaching “according to Christ”—in line with the tradition handed down from him (v. 6)—but one which accorded with the “elements (stoicheia) of the world (kosmos).”40
There are two Pauline letters which use this term stoicheia (rendered “rudiments” in the KJV and the ARV, “elemental spirits” in the RSV and the NEB, “basic principles” in the NIV). The other is the letter to the Galatians. In Gal. 4:3, 9, the stoicheia are the forces which regulated both Jewish life under the law and pagan life in the service of “beings that by nature are no gods.” The Galatian converts’ reversion to the domination of the stoicheia was shown in their observance of the Jewish sacred calendar: “You observe days, and months, and seasons, and years” (Gal. 4:10). Since those calendrical divisions are regulated by the heavenly bodies, some association of the stoicheia with the planets may be implied.41 (It may be inferred from Col. 2:16 that similar calendrical observances were enjoined by the Colossian heresy.) Again, the argument of Galatians has suggested to many exegetes that the stoicheia in that letter are closely related to (if not identical with) the angels by whose agency the law is said to have been administered (Gal. 3:19).42 The objection that some of these meanings are not attested for stoicheia until later43 may be answered in part by the consideration that the phrase “the elements of the world” in this sense is an original Pauline contribution to religious vocabulary. In the divine providence there was a time when the stoicheia fulfilled a supervisory role in the lives of the people of God, as a slave-attendant44looked after a freeborn child until he came of age. The coming of age of the people of God coincided with the advent of faith in Christ: to remain under the control of the stoicheia after that was a sign of spiritual immaturity.
So, too, the form of teaching which was gaining currency at Colossae was something which belonged to a pre-Christian stage of experience; therefore, whatever its precise nature might be, to accept it now would be a mark of spiritual retrogression. As Paul goes on to assure them, they had said a long farewell to all such forces when they died with Christ to begin a new life in him.45 Formerly, when they were “in the flesh,”46 they were unable to throw off the domination of the powers which controlled the present world-order in opposition to God. But now one has come to conquer these powers and liberate human beings from their sway;47 how foolish, then, it is for those who have enjoyed this liberation to go back and put themselves under the yoke of these discredited tyrants all over again! They have transferred their allegiance to the ruler of a new order, who has defeated the hostile powers; let his will and teaching be their rule of life henceforth.
9 The teachers of error may have talked of the fullness of divine being as distributed among a hierarchy of spirit-powers, through which it was filtered down to this world:48 Christians had something better. They had Christ, the personal revelation of the Father, the one mediator between God and human beings, in whom (truly man as he was) the plenitude of deity was embodied.49 Far from there being any inherent impossibility in the nature of things for God to communicate directly with this world, he who shared the divine nature had become flesh and made his dwelling with men and women. The adverb (meaning “corporeally”) at the end of v. 9 no doubt implies his incarnation, but probably carries something of the sense which the noun “body” bears in v. 17—the substance as opposed to the shadow (hence the rendering above: “in bodily reality”).50
10 Not only so, but Christians by their union with him participated in his life. If the fullness of deity resided in him, his fullness was imparted to them. There is an affinity in sense here with the language of the Johannine prologue: “from his fullness have we all received, grace upon grace” (John 1:16). Without him his people must remain forever disiecta membra—incomplete, unable to attain the true end of their existence. But united with him, incorporated in him, they are joined with him in a living bond in which he and they complement each other (although they are not essential to his fullness as he is to theirs).51
Moreover, the one with whom Christians are united, and in whom they are filled, is the “head of every principality and power.”52 As in Col. 1:16 all principalities and powers are said to have been created through him, he is their head in the sense of being the source of their being, and therefore also their ruler. But the head/body relationship is probably not implied here. Whatever the original intention of the Christ-hymn of Col. 1:15-20 may have been, it is quite unlikely that Paul or any of his associates wished to suggest that the principalities and powers, or the world to which they belonged, formed in any sense the body of which Christ is head. What is emphasized here, as in the Christ-hymn to which the present passage harks back, is Christ’s primacy over all creation, including the principalities and powers.53
It has been argued that all that is meant by this clause is that Christ is superior to all rule and authority.54 But that more than this is intended may be gathered from the references to principalities and powers in the Christ-hymn and more particularly in the celebration of Christ’s victory over them in v. 15. There is more point to the mention of “every principality and power” in v. 10 if in fact forces in the spiritual world, denoted comprehensively as “principalities and powers,” played some part in the Colossians’ thinking. Those who are united to Christ have no need to pay their respects to those forces over which he has vindicated his preeminence.
(2) The New Circumcision (2:11-12)
11 In him, too, you were circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands, by the stripping off of the body of flesh55—that is to say, with the circumcision of Christ—
12 when you were buried with him in baptism.56 In baptism,57 too, you were raised with him through faith in the power of God who raised him from the dead.58
11 If only they called to mind their baptism, and all that was involved and implied in it, they would be delivered from such inconsistent syncretism.
Their baptism involved a spiritual circumcision—”a circumcision not made with hands.” Even in the OT the symbolical character of the outward sign of circumcision was emphasized: what God really desired was not the external sign for its own sake, but the “circumcision of the heart” (Deut. 10:16; 30:6; Jer. 4:4), an inward purification, which to Paul was the true circumcision.59 But the Israelite who appreciated the primary importance of “heart-circumcision” did not normally think himself exempt on that ground from the requirement of physical circumcision;60 now, however, the work of Christ has so thoroughly exhausted the significance of the original ordinance (as of the whole ceremonial law) that it is henceforth superseded.61 Paul’s choice of language here would be especially apt if circumcision were one feature of the syncretism which was being inculcated in the church of Colossae. No longer is there any place for a circumcision performed by hands62 (which, being restricted to males, was in any case inappropriate for the new order in Christ)63; the death of Christ has effected the inward cleansing which the prophets associated with the new covenant,64 and of this Christian baptism is the visible sign.
This spiritual circumcision is further called “the circumcision of Christ.” This phrase may mean either the circumcision undergone by Christ or (preferably) the circumcision effected by Christ.65 If it bears the former meaning, the reference is not so much to his circumcision as a Jewish infant of eight days old (Luke 2:21) as to his crucifixion, of which his circumcision in infancy was at best a token anticipation. In that case the “stripping off66 of the body of flesh”67 will denote what Christ did in his death; baptism is viewed (as in Rom. 6:3-4) as a symbolical sharing in Christ’s death. “This circumcision of the Christ is reproduced sacramentally in the members of the community by baptism.”68
If, on the other hand, the “circumcision of Christ” is the circumcision which he effects, the inward cleansing brought about by his death, resurrection, and indwelling presence in those who are united to him by faith, then the “stripping off of the body of flesh” refers to the believer’s baptismal experience (described in Rom. 6:6 as the crucifixion of “our old self” and the destruction of “the sinful body”). It involves the reckoning of one’s former self with its desires and propensities to be dead, as a necessary prelude to putting on the new nature—putting on Christ himself in his resurrection life.69 What the believer puts off is “the whole personality organized for, and geared into rebellion against God.”70
12 Their baptism might, again, be viewed as their participation in Christ’s burial.71 The “stripping off of the body of flesh” and its burial out of sight alike emphasized that the old life was a thing of the past. They had shared in the death of Christ; they had also shared in his burial. Similarly, in Rom. 6:3-14 Paul argues that those who have been buried with Christ “by baptism into death” must henceforth lead new lives in him, no longer enslaved to sin.
For baptism not only proclaims that the old order is past and done with; it proclaims that a new order has been inaugurated. The convert did not remain in the baptismal water; he emerged from it to “walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4). Baptism, therefore, implies a sharing in Christ’s resurrection as well as in his death and burial.72
The resurrection of Christ is held forth by Paul as the supreme demonstration of the power of God. Those who have been raised with Christ have been raised through faith in the divine power which brought him back from the dead, and from now on that power energizes them and maintains the new life within them—the new life which is nothing less than Christ’s resurrection life flowing through all the members of his body.73In him they already enjoy eternal life, the life of the age to come.
This whole conception is thoroughly and characteristically Pauline. It may well be that in this place (together with Col. 3:1 and Eph. 2:6) the idea of the believer’s participation in the risen life of Christ finds clearer expression than it does elsewhere in the Pauline letters, but to suppose that a Paulinist rather than Paul is responsible for this phraseology is to suppose that someone other than Paul could give clearer expression to a central thought of Paul’s than Paul himself could give.74
And be it noted: it is through faith that the believer bids farewell to the old life and embarks upon the new. The sacrament of baptism derives its efficacy not from the water or from the convert’s token burial in it, but from the saving act of Christ and the regenerating work of God, producing that faith-union with the risen Lord of which the sacrament is the sign and seal.75
(3) The Triumph of Christ (2:13-15)
13 Yes, when you76 were dead in your trespasses, uncircumcised Gentiles as you were,77 he brought you78 to life together with him. He forgave us79 all our trespasses;
14 he blotted out the bond which stood against us, ordinances and all,80 the bond that was opposed to us; he has taken it out of the way, nailing it to the cross.81
15 He stripped82 the principalities and powers and made a public exhibition of them, triumphing over them83 by it.84
13 Yes, the apostle insists, this is what has happened to you.85 You were spiritually and morally dead in your earlier pagan days. But now you have been brought to life again—brought to life in Christ, who was himself dead and came to life again.86 Your new life, indeed, is a sharing in the new life which Christ received when God raised him from the dead. And in giving you this new life with Christ, God has broken you clean away from your past. He has freely forgiven87 all your sins—and not yours only, but ours too.88 Paul insisted that Jews, who had received the divine law by revelation, and pagans, who had not received it—not in the same form, at least—were alike morally bankrupt before God and equally in need of his pardoning grace.89 Jews had disobeyed his will in the form in which they knew it (the law); pagans had disobeyed it in the form in which they knew it (the inner voice of conscience). But, like the creditor in the parable faced with his two debtors, “when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave90 them both” (Luke 7:42).
14 The sins which have now been forgiven represented, so to speak, a mountain of bankruptcy which those who had incurred it were bound to acknowledge but could never have any hope of discharging. They had violated the ordinances of the law, and nothing that they might do could afford redress. But Christ wiped the slate clean and gave them a fresh start. He took that signed acknowledgment of indebtedness91 which stood as a perpetual witness against them and cancelled it by his death.92 It might even be said that he took the document, ordinances and all, and nailed it to his cross as an act of triumphant defiance in the face of those blackmailing powers that were holding it over men and women in order to command their allegiance.
There is perhaps an allusion here to the fact that our Lord’s own accusation was fixed to his cross. Jesus nails the accusation against his people to the cross, just as his own accusation had been nailed there. Thus his victorious passion liberates them from their bankruptcy and bondage. As Krishna Pal put it:
Jesus for thee a body takes,
Thy guilt assumes, thy fetters breaks,
Discharging all thy dreadful debt—
And canst thou then such love forget?
15 Christ by his cross releases his people not only from the guilt of sin but from its hold over them. “He breaks the power of cancelled sin.” Not only has he blotted out the record of their indebtedness but he has subjugated those powers whose possession of that damning indictment was a means of controlling them. The very instrument of disgrace and death by which the hostile forces thought they had him in their grasp and had conquered him forever was turned by him into the instrument of their defeat and disablement. As he was suspended there, bound hand and foot to the wood in apparent weakness, they imagined they had him at their mercy, and flung themselves on him with hostile intent. But, far from suffering their attack without resistance, he grappled with them and mastered them, stripping them of the armor in which they trusted, and held them aloft in his outstretched hands, displaying to the universe their helplessness and his own unvanquished strength. Such seems to be the picture painted in these words.93
Had they but realized the truth, those “rulers of this age”—had they (as Paul puts it in another letter) known the hidden wisdom of God which decreed the glory of Christ and his people— “they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Cor. 2:8).94 But now they are dethroned and incapacitated, and the shameful tree has become the victor’s triumphal chariot, before which his captives are driven in humiliating procession, the involuntary and impotent confessors of his superior might.95
The cross of Christ, in short, is the answer to the theosophy which was beguiling the minds of the Lycus churches. How absurd it now appeared to pay tribute to those principalities and powers which, it was held, controlled the way from God to this world and back from this world to God! That way is controlled by one person—by him who has vindicated his sovereignty over the principalities and powers. Their envious enmity to human beings can no longer be indulged; they have been pacified96 by a stronger than themselves.97 Whatever power they once exercised, they are now the “weak and beggarly elemental forces” that Paul declares them to be in Gal. 4:9.
The principalities and powers which figured so largely in the Colossian heresy may play no part in the world outlook of most of our contemporaries—although the number of those who accept the invitation to “plan with the planets” in the columns of popular newspapers or watch astrological programs on television should warn us not to frame such a statement in absolute terms. The angelic beings through which the law was held to have been mediated may mean nothing to modern men and women. Angels and demons may be unknown to them by name. But many of them are unprecedentedly aware of powerful and malignant “demonic” forces operating against them, which they are quite unable to master, whether by individual strength or by united action. These forces may be Frankenstein monsters of their own creation; they may be subliminal horrors over which they have no conscious control. “We are still conscious that, apart from the victory of Christ, man is a helpless victim in a hostile cosmos. It is little comfort to us that the inexorable fate which was once expressed in terms of the influence of the stars, conceived as personal demons, is now expressed in terms of psychological, or physical or economic determinism. We still ask how a man is to triumph over an evil heredity, or how he can be free and victorious in a world of rigid law and scientific necessity. We still suffer from ’astronomical intimidation’—terror at the insignificance of man and the vastness of the material universe encompassing him.”98 Moreover, we are acutely conscious of our inevitable involvement in situations from which our moral sense recoils—but can anything effective be done about it?99 But for the gospel, we might well think of ourselves as puppets in the hand of a blind and unfriendly fate. And what would it matter whether we resist and be crushed sooner, or acquiesce and be crushed a little later?
The message proclaimed by Paul to the Colossians remains the one message of hope to men and women in frustration and despair. Christ crucified and risen is Lord of all: all the forces of the universe are subject to him, not only the benign ones but the hostile ones as well. They are all subject to the one through whom they were created; the hostile forces are also subject to the one by whom they were conquered. Therefore, to be united to him is to be liberated from their thraldom, to enjoy perfect freedom, to overcome the powers of evil through participation in his victory. The redemption that is in Christ Jesus is a cosmic redemption; its healing virtue streams out to the farthest bounds of creation. But it is a personal and particular redemption too: the conqueror who is enthroned at God’s right hand, supreme above the universe and filling it with his presence, is at the same time enthroned as king in each believer’s heart. Though “we do not yet see everything in subjection to him” (Heb. 2:8), we are nevertheless assured that, because of his redemptive act, all creation will ultimately “be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21). And here and now those who have already entered into that liberty may share Paul’s persuasion “that neither death nor life, . . . nor principalities, . . . nor powers, . . . nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38-39).
2. GUARD YOUR FREEDOM! (2:16-19)
Since the new teaching involved an ascetic discipline which combined food restrictions and calendar regulations with a form of angel worship, Paul goes on to warn the Colossian Christians of the necessity of guarding on those particular fronts the freedom which is theirs in Christ.
(1) Freedom in Respect of Food and Festivals (2:16-17)
16 Let no one therefore sit in judgment on you in the matter of food and100 drink, or with regard to a festival or new moon or sabbath.
17 These things101 are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance is Christ’s.
16 Don’t let anyone sit in judgment on you, he tells them, in matters of food or drink. He had said this sort of thing already when addressing a situation in which people of different practices and traditions in such matters shared one Christian fellowship: “let not him who abstains pass judgment on him who eats” (Rom. 14:3). But now he is not simply referring to an attempt to impose Jewish food laws on Gentile believers, nor yet to a ban on eating the flesh of animals that had been sacrificed to pagan deities—a subject which had been discussed in his correspondence with the church of Corinth (1 Cor. 8:1-13; 10:19-30). The Jewish food laws did not extend to beverages, but here the reference is to more stringent regulations of an ascetic nature, perhaps involving the renunciation of animal flesh and of wine and strong drink102 (after the Nazirite fashion). In any case, Paul lays down the principle of Christian liberty in all such matters, in the spirit of his Master who, by one comprehensive pronouncement, “declared all foods clean” (Mark 7:19).
Elsewhere, in dealing with these matters, the apostle introduces a further principle which might impose a voluntary limitation on one’s Christian liberty—the principle of respect for the tender conscience of a “weaker brother” (Rom. 14:13-21; 1 Cor. 8:7-13). But this latter principle is invoked when Christians are asserting their liberty at all costs (even at the cost of Christian charity); at Colossae it is precisely Christian liberty that needs to be asserted in face of specious attempts to undermine it.
And don’t let anyone sit in judgment on you, he goes on, in respect of holy days. The observance of the sacred calendar, like the observance of the levitical food laws, was obligatory on Jews. But Christians are free from obligations of this kind. If a Christian decides to abstain from certain kinds of food and drink, or to set aside certain days or seasons for special observance, commemoration, or meditation, good: these are questions to be settled between the individual conscience and God. Concerning such questions Paul writes in another letter: “Let everyone be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. He also who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God; while he who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God” (Rom. 14:5-6). But to regard them as matters of religious obligation is a retrograde step for Christians to take. When the churches of Galatia were minded to adopt the observance of special “days, and months, and seasons, and years,” Paul told them that this was nothing less than placing themselves afresh under the yoke of the “weak and beggarly” elemental ordinances which regulated these time divisions (Gal. 4:9-10). He now uses a similar argument for the benefit of the Colossian church, which was being criticized by the innovators for not observing festivals and new moons and sabbaths.
Most cultures had their festivals, and many observed the appearance of the new moon (which was normally important for the ordering of the calendar), but the sabbath was peculiarly Jewish. It is therefore probable that the festivals in question are those of the Jewish year, and that the reference to the new moon is to the Jewish celebration of the first of the month (Num. 10:10; 28:11-15).103 Like the Galatians at an earlier date, the Colossians are now told that the observance of these occasions as obligatory is an acknowledgment of the continuing authority of the powers through which such regulations were mediated—the powers that were decisively subjugated by Christ. It would be preposterous indeed for those who had reaped the benefit of Christ’s victory to put themselves voluntarily under the control of the powers which he had conquered.
Had this lesson been kept in mind in post-apostolic generations, there might have been less friction than there was in the church over the divergent calculations of the date of Easter (whether during the quartodeciman controversy or later).104 No doubt it was awkward (as it still is) for Christians to have differing procedures for fixing the anniversary of their Lord’s passion and resurrection when they wished to commemorate the saving events year by year; but the adjustment of such discrepancies is a matter of expediency, not of principle. And sabbatarian controversies among Christians would be laid to rest if serious account were taken of the injunction: “Let no one sit in judgment on you with regard to a sabbath.”105
17 Why must they refuse to be dictated to in these matters? Because cause all such matters belonged to a transitory order. The legal prescriptions of yesteryear were but a shadow;106 with the coming of Christ and the proclamation of the gospel they now have the substance. This analogy of the legal shadow and the gospel substance is elaborated in the letter to the Hebrews, with special reference to the sacrificial ritual.107 Eduard Schweizer has argued that “Paul, in speaking of the law, could never use the relatively innocuous image of the shadow of that which is to come,”108 since his assessment of the law in relation to the gospel was much more negative. But when Paul is not polemicizing against legalism, he can use language which is not so far removed from the shadow/substance antithesis. Thus, in 1 Cor. 5:7-8, the sacrifice of Christ is the reality which was foreshadowed by the passover in Egypt, and the festival of unleavened bread which followed the passover is used as a picture of the Christian life which the sacrifice of Christ makes possible.
In developing this argument, Paul could have been adapting principles which he had learned in the course of his rabbinical education. Many Jews looked on their festivals and sacred seasons as adumbrations of the messianic age. There are rabbinical texts which treat the sabbath as a foretaste of that coming time109—the time which, for Paul and other Christians, has come already in Christ.
Paul might have been expected to say “the substance is Christ” rather than “the substance is Christ’s”; indeed, it has been suggested that “Christ’s” might here be emended to “Christ.”110 But the word which is used in the sense of “substance” is the ordinary Greek word for “body” (sōma), and the use of this word in the context to denote the body of Christ may have influenced the choice of the genitive instead of the nominative: it is as members of the body of Christ that his people now possess the substance, so that they may cheerfully let the shadow go.
(2) Freedom in Respect of Asceticism and Angel Worship (2:18-19)
18 Let no one disqualify you111 through delight in “humility” and angel worship—the things which he has seen112 at his initiation—inflated to no purpose by his carnal mind,
19 and not holding fast the head,113 from which the whole body, supplied and fitted together through the joints and ligaments, grows with the growth that comes from God.
18 Don’t let anyone disqualify you, Paul goes on, by a show of superior humility. Some people love to make a parade of exceptional piety. They pretend to have found the way to a higher plane of spiritual experience, as though they had been initiated into sacred mysteries which give them an infinite advantage over the uninitiated. Others are overprone to be taken in by such people, for this kind of claim impresses those who always fall for the idea of an “inner ring.”114 But (says the apostle) don’t be misled by such people. For all their lofty pretension, for all the delight which they take in self-abasement and angel worship, for all their boasting of the special insight which they have received into divine reality, they are simply inflated by the pride of their own unspiritual minds, having lost contact with him who is the true head and fount of life and knowledge.
Humility is a Christian virtue,115 but the “humility” professed by the people here referred to is a counterfeit “humility.” The truly humble person is unconscious of his or her humility, let alone taking delight or pride in it. We may recall Uriah Heep and others of his tribe who make a parade of “humility,” though their “humility” does not always take the form of asceticism or “mortification” of the body, as was evidently so in the present case.
As for the angel worship, this seems to go beyond such speculation about angels as was common in several Jewish circles (such as the Essenes and apocalyptists), with the claim to participation in the worship offered by the heavenly host, and to denote an actual cult of angels. While Paul may have the elemental forces chiefly in mind, or those principalities and powers to which he has made earlier allusion, he seems to refer here more generally to angels as a class. Some indeed, like Ernst Percy, suggest that “angel worship” is but another way of designating subjection to legalism, since that involved subjection to the angels through whom the law was mediated. “By their legalism and asceticism the heretics are worshipping the angels instead of God.”116 But something more than this is required to satisfy Paul’s strong language about an angel cult “figuring centrally in the plan of salvation.”117
In a number of OT theophanies the angel of Yahweh is an extension of Yahweh’s personality; he speaks as Yahweh and is addressed as Yahweh.118Something of this order reappears in the concept of a superior angel in later phases of the merkabah tradition, where Metatron, “the prince of the countenance” (mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud as the angel of whom God says in Exod. 23:21, “my name is in him”),119 is called “the lesser Yahweh” or “the lesser Lord.”120 It is the same angel who is called Yahoel in the second-century Apocalypse of Abraham (an appellation given to him, he says, by the supreme God “in virtue of the ineffable name that is dwelling in me”).121 Earlier still, in the Melchizedek fragment from Cave 11 at Qumran, Melchizedek figures as the “God” who holds judgment “in the midst of the gods” (Ps. 82:1) and who “judges the peoples” (Ps. 7:8), the God whose reign is announced in Isa. 52:7. Melchizedek here is the angel prince who, by passing sentence on the hosts of Belial, inaugurates the age of release for the righteous.122 Also from Qumran (Cave 4) comes an angelic liturgy which takes up the theme, “Praise God, all ye angels,” and exhorts the angels, under many names, to offer various forms of worship to God.123 The exhortation formed part of the liturgy of the burnt offering sabbath by sabbath throughout the year (according to the Qumran calendar): the liturgy of the people of God on earth is designed to reproduce that presented by the angels before the heavenly throne. Such a liturgy might well be called “the worship of angels”—although there angels are not the objects of the worship but rather the initiators and exemplars of the worship.124
It has been suggested that this feature of the Colossian heresy reflected a local tendency which persisted for centuries. Thus W. M. Ramsay quotes from Canon 35 of the Synod of Laodicea (c. A.D. 363) and from the commentary of Theodoret on this letter (ad loc.) words which indicate that the practice of praying to angels was maintained by some Phrygian and Pisidian Christians in face of official ecclesiastical prohibition.125 (In later centuries the practice which had once been condemned as idolatrous came to be reckoned as piety in the form of the veneration of Michael the archangel, who was credited from the ninth century onward with being the author of a natural phenomenon in the vicinity of Colossae—”the miracle at Khonai,” as Ramsay calls it.)126 It is most improbable, however, that the practices attested by the Canons of Laodicea and by Theodoretus have any direct connection with the situation to which Paul here addresses himself.127
The difficulty of translating v. 18 as it stands gave rise to a variety of conjectural emendation. The main difficulty was posed by the participle which has been translated above “at his initiation.”128 No such meaning was attested for the verb before 1912, although it was known in Greek literature in the sense “investigate.”129 (It was no doubt the attempt to give it this sense in the present context that led to the early insertion of a negative into the preceding adjective clause, which yielded the sense “investigating things that he has not seen.”)130 But in 1912 and 1913 Martin
Dibelius and W. M. Ramsay,131 almost simultaneously, recognized that the verb was used here in a sense which it bore in recently published inscriptions from the sanctuary of Apollo at Claros, a few miles northwest of Ephesus.132 The effect of the verb as used here by Paul, says Ramsay, “depends on the fact that it was a religious term familiar to his Phrygian readers.”133 Strictly speaking, it does not denote the initiation itself but the next stage, entering the sacred area in order to see the mysteries.134 These mysteries could well be described, however (as in our translation), as “the things which he has seen at his initiation.”135 The readers would catch the suggestion that the person alluded to had formally “entered upon” his higher experience like someone being admitted to secret rites from which the vulgar mob was excluded, and was now appealing to that superior enlightenment in support of his teaching.
Whatever may have been the precise nature of the mystical experience which this teacher had undergone, his exploitation of it forms a striking contrast to Paul’s apologetic reticence when he refers to the strange thing that once happened to him when he was “caught up into Paradise” and “heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter” (2 Cor. 12:3-4). In the sequel Paul incurred a humiliating disability to keep him, as he says, “from being too elated by the abundance of revelations” (2 Cor. 12:7); but the person who is now in view, in the absence of such a visitation, could not resist being “inflated ... by his carnal mind”136 as he contemplated his extraordinary visions—and all to no purpose.
His “carnal mind” is literally “the mind of his flesh”137—a remarkable locution, quite out of keeping with the general Greek concept of the relation between body and mind. The “sensuous mind” (as the RSV renders it) is the mind that is taken up with sense perceptions (including those received in a state of ecstasy). Paul’s distinctive use of the term “flesh” points to the attitude and outlook characteristic of the old nature, before the regenerating grace of the Holy Spirit has taken effect. Even in believers this antiquated tendency may linger on: so to the Christians of Corinth Paul could write that, despite their conversion to faith in Christ, they were “still of the flesh” in their thoughts and actions, “babes in Christ,” “behaving like ordinary men,” unfit as yet to be treated as spiritual (1 Cor. 3:1-3).
19 This self-inflation and pride in private religious experiences come of not maintaining contact with the head. Here at any rate it is best to understand “head” and “body” in their physiological relation to each other. Each part of the body functions properly so long as it is under the control of the head: if it escapes from this control and begins to act independently, the consequences can be very distressing. It is under the direction of Christ, then, that the various parts of his body function harmoniously together, since they share his common life and grow to maturity under the fostering care of God,138 supplied with nutriment and fitted to each other by means of the “joints and ligaments.”139
In spite of Dibelius’s argument, developed in agreement with his exposition of Col. 1:18 and 2:10, that the body here is the cosmos,140 it is preferable by far to take the present passage in the same sense as Eph. 4:16, the body being the church.141 Dibelius’s interpretation, according to which the false teachers hold fast to the members of the cosmos-body (that is, to the principalities and powers) instead of to Christ as the head of that body, introduces into the argument an element which is not only un-Pauline but not really consistent with its context. What is more probably meant here is that the false teachers, by failing to maintain contact with him who is head of his body the church, have no true part in that body, since it is from Christ as their head that all the members of the body acquire their capacity to function aright in harmony with one another.
3. YOU DIED WITH CHRIST; THEREFORE . . . (2:20-23)
20 If142 you died with Christ from (subjection to) the elemental forces of the world,143 why, as though living in the world, do you submit to regulations—
21 “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!”
22 in reference to things which are all destined to perish by the very use that is made of them—according to human commandments and teachings?
23 Those regulations have a reputation for wisdom with their would-be religion and asceticism144 and145 severity to the body, but they are not of any value against the indulgence of the flesh.146
Paul has already told the Colossians that they were participators in the death of Christ (v. 11). Now he takes up this crucial fact again and applies it to them in a practical way. You died with Christ (he says): and in that death with him (which is what your baptism was all about), your former relation of bondage to the elemental forces of the world has been terminated. That former existence, which they dominated, has come to an end. From their point of view, you are dead. Why, then, do you go on serving them as though that former existence were still going on?147 You submit to their restrictive regulations: “Hands off this! Don’t eat that! Don’t touch that other thing!”148 And you imagine that asceticism of this kind is true holiness! But how wrong you are! Only consider: the things with which these prohibitions are concerned are all material things, belonging to this transitory order of time and sense. They are things which come to an end in the very act of being used. Handling them, eating them, or the like involves their destruction. Food, once eaten, ceases to be food. These are not the things that matter most; these are not the ultimate realities. Yet these things are the burning concern of those merely human commandments and teachings. The commandments and teachings of Christ provide more important matters than these to engage your attention. O, I agree that the acceptance of these prohibitions looks very good: it makes a favorable impression on many people and suggests that you have attained a high plane of wisdom from which you can despise the material world. There is something very specious about all this voluntary piety, this self-abasement, this harsh treatment of the body. But does it really get you anywhere? Let me assure you that it does not. The acceptance of all these ascetic restrictions is of no account when it comes to a real struggle against indulgence of the “flesh.” In fact, the most rigorous asceticism can coexist with insufferable spiritual pride, one of the subtlest and most intractable of the “works of the flesh.”149 You are following the wrong road, one which can never lead you to your true goal—a road, moreover, which is barred to all believers in Christ who know what it means to have shared in his death.
20 The idea of the believer’s dying with Christ appears in earlier Pauline letters. Paul puts it most emphatically when he says of himself, “I have been crucified with Christ” (Gal. 2:19).150 In Rom. 6:1-14 the proposal that believers should continue in sin, to give God’s grace further opportunity of displaying itself in its superabundance, is refuted by the argument that those who have died to sin can no longer live in sin. Baptism proclaims the believer’s death with Christ: “all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death” (Rom. 6:3). The finality of that death-with-Christ has been confirmed by their burial-with-Christ— a burial from which they are now risen-with-Christ to begin a new life-in-Christ.151 As death severs the bond which binds a slave to his master, so their death-with-Christ has severed the bond which bound them to sin.152 As death severs the bond which binds a wife to her husband, so their death-with-Christ has severed the bond which bound them to legal ordinances.153 Here the argument presented to the Colossian Christians is that, as death severs the bond which binds a subject to his ruler, so their death-with-Christ has severed the bond which bound them to the service of the principalities and powers. Why then should they go on submitting to the rules154 imposed by these powers? All these rules and regulations belong to the sphere of the “flesh”155—the old, pre-Christian life—and only in that sphere do they have any binding validity. Those who live “not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit” (Rom. 8:4) are under no further obligation to obey them.
21 What sort of regulations are these which the elemental forces impose? Completely negative ones: “Don’t, don’t, don’t.” There may be a stage in children’s development when they must be told not to do this and not to touch that, before they can understand the reasons for such prohibitions. But when they come to years of discretion and can appreciate their parents’ point of view, they are able to look at life from a responsible angle and do what is proper without having to conform to a list of prohibitions such as are suitable and necessary for the years of infancy. These would-be guides were trying to keep the Colossian Christians in leading strings; Paul encourages them to enjoy the liberty with which Christ has set them free.156 The imposition of prohibitions from without can do nothing to create or develop new life within. “Merely negative rules do not avail for the maintenance and growth of Christian life, for life is not offered merely to our acceptance, it is offered to our acquisition. Not abstinence, not indulgence, not mystic immersion into an external symbolism, as in the mysteries of Eastern Greece—not in these, but in the appropriation of Christ in His person and His work does the Christian life consist. The Christian must live over again the experience of the Christ; he must die with Him, rise with Him, live with Him in an endless, evergrowing life.”157
22 Besides, all the things covered by these taboos are perishable objects of the material world, doomed to pass away by the very use that is made of them.158 This is plainly so where food is concerned: food ceases to exist as such by the very act of being digested. The Corinthians had a saying, “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food”; but, Paul adds, “God will destroy both one and the other” (1 Cor. 6:13). But the Corinthians who summed up their outlook in these words were probably not thinking of food alone, but also of sexual relations: they too, it was implied, were bodily functions, as irrelevant ethically or religiously as food or drink. May it be, then, that the asceticism recommended at Colossae included abstention from sexual relations (even within marriage) as well as from various kinds of food or drink?159 This may well have been so, but the reference to “things which are all destined to perish by the very use that is made of them” would not be applicable to sexual relations; what Paul thought about the lasting effect of these, even of the most casual kind, may be gathered from 1 Cor. 6:15-20.
Moreover, these taboos are not divinely ordained: they are imposed “according to human commandments and teaching.” Behind this phrase lies the wording of Isa. 29:13, where the God of Israel says of his people, “their hearts are far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment of men learned by rote.” These words were quoted by Jesus in reference to the “tradition of the elders” by which, he averred, the scribes of his day had nullified the word of God.160 From his use of the text it passed into the arsenal of “testimonies” by which early Christian apologists explained Jewish reluctance to accept the gospel.161 When Paul echoes the prophet’s words here, therefore, it is with the implication that these taboos frustrate the pure teaching of God with its emancipating emphasis.
23 These prohibitions carry with them a reputation for wisdom, it is true. They are associated in people’s minds with schools of ascetic philosophy, like that of the Pythagoreans,162 and win for those who inculcate and practice them a veneration which is, after all, cheaply acquired. But there is no necessary connection between such impressive asceticism and the true spirit of the gospel. By contrast with the spiritual service which true Christianity enjoins in harmony with the will of God, “good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom. 12:1-2), this “would-be religion”163 is a “self-made cult,” as Deissmann puts it,164 or a “faked-religion,” as Bate has it.165 The term which Paul uses implies that these people thought they were offering God a voluntary addition to his basic requirements—a supererogatory devotion by which they hoped to acquire superior merit in his sight. Far from being of any avail166 against the indulgence of the “flesh,”167 as its proponents claimed, it could and often did coexist with overweening self-conceit, making it extremely difficult for those who accepted it to admit the truth that in God’s sight they were sinners, desperately in need of his salvation. When they commended harsh usage of the body as a specific against fleshly indulgence, they thought in terms of the Greek antithesis between body and soul. But this is not Paul’s thought. When he speaks of “severity to the body,” he means the body in its ordinary sense; but when he speaks of “indulgence of the flesh,” he means the old Adam-nature in its rebellion against God.168 A chief ingredient in that rebellion is the proud spirit of self-sufficiency which has nothing to do with the body in the ordinary sense, but springs from the will. And the asceticism disparaged by Paul feeds this particular indulgence of the “flesh” instead of starving it.169
COLOSSIANS 3
4. YOU WERE RAISED WITH CHRIST; THEREFORE . . . (3:1-4)
1 So then, if you were raised with Christ, seek those things that are above, where Christ is, seated at God’s right hand.
2 Set your minds on the things above, not on the things on earth.
3 For you died; and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
4 When Christ, your1 life, is manifested, then you also will be manifested in glory with him.
The Colossians are reminded that they not only died with Christ; they were raised from the dead with him too—as indeed they have already been told (Col. 2:12). When Christ left the tomb, he was raised on high, and is now enthroned in glory, at God’s right hand. What does this mean for those who by faith have been united with him in his death and resurrection? They continue to live on earth in their mortal bodies, but they have embarked on a new way of life. The motive power enabling them to follow this new way of life is imparted by him from the glory in which he now lives. Since his people share his risen life, their interests are now centered in him; his interests, in fact, have become theirs. They must therefore pursue those things which belong to the heavenly realm where he reigns; their mind, their attitude, their ambition, their whole outlook must be characterized by their living bond with the ascended Christ. The conclusion is inescapable. Having died with Christ, they now live with him and in him. Their life is bound up with his; it is, in other words, laid up in safekeeping with him, securely hidden in God. Because he lives, his people live also: because he is their life, their life is as eternal as his. The world cannot see their real life at present, just as it cannot see the exalted Christ. A day is coming, however, when Christ will be revealed in glory, and those whose life is at present hidden with him will necessarily be revealed with him and share his glory.
1 The readers knew (in theory, at least) that, like their fellow-Christians throughout the world, they had been brought to new life with Christ when they were spiritually dead, that they had been “raised with him through faith in the power of God” (Col. 2:12). On every occasion when they recalled their baptism and its meaning, they ought to be impressed afresh with the reality of their participation in Christ’s death and resurrection, and draw the logical and practical conclusions. If their death with Christ severed the links that bound them to the old world-order, which was trying to impose its dominion on them again, their resurrection with Christ established new links, binding them to a new and heavenly order, to that spiritual kingdom in which Christ their Lord was sovereign.
When Christ’s present position of supremacy is described in the Pauline writings as being “at the right hand of God,”2 the apostle is usually echoing the language of some primitive confession of faith, presumably familiar to his readers. Christ’s ascension to the right hand of God was an essential and constant element in the earliest apostolic preaching.3 It goes back to the messianic interpretation of Ps. 110:1, one of the most primitive of Christian testimonia.4 There we find reproduced an oracle of Yahweh addressed to someone whom the psalmist calls “my Lord”: “Sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies your footstool.”
In the Synoptic Gospels Jesus refers to this oracle on two occasions. During his debates with the scribes of the Pharisaic party in the temple precincts he asked them why they should call the Messiah the son of David since in this psalm David speaks of him as “my lord” (Mark 12:35-37). It is presupposed that they would agree that the person addressed in the divine oracle was the Davidic Messiah. Again, during the inquiry before the high priest and his colleagues which followed his arrest in Gethsemane, he was asked if he was the Messiah, “the Son of the Blessed,” and he replied: “I am; and you will see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of the Almighty, and coming with the clouds of heaven” (Mark 14:61-62).5The form of his reply may suggest the sense: “If ’Messiah’ is the term you insist on using, then I can only say ’Yes’: but if I am to choose my own form of words, then let me say that you will have the answer to your question when you see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Almighty, and coming with the clouds of heaven.” It was his own chosen form of words—and perhaps in particular his apparent self-identification with the “one like a son of man” who, in Dan. 7:13-14, receives eternal and universal dominion from the Ancient of Days6—that enabled his judges to pronounce him guilty of blasphemy. He was claiming, they held, to be the peer of the Most High. But after his resurrection the apostles proclaimed that the enthronement to which he looked forward had actually taken place: Christ was now reigning as king from the right hand of the Almighty, and would continue so to reign until all opposing forces in the universe had submitted to him.7
The apostles knew very well that they were using figurative language when they spoke of Christ’s exaltation in these terms: they no more thought of a location on a literal throne at God’s literal right hand than their twentieth-century successors do. The static impression made by conventional artistic representations of the heavenly session of Christ obscures the dynamic NT picture of the exalted Christ going forth by his Spirit in all the world, conquering and to conquer.8 What Paul understood by the heavenly session can be gathered from other terms used in his writings to convey the same idea: Christ has been given “the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow . . . and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Phil. 2:10-11): he has “ascended high above all the heavens, in order to fill all things” (Eph. 4:10). Because he has been elevated to the position of highest sovereignty over the universe, he pervades the universe with his presence.
This reference to the exaltation of Christ, the seal of divine approval on his saving work, is not introduced here for an ornamental purpose. Paul is about to commence the paraenetic section of his letter, and his paraenetic sections regularly presuppose the content of the apostolic preaching.9 What God has done for his people in Christ is the grand argument and incentive for Christian living. The apostolic teaching or didache may be distinguished from the preaching or kerygma, but it is founded on the preaching—and in any case the distinction between the two should not be pressed too sharply. Whatever affinities may be traced between Paul’s ethical exhortations and those of contemporary moralists, their whole emphasis in Paul’s writings depends on their arising directly out of the work of Christ.10 It is because believers have died with Christ and been raised to new life with him that their conduct is henceforth to be different.
What, then, are the practical implications of being raised with Christ? In the first place, believers have now no private life of their own. Their life is the life of Christ, maintained in being by him at God’s right hand and shared by him with all his people.11 Their interests must therefore be his interests. Instead of waiting until the last day to receive the resurrection life, those who have been raised with Christ possess it here and now. The new creation12—the “regeneration”13—has already begun in them. Spiritually—that is to say, “in Christ”—they belong already to the age to come and enjoy its life.
2 Aim then at what is above, says Paul; set your minds on that14and let it give character to your outlook on everything. The Gnostics also believed in aiming at what was above. They were seriously concerned with living on a higher plane than this mundane one. But Paul has in mind a higher plane than theirs. Go in for the higher things (he says)—higher things than the principalities and powers which dominate the planetary spheres, for Christ has ascended far above these.15 Don’t let your ambitions be earthbound, set on transitory and inferior objects. Don’t look at life and the universe from the standpoint of these lower planes; look at them from Christ’s exalted standpoint. Judge everything by the standards of that new creation to which you now belong, not by those of the old order to which you have said a final farewell.16
3 For, you see, you died in relation to that old order.17 The idea is so strange that it must be repeated and emphasized. You died, I say, and as for the new life on which you have entered, its true abode is where Christ himself is. “When our Forerunner triumphed, ’He bore up with Him into safety the spiritual life of all His people.’ “18
There is a widespread belief in many cultures that a person’s life is bound up with some external object, some “life-token.”19 This object, sometimes actually referred to as the person’s “life,” is safely hidden away in the belief that, so long as it is preserved intact, no harm can befall that person. There is no such idea in Paul’s mind here; yet the belief could serve as a parable of the truth he expresses. The believer’s life is safely “hidden away” with Christ. Its well-being depends on his. His people’s true life is an extension of that indissoluble life which is his in the Father’s presence.
Not only is their life hidden “with Christ” but “with Christ in God”—”a double rampart, all divine.”20 The expression “in God” is unusual in the Pauline corpus, in comparison with “in Christ” or “in the Lord.” The Thessalonian church is said to have its being “in God the Father” as well as in “the Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thess. 1:1; 2 Thess. 1:1). A closer parallel to the present wording appears in Eph. 3:9, where the “mystery” now received and proclaimed by Paul is said to have been “hidden from eternity in God.” The divine purpose enshrined in that mystery is said to have been conceived eternally in Christ (Eph. 1:4, 9-10); it is, indeed, embodied in Christ (Col. 2:2). So the life of believers is hidden “with Christ” because they died with him and have been raised with him: it is hidden “in God” because Christ himself has his being in God21 and therefore those who belong to him have their being there too.22
4 “You know your life to be safely hidden with Christ,” says Paul, “although in the eyes of the world you are, spiritually speaking, without visible means of support. But when Christ, the true life of all his people, is manifested in his parousia, then you who share his life will share his glorious epiphany.”23
“Christ your life.” The apostle who could say, “For to me to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21), does not think of this as something which is true of himself alone. Christ is the life of all those who are united to him by faith, members of his body.
Nor is he their life only; because he is their life, he is also their hope. The indwelling Christ who is at present their hope of glory24 is the Christ whose manifestation at his parousia will bring them the realization of that glory. The inward revelation of his saving glory which has come home to them already is the earnest of a fuller revelation yet to come, the grand consummation of the union between Christ and his people. “The same man whose daily thanksgiving was that ’it pleased God to reveal His Son’ in him could also hope for a day ’when Christ, who is our life, shall appear.’ “25 That is the day for which, as Paul says in another letter, the whole creation looks with eager expectation.26 Hitherto it is fast held in the bondage of frustration: as the Preacher saw, “Vanity” is written large over it.27 But what the Preacher did not see was that creation would one day be liberated from the frustrating cycle of change and decay, and participate in the glorious liberty of the children of God.28 That glorious liberty will be manifested on the day of their revelation, for the revelation of the Son of God in glory carries with it the revelation of the sons and daughters of God in that same glory29—the glory which is his by right and theirs by the grace which unites them with him.
A later NT writer voices the same thought in his own characteristic phraseology: “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been manifested, but we know that, when he is manifested, we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). To share in the revealed glory of Christ is to attain his likeness, as indeed Paul indicates again when he tells the church in Philippi that its constitution is laid up in heaven, from which “we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body” (Phil. 3:20-21). And what is this but the fullness of Christian sanctification? Here and now, according to the teaching of other Pauline letters, it is the province of the Holy Spirit within the people of Christ to reproduce his likeness increasingly in their lives,30 but the consummation of this sanctifying work awaits the day of Christ.31 Indeed, the presence and activity of the Spirit here and now is their guarantee of the heritage which is reserved for believers against that day.32 In this letter, as we have seen, this function is discharged by the indwelling Christ, his people’s “hope of glory.” The day of revelation and glory will but bring to complete and public fruition something that is already true—that Christians have died with Christ and been raised with him, and in him are partakers of the age to come.33
When the day of revelation and glory will dawn Paul does not suggest. Its date is unknown; its advent is certain. This consummating act in the series of saving events is assured by those which have already been accomplished. Those whom God foreknew “he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brethren; and those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified: and those whom he justified he also glorified” (Rom. 8:29-30). The day of glory may be future but (as the past tense of the verb “glorified” implies)34 its arrival is as sure as if it were already here. For those whose faith is placed in him, Christ is already their glory, as certainly as he is their hope: the hope and the glory are comprehended in the life which all his people have in him.
With this reaffirmation of the Christian hope, the apostle concludes the more strictly theological section of the letter.
V. THE CHRISTIAN LIFE (3:5-4:6)
The teaching contained in the preceding sections of the letter is now applied in detailed practice. As in other Pauline letters, the transition is marked by the conjunction “therefore.”35
Paul’s ethical teaching is evidently cast in forms which were in widespread use among early Christians. These forms may be traced back to the ethical teaching of Jesus himself. But Paul emphasizes the logical connection between theology and practice. He does not inculcate Christian doctrine simply in order that his readers may have a firm intellectual grasp of it; he insists that it must find expression in Christian living.36 On the other hand, his ethical teaching is never left suspended in air: it is firmly founded on the saving revelation of God in Christ. If his theology is a theology of grace, the practical response to that grace is gratitude—gratitude in action as well as in word.37
Here, then, he enunciates general Christian maxims: there are old practices to be abandoned; there is a new way of life to be adopted. The old must be “put off”; the new must be “put on”—a figure of speech which has been associated with the wearing of new garments at one’s baptism.38
It appears that the church began at an early date to classify its ethical teaching in categories which would be easily taught and remembered, each being introduced by a sort of catchword. The steady increase in the number of believing Gentiles made it desirable that they should receive the elements of Christian ethics in a form which could be readily assimilated.39 These catechetical forms are recognizable in several NT letters, and their recurrence is not to be accounted for by the dependence of one letter on another but by the indebtedness of all to a common paradosis of practical teaching.40 Of these forms with their distinctive catchwords four are discernible here: they consist of the paragraphs which expand the injunctions to “put off” (Col. 3:5-11); “put on” (Col. 3:12-17); “be subject” (Col. 3:18-4:1); and “watch and pray” (Col. 4:2-6).
1. “PUT OFF” (3:5-11)
5 Therefore, treat your41 earthly members as dead—fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire,42 and covetousness, which is idolatry.
6 It is because of these things43 that the wrath of God is coming [on the disobedient].44
7 Formerly you also behaved in that way, when you lived in such practices;
8 but now you also must put them all off—wrath, anger, malice. Get slander and foul language right out of your mouths.45
9 Tell no lies one to another, since you have put off the “old man” with his actions
10 and have put on the “new man,” who is being renewed after his Creator’s image so as to attain true knowledge.
11 Here there is no46 Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave or47 free; but Christ is all48, and in all.
Now that you are new men and women in Christ, says the apostle, live like new men and women. You have said good-bye to your old life; therefore have done with all those things that were characteristic of it. You have died with Christ; act and speak and think therefore so as to make it plain that this “death” is no mere figure of speech, but a real event which has severed the links which bound you to the dominion of sin. In short, be (in actual practice) what you now are (by a divine act).
There is a true Christian askēsis, which is quite different from the askēsis which the Colossians were being urged to undertake. The Christian askēsis consists in the renunciation of all sinful propensities and pursuits, so that the new nature, divinely implanted within, may find outward expression in the fair fruit of a holy life.
5 While the first of the four ethical paragraphs contains the catchword “put off” (v. 8), the paragraph is introduced by the equivalent injunction “put to death” or, as it might be rendered, “reckon as dead.”49 “Reckon as dead those ‘members’ of yours which partake of the nature of the old earthly life.” Paul is not talking here of the actual members of the human body, nor is he expressing himself in quite the sense intended by Jesus when he said that the offending hand or foot should be cut off or the offending eye plucked out, if entrance into life could not otherwise be gained. This seems plain from the apposition of the noun “members” with the following list of vices.50 Yet this apposition is so abrupt that attempts have been made to ease the difficulty of the construction by expedients which nevertheless are unconvincing. Thus Lightfoot puts a heavy stop after “treat your earthly members as dead” and regards the following nouns (“fornication, impurity, . . .”) as “prospective accusatives” governed by some such verb as “put off” in v. 8.51 On this showing, Paul intended to make the accusatives directly dependent on the verb “put off,” but before he reached the verb he introduced intervening clauses which led to a change in the structure of the sentence. To be sure, such breaches of construction (anacolutha) are by no means uncommon in Paul’s epistolary style; but in this place, if he had meant to make the accusatives directly dependent on the verb “put off,” he would almost certainly have put that verb in front of them.52 Even less convincing is Charles Masson’s expedient: he takes “members” as vocative and interprets the passage thus: “You members [of the body of Christ] are therefore to reckon as dead the things which are on the earth—fornication, impurity, etc.”53
What we have here is rather an extension of the ordinary sense of “members.” Since these people’s bodily members had been used as instruments of sin in their former life (cf. Rom. 6:19), they are viewed here as comprehending the various kinds of sin which were committed by their means. In Rom. 7:23 Paul speaks of “the law of sin which dwells in my members”; here he goes farther and practically identifies the members with the sins of which they had once been the instruments.54 But what he really has in mind is the practices and attitudes to which his readers’ bodily activity and strength had been devoted in the old life. Of these he mentions first of all fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, proceeding from the more overt to the less overt. These things had to be regarded as dead. Since believers have died with Christ, the domination of the old habits and instincts has been broken. But this severance of the old relation by reason of death can equally well be expressed the other way around: if, from one point of view, believers have died to these things, then, from another point of view, these things are dead so far as believers are concerned: they are no longer able to enforce their claims as they once did. So, in Rom. 6:11, Paul exhorts his readers to reckon themselves as dead to sin but alive to righteousness, while in Rom. 8:13 he says, “if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live” (the “deeds of the body” being such things as are listed here in Col. 3:5).55
It has been said that, in his oscillation between the idea of the Christian’s having died with Christ and the idea of his still having to “put to death” the old bad habits, or to reckon himself as dead, Paul can be charged with inconsistency. “He is working with an abstract theological idea which does not fit in with the facts of life, and in his effort to assert it he is involved in constant trouble.”56 This criticism does less than justice to the reality of the believer’s union with Christ and reception of new life in him, which is much more than an “abstract theological idea.” The difficulty arises rather from the circumstance that believers, in fact and in conscious experience, exist on two planes so long as mortal life endures: spiritually they already belong to the age to come, while temporally they are involved in this present age; spiritually they are united to Christ at God’s right hand, while temporally they live on earth. The impartation of the new nature by Christ does not effect the immediate annihilation of the old hereditary nature; so long as they live in this world, the old nature persists like a dormant force which may spring into activity at any time. Hence the tension, which arises not from any inconsistency between Paul’s premises and his recognition of the facts of human life, but from well-known conditions of Christian existence.
The believer is dead to the world with Christ (Col. 2:20; 3:3), having put off the old nature in him (Col. 2:11; 3:9) and been liberated from sin (Rom. 6:6-7, 11, 18, 22); on the other hand, the believer is still in the world in a mortal body and exposed to sinful temptations. Hence this antinomy in the apostle’s thought; hence his transition back and forth between the indicative and the imperative:57 “Be what you are!”58
In moving from the outward manifestations of sin to the cravings of the heart—from improper acts to their inner springs—Paul proceeds in the manner of our Lord, who in the Sermon on the Mount traces murder back to the angry thought, and adultery to the lustful glance (Matt. 5:21-22, 27-29). Catalogues of vices were common form among pagan moralists and in the antipagan polemic of Jewish propagandists.59 Such lists appear repeatedly in Paul’s letters (cf. Rom. 1:29-31: 1 Cor. 5:11; 6:9-10; Gal. 5:19-21; Eph. 5:3-4), receiving a special significance from the Christian context in which they are set.
Fornication,60 which appears first in the list of sins, receives the same preeminence among the “works of the flesh” enumerated in Gal. 5:19-21. It means primarily traffic with harlots; it is found also as a near-technical term for sexual relations within prohibited degrees61 and, more widely, of sexual irregularity in general. In its primary sense it was so common in Graeco-Roman antiquity that, except when carried to excess, it was not regarded as especially reprehensible. Some of Paul’s churches had difficulty in abandoning their former pagan tolerance of it; hence his specific warnings against it: “Shun fornication” (1 Cor. 6:18); “abstain from fornication” (1 Thess. 4:3).
Impurity62 has a wider range of meaning than fornication. It includes the misuse of sex, but is applicable to various forms of moral evil: Demosthenes, for example, uses it of one who, pretending to be a man’s friend, commits perjury to do him an injury.63
The word translated “passion” covers a variety of emotion and affection, but when it appears in this kind of context it denotes “dishonorable passions,”64 as it is put explicitly in Rom. 1:26. So also the word translated “desire” denotes strong desire whether good or bad, but here it is expressly qualified as “evil.” (Even if the adjective be omitted, as it is in some textual witnesses, the context would be sufficient to indicate that evil desire is meant, which indeed is the usual significance of the word in Paul’s writings.)65
The climax of the present list is covetousness, which is equated with idolatry, as in Eph. 5:5.66 Covetousness is idolatry because it involves the setting of one’s affections on earthly things and not on things above, and therefore the putting of some other object of desire in the place which God should occupy in his people’s hearts. So, in Phil. 3:19-20, the contrast is pointed between those whose minds are “set on earthly things” and those whose citizenship is in heaven. The exceeding sinfulness of covetousness was revealed to Paul, according to Rom. 7:7-13, when he became aware of the commandment “Thou shalt not covet” (and even if that passage is not truly autobiographical, the validity of his argument is not affected). The sins which precede covetousness in the catalogue appear regularly in such lists, and certainly they were sins against which converts from paganism needed to be put on their guard; but covetousness is the more dangerous because it may assume so many respectable forms.
6 As Paul emphasizes elsewhere, and above all in the great arraignment of the pagan world in Rom. 1:18-32, these vices incur divine retribution.67 God has written his decree against them not only in the law as Israel received it, but in the conscience and constitution of men and women, so that it cannot be violated with impunity. The retribution manifests itself in the inevitable consequences incurred by those who freely choose a course of life that sets the Creator’s law at nought. The textually doubtful phrase “on the disobedient” (lit., “on the sons of disobedience”), 68 which may have been imported from Eph. 5:6, denotes those whose lives are characterized by defiance of the law of God and consequent liability to his wrath; the opposite idea is conveyed by the phrase “obedient children” (lit., “children of obedience”) in 1 Pet. 1:14.69
7 You yourselves used to practice these vices,70 Paul reminds the Colossians; you too were numbered among “the disobedient.” This is not the only place in the NT where a catalogue of pagan vices is immediately followed by a reminder to the readers that not so long ago their own lives were marked by these things.71 It was largely for this reason that Paul’s critics thought him so foolishly impractical in stressing gospel liberty where such people were concerned. Gospel liberty, they thought, might be all very good for Jews and God-fearers who had learned to acknowledge the law of God in their lives, but people so lately weaned from pagan immorality ought to be subjected first to a period of probation before they could be properly recognized as full members of the church. Paul’s policy was different: pagans though these people had once been, they had now received a new nature; they were in Christ and Christ lived in them. If they accepted the logic of this new situation, if they looked on themselves as dead to their former desires and alive to God in Christ, then the Christ-life now coming to maturity within them would manifest itself in a new pattern of behavior.
8 So, he tells them, put off72 all those old habits, just as you would discard an outworn suit of clothes which no longer fitted you. And a repulsive collection of habits they are, to be sure—anger, quick temper,73 malice,74 and the language which accompanies these things, slander and foul talk.75 Get rid of them all; do not let your mouths be polluted with the scurrilous and filthy language that used to flow readily from them.
9 Another thing that polluted your mouths was lying: you used to tell lies as though it were the natural thing to do; have done with such conduct.76 Your tongues were given you to speak the truth; be known as men ana women of your word.
You see, he goes on, you have stripped off77 the “old man” that you used to be, together with the practices in which he loved to indulge.78 This was emphasized in Col. 2:11-22, where their baptism was said to be, in effect, not the removal of an insignificant scrap of bodily tissue, as the old circumcision was, but the stripping off of the whole “body of flesh”— the renunciation of the sinful nature in its entirety. This they had already done, in principle at least, and by the same token they had put on a new nature.79 But what was that new nature? It was the “new man” who was being continually renewed80 with a view to their progressive increase in true knowledge81—renewed in conformity with the Creator’s image.
10 When Paul speaks of the renewal of the new man, his intention is much the same as when he says in 2 Cor. 4:16, “though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day.” The life and power of Christ within is thus being constantly renewed, as the Christlikeness is being reproduced more and more in the believer’s life.82
In the phrase “after his Creator’s image” it is impossible to miss the allusion to Gen. 1:27, where the first Adam is said to have been created by God “in his own image.”83 But the first Adam is now seen as the “old man” who must be discarded, in order that the believer may put on the new man, the “last Adam.” Nor is there any doubt about the identity of the new man. Paul had already told the Corinthians that, as “the first man Adam became a living being” (Gen. 2:7), so “the last Adam became a life-giving spirit ... the first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven” . . . and “just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven” (1 Cor. 15:45-49).84 The “last Adam” or “new man,” that is to say, is effectively Christ. So, in Gal. 3:27, instead of telling his readers (as here) that they have put on the “new man,” Paul says directly, “as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.”85 To “put on Christ” is the necessary corollary of being “in Christ.”
The conception of Christ as the Second Man, the last Adam, head of a new creation as the first Adam was of the old creation, is thoroughly biblical, and there is no need to look for its sources outside the biblical tradition. The age to come is pictured as a new creation in the OT86 and postbiblical Judaism,87 and in that new creation (as in the old) dominion is divinely bestowed on “one like a son of man” (Dan. 7:13). In the NT this “one like a son of man” is identified with Jesus.88 While the presentation of Jesus as the second Adam in the NT is predominantly Pauline,89 it is not exclusively so: it may be traced in the Gospels,90 in Hebrews,91 and in Revelation.92 As the first Adam’s posterity, by virtue of their solidarity with him in the old creation, are involved in his transgression, so the people of Christ, by virtue of their solidarity with him in the new creation, share the redemption and eternal life which he has procured.93
One result of the putting on of the new man is a new knowledge. The “knowledge” (gnōsis) that was held out to the Colossians was a distorted and imperfect thing in comparison with the true knowledge accessible to those who, through their union with Christ, had been transformed by the renewing of their minds. This true knowledge was, in short, nothing less than the knowledge of God in Christ, the highest knowledge to which human beings can aspire.
11 It is not only the old sinful habits and attitudes that are done away with in this new creation. The barriers that divided human beings from one another are done away with as well. There were racial barriers, like that between Gentile94 and Jew; this was also a religious barrier, as the reference to circumcision and uncircumcision indicates. There were cultural barriers, which divided Greeks and barbarians—or, in the circumstances of the first century A.D., divided those outside the pale of Graeco-Roman civilization, like the Scythians, from those within. There were social barriers, such as that between slaves and free persons. Outside the Christian fellowship those barriers stood as high as ever, and there were Christians on the one side and on the other. From the viewpoint of the old order these Christians were classified in terms of their position on this side or that of the barriers. But within the community of the new creation— “in Christ”—these barriers were irrelevant; indeed, they had no existence.
There is a close similarity between this passage and Gal. 3:28, where Paul affirms that for those who have been baptized into Christ and have put on Christ “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no ’male and female’; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” There the choice of antitheses is apparently made so as to assert the abolition of the religious privileges enjoyed in Judaism by a Jew over a Gentile, a slave over a free person, a man over a woman.95 Here the wording is more general.
As for the obliteration in Christ of the old religious distinction between Jew and Gentile, this was one of the most remarkable achievements of the gospel within a few decades. The wonder of it is especially celebrated in the first three chapters of Ephesians. No iron curtain of the present day presents a more forbidding barrier than did the middle wall of partition which separated Jew from Gentile. As to the Galatians, so now to the Colossians Paul no doubt found it necessary to emphasize the abolition of this distinction in view of elements of the teaching which he was countering in the one situation as in the other. “There is no distinction between Jew and Greek” either in respect of their need of salvation or in respect of the grace of God, bestowed impartially on both; “for God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all” (Rom. 3:22; 10:12; 11:32). Natural and racial idiosyncrasies may survive, but in such a way as to contribute to the living variety of the people of Christ, not so as to create or perpetuate any difference in spiritual status.
Where cultural differences exist, the gospel ignores them. Paul reckoned himself to be debtor “both to Greeks and barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish” (Rom. 1:14)—that is, to all sorts and conditions of men and women. Greeks divided the human race into two camps— Greeks and barbarians (those whose language was not Greek). As the area of Greek civilization spread, especially after the Roman conquest, when “captured Greece took her savage captor captive,”96 so people like the Romans, who were not Greeks by nationality, came to be included in the wider Graeco-Roman civilization of the Mediterranean world. Outside this area of civilization were the barbarians, and among the barbarians the Scythians had for long been looked on as particularly outlandish. “Scythian” is not set here in antithesis to “barbarian”; it intensifies the concept expressed by “barbarian.” Since the Scythian invasion of the Fertile Crescent toward the end of the seventh century B.C.,97 “Scythian” had been a byword for uncultured barbarism. In the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. Scythian slaves did police duty in Athens, and Scythian policemen are figures of fun in Attic comedy because of their uncouth ways and speech.98 But the gospel overrides cultural frontiers; they have no place in the Christian church.
The same is true of the distinction between slave and free. For Greeks and Romans alike, a slave in law was not a person but a piece of property. Aristotle could define a slave as “a living tool, as a tool is an inanimate slave.”99 But within the believing community slaves as much as free persons were brothers and sisters “for whom Christ died.”100 Paul did something revolutionary when he sent Onesimus back to his former owner Philemon “no longer as a slave, but better than a slave—a dear brother,” since to the previous temporal bond between them there was now added the bond which united them “in the Lord” (Philem. 16).101 Philemon might still receive obedience from Onesimus, but now it would be obedience gladly rendered by one Christian brother to another. The old relationship is transformed by the new. “We might say that the distinction of social function remains but the distinction of class is destroyed—because all are brothers in Christ. It is only when the latter is added to the former that snobbery is produced and ill-feeling is bred between those of different social function.”102 (Similarly, when Paul says in Gal. 3:28 that in Christ “there is no ’male and female,’” he does not mean that the distinctive roles and capacities of man and woman are abolished, but that any inequality between them in religious status or function has been removed.)
Perhaps in this way the gospel made its deepest impression on the pagan world. A slave might be a leader in a Christian church by virtue of his spiritual stature and ability, and freeborn members of the church would humbly and gratefully accept his direction.103 In times of persecution slaves showed that they could face the trial and suffer for their faith as courageously as freeborn Romans. The slave-girl Blandina and her mistress both suffered in the persecution which broke out against the churches of the Rhone valley in A.D. 177, but it was the slave-girl who was the hero of the persecution, impressing friend and foe alike as a “noble athlete” in the contest of martyrdom.104 In the arena of Carthage in A.D. 202 a profound impression was made on the spectators when the Roman matron Perpetua stood hand-in-hand with her slave Felicitas, as both women faced a common death for a common faith.105 What real difference could there be for a Christian between bond and free?106
Nor has the time gone by when this note needed to be sounded. Our world is crossed and recrossed by barriers of one kind and another, and our life is scarred by the animosities cherished by one side against the other. But in Christ these barriers must come down—iron curtains, color bars, class distinctions, national and cultural divisions, political and sectarian partisanship. It is not difficult to rephrase, in terms of the divisions of modern life, Paul’s declaration that “in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free” (1 Cor. 12:13). In the unity of that body there is no room for old cleavages: Christ is all, and in all.107 The Christ who lives in each of his people is the Christ who binds them together in one. This “restoration of the original image of creation”108 will yet be universally displayed; but how good and pleasant it is when here and now that day of the revelation of the sons and daughters of God is anticipated and our divided world is confronted with a witness more eloquent than all our preaching and feels constrained to say, as in Tertullian’s time, “See how they love one another!”109
2. “PUT ON” (3:12-17)
12 Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dear to him, put on a compassionate heart, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience,
13 bearing with one another and forgiving whatever complaint110 one may have against another. As the Lord111 forgave you, so do you also forgive.
14 And above all these put on love, the perfect bond.112
15 Let the peace of Christ,113 to which you were called in one114 body, be arbiter in your hearts; and be thankful.
16 Let the word of Christ115 dwell in you richly, as you teach and instruct one another in all wisdom, singing with thanksgiving in your hearts to God, in psalms, hymns, and Spirit-inspired songs.116
17 Whatever you do, in word or in action, do117 it all in the name of the Lord Jesus,118 giving thanks through him to God the Father.
As those who have put on the “new man,” the apostle continues, Christians should cultivate and manifest the qualities which are characteristic of him. Those qualities, as one considers them, are seen to be those which were preeminently displayed in the life of Jesus; no wonder, then, that when Paul in another place wishes to commend the whole body of Christian graces, he sums them up by saying, “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 13:14).
12 Believers in Christ are God’s chosen people.119 As the nation which God chose in OT times “to be a people for his own possession, out of all the peoples that are on the face of the earth,” was enjoined to be “careful” to keep his commandments (Deut. 7:6-11) and to be holy, as he was holy (Lev. 11:44, etc.), so men and women of the new creation, his choice souls, whom he has set apart for himself and into whose hearts he has poured his love, should inevitably exhibit something of his nature. Jesus made this point in the Sermon on the Mount when he said that peacemakers would be known as the sons of God, and that members of God’s family ought to be compassionate like their heavenly Father (Matt. 5:9; Luke 6:36).120 So here, and probably by way of echoing the teaching of Jesus, Paul tells his readers to “put on” compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience—graces that were perfectly blended in their Master’s character and conduct.
The “compassionate heart” is literally “bowels of compassion”121 (because the tender emotions in biblical idiom have their seat in the bowels). From the Greek word for “bowels” is derived a verb which is repeatedly used of Jesus’ compassionate reaction to people in need, as when he “had compassion” on the leaderless multitude of Mark 6:34.122 As for the noun translated “compassion,” Paul uses it when he appeals to the Roman Christians “by the mercies of God” (Rom. 12: 1)123 and when, writing to the Corinthians, he calls God “the Father of mercies” (2 Cor. 1:3).124 Like Father, like children.
“Kindness”125 (included in the ninefold “fruit of the Spirit” in Gal. 5:22) is also a quality of God. “Taste and see that the LORD is kind,” says the psalmist (Ps. 34:8).126 Jesus taught his hearers to be kind, because God is “kind to the ungrateful and ungenerous,” and those who imitate him in this “will be sons of the Most High” (Luke 6:35). His “kindness and severity” are displayed in his dealings with human beings (Rom. 11:22); his kindness is designed to bring them to repentance (Rom. 2:4) and his children are urged to “continue in his kindness” (Rom. 11:22).
True humility (by contrast with the pride that apes humility of which the Colossian heresy made much) was not esteemed as a virtue in pagan antiquity; the word meant “mean-spiritedness.”127 The OT attitude is different: those who would walk with God must humble themselves to do so (Mic. 6:8), because he makes his dwelling by preference with those who are “of a humble and contrite spirit” (Isa. 57:15). Humility is especially fitting for the followers of Jesus, who was “gentle and lowly in heart” (Matt. 11:29),128 and a community in which this grace is cultivated is likely to be free from the tensions which spring from pride and self-assertiveness.
Gentleness,129 included (like kindness) in the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:23), is the quality which has traditionally been rendered “meekness.” Moses was “very gentle” (Num. 12:3)130 in the sense that, faced with undeserved criticism, he did not give way to rage but interceded with God for the offenders. “The gentle shall inherit the land” (or “the earth”), according to Ps. 37:ll131—a saying which is taken over in the Matthaean beatitudes (Matt. 5:5)—the implication being perhaps that the militants will wipe one another out and leave the gentle in possession. Jesus was “gentle” (Matt. 11:29), but was perfectly capable of indignation. Paul entreats his Corinthian friends “by the gentleness and forbearance of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:1),132 but if the language which follows that entreaty is an expression of gentleness and forbearance, one wonders what he would have said had he been unrestrained by those graces. Yet those graces are evident in his affectionate concern for his converts—a concern matched by his indignation against those who were leading them astray.
Gentleness has much in common with patience,133 the fifth of the virtues listed here. Patience, too, belongs to the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22); like compassion and kindness it is a quality of God which should be reproduced in those who bear his image. In the revelation of the divine name in Exod. 34:6 patience is included along with compassion and mercy. In the NT God shows patience not only toward his chosen people (Luke 18:7) but toward the impenitent also (Rom. 2:4); in his patience he postpones the day of retribution (Rom. 9:22). Love is patient, says Paul (1 Cor. 13:4), and he urges his Christian friends to show patience to one another and to all (Eph. 4:2; 1 Thess. 5:14).
13 Mutual forbearance, mutual tolerance, and mutual forgivingness should mark all their relations with one another.134 Did not Jesus himself inculcate the principle of unwearying and unceasing forgiveness, until “seventy times seven” (Matt. 18:22)? More than that, had they not received his forgiveness, in far greater measure than they were ever likely to have to emulate in forgiving others? For he taught the lesson of unlimited forgiveness by example and not only by precept. In his teaching, too, he made it clear that those who seek the forgiveness of God must be ready to forgive others.135 Not that human forgiveness is a work that earns the divine forgiveness—the initiative in forgiveness lies with God—but an unforgiving spirit is an effective barrier to the reception of his forgiveness. So, in the parallel passage in Eph. 4:32, the readers are directed to be kind and tenderhearted to one another, “forgiving one another, just as God in Christ forgave you.” In fact, Paul reproduces Jesus’ insistence on the close relation between God’s forgiveness of us and our forgiveness of others in a way that suggests he may have known the Lord’s Prayer.136
14 Above all else, Paul adds, put on the grace which binds all the other graces together, the crowning grace of love.137 In Gal. 5:6 love is the active expression of justifying faith; in Gal. 5:22 it is the primary fruit of the Spirit; in 1 Cor. 13:13 it is the supreme Christian grace; in Rom. 13:9-10 all the commandments are summed up in one: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”138 Love is the fulfilment of the law of God because love does a neighbor nothing but good. In all these places Paul’s ethic is directly dependent on the teaching of Jesus, according to whom the whole OT ethic hung on the twin commandments of love to God and love to one’s neighbor. God’s love in Christ to human beings and their answering love to him are presupposed here as the basis of that mutual love which the readers of the letter are called on to practice. It is by such love that the body of Christ is built up; “love,” as Moffatt renders it, “is the link of the perfect life.”139
15 From love the apostle moves to peace. It is noteworthy that in Eph. 4:3 peace itself is the bond in which the unity of the Spirit is maintained. This is one of the incidental indications that the two letters are the product of the same mind around the same time. If, in the author’s mind, the general idea of love and peace was linked with the idea of a unifying bond uniting believers in one common life, manifesting itself in the Christian graces, this would sufficiently account for the similar, if divergent, modes of expression.
“Let the peace of Christ be arbiter140 in your hearts,” he says. When hostile forces have to be kept at bay, the peace of God garrisons141 the believer’s heart, as in Phil. 4:7. But here the common life of fellow-members of the body of Christ is in view; when differences threaten to spring up among them, the peace of Christ142 must be accepted as arbitrator. If the members are subject to Christ, the peace which he imparts must regulate their relations with one another. It was not to strife but to peace that God called them in the unity of the body of Christ.143 Peace in this sense figures prominently in the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22). In a healthy body harmony prevails among the various parts. Christians, having been reconciled to God,144 enjoying peace with him through Christ,145 should naturally live at peace with one another.146 Strife inevitably results when men and women are out of touch with him who is the one source of true peace; but there is no reason why those who have received the peace which Christ established by his death on the cross should have any other than peaceful relations among themselves.
“And be thankful,” he adds, for Christian behavior (to repeat what has been said before) can be viewed as the response of gratitude to the grace of God. One of the counts in Paul’s indictment of the pagan world in his letter to the Romans is that, “although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks147 to him” (Rom. 1:21). If thanksgiving is God’s due from all humanity for his gifts of creation and providence, how much more is it his due from those who have received the surpassing gift of his grace?
16 What is meant by the injunction: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly”? Does “in you” mean “within you” (as individual Christians) or “among you” (as a Christian community)? Perhaps it would be unwise to rule either alternative out completely, although the collective sense may be uppermost in view of the context. Let there be ample scope for the proclamation of the Christian message and the impartation of Christian teaching in their meetings. Christian teaching must be based on the teaching of Jesus himself; it must be unmistakably “the word of Christ.”148 It would “dwell richly” in their fellowship and in their hearts if they paid heed to what they heard, bowed to its authority, assimilated its lessons, and translated them into daily living.
The punctuation of this sentence is disputed, but it makes better sense if the phrase “in all wisdom” is attached to “teach and instruct” (not to “dwell richly”) and the words “in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs” modify the verb “singing” (and not “teach and instruct”).149
The Colossian Christians, like those at Rome,150 should be able to instruct one another;151 but such instruction should be given wisely and tactfully. If wisdom or tact be absent, the instruction, however well intentioned, could provoke the opposite reaction to that which is designed.
Whatever view is taken of the punctuation or construction of the sentence, the collocation of the two participial clauses (as they are in the Greek text), “teaching and instructing . . .” and “singing . . .,”152 suggests that the singing might be a means of mutual edification as well as a vehicle of praise to God. In 1 Cor. 14:26 Paul insists that, when Christians come to their meetings prepared with a psalm or any other spiritual exercise, they must have regard to the essential requirements of general helpfulness and good order. In our present passage, as in the closely similar Eph. 5:19, antiphonal praise or solo singing at church meetings is probably recommended. We recall the younger Pliny’s report to the Emperor Trajan (A.D. 111-112) of the way in which Christians in Bithynia met on a fixed day before dawn and “recited an antiphonal hymn to Christ as God”;153 or Tertullian’s description eighty or ninety years later of the Christian love-feast at which, “after water for the hands and lights have been brought in, each is invited to sing to God in the presence of the others from what he knows of the holy scriptures or from his own heart.”154
It has been asked sometimes if a strict threefold classification of praise is signified in the mention of “psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.” It is unlikely that any sharply demarcated division is intended, although the “psalms” might be drawn from the OT Psalter (which has supplied a chief vehicle for Christian praise from primitive times),155 the “hymns” might be Christian canticles (some of which are reproduced, in whole or in part, in the NT text),156 and the “spiritual songs” might be unpremeditated words sung “in the Spirit,”157 voicing holy aspirations.
Plainly, when early Christians came together for worship, they not only realized the presence of Christ in the breaking of the bread but also addressed prayers and praises to him in a manner which tacitly, and at times expressly, acknowledged him to be no less than God. If here the Colossian Christians are encouraged to sing in their hearts to God, the parallel Ephesians passage speaks of “singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord” (meaning, presumably, Christ). The voice must express the praise of the heart if the singing is to be really addressed to God. Again, the necessity of a thankful spirit is emphasized, although the phrase rendered “with thanksgiving” might mean “with grace” or “in a state of grace.”158
17 Finally, these general injunctions are summed up in an exhortation of universal scope, covering every aspect of life.
The NT does not contain a detailed code of rules for the Christian. Codes of rules, as Paul explains elsewhere,159 are suited to the period of immaturity when the children of God are still under guardians; but children who have come to years of responsibility know their father’s will without having to be provided with a long list of “Do’s” and “Don’t’s.”160 What the NT does provide is those basic principles of Christian living which may be applied to varying situations of life as they arise. So, after answering the Corinthian Christians’ question about the eating of food that has been offered to idols, Paul sums up his advice in the words: “whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31). Phrases current in worship, like “to the glory of God” or (as here) “in the name of the Lord Jesus,” were given a practical relevance by being applied to the concerns of ordinary life.
The Christian (whether of the apostolic age or any other generation), when confronted by a moral issue, may not find any explicit word of Christ relating to its particular details. But the question may be asked: “What is the Christian thing to do here? Can I do this without compromising my Christian confession? Can I do it (that is to say) ’in the name of the Lord Jesus’—whose reputation is at stake in the conduct of his known followers? And can I thank God the Father through him161 for the opportunity of doing this thing?” Even then, the right course of action may not be unambiguously clear, but such questions, honestly faced, will commonly provide surer ethical guidance than special regulations may do. It is often easy to get around special regulations; it is less easy to get around so comprehensive a statement of Christian duty as this verse supplies. In the NT and the OT alike it is insisted that our relation to God embraces and controls the whole of life, and not only those occasions which are sometimes described as “religious” in a narrow sense of the word.
3. “BE SUBJECT” (3:18-4:1)
The Christian duty of mutual deference is inculcated in several of the ethical sections of the NT letters.162 Thus, in the section of Ephesians which corresponds to Col. 3:18-4:1 the Christian wife’s deference to her husband is enjoined as a particular expression of the general duty of submissiveness which all Christians are encouraged to show to one another: “Be subject one to another in the fear of Christ—wives [in particular] to your own husbands, as to the Lord” (Eph. 5:21-22).163
Here in Colossians, however, there is a more definite paragraph division between the preceding general instructions (“Put on”) and the specific directions for the Christian household. Certainly in Col. 3:18-4:1 the general principles of Christian behavior laid down in the foregoing paragraph (Col. 3:12-17) are applied in the special setting of the Christian home, but the exposition of the theme “be subject” is confined to that setting.
The household (familia) was recognized as a stabilizing element in ancient society, and treatises on household administration were common.164The household was wider than the nuclear family of the Western world today: it included all who were under the authority of its head. In NT times the head of a household might be a woman, like Lydia of Philippi (Acts 16:15), Chloe of Corinth, who may or may not have been a Christian (1 Cor. 1:11), and Nympha of the Lycus valley (Col. 4:15). But usually the head of the household was a man, who exercised within it the authority of a husband, a father, and a master.165
As in society in general, so in the Christian community the household appears to have been the basic unit or cell. Where the family home was of a convenient size, the household could be expanded for certain purposes by the inclusion of fellow-believers who joined its members from time to time to form, with them, the “church” in So-and-so’s house.166When the head of a household was converted to Christianity, the whole household appears normally to have joined in adhering to the new faith and receiving baptism, but it was not invariably so, and in 1 Cor. 7:12-16 provision was made for tensions which might arise from divided religious allegiance.
In the literary treatment of household administration, codes of domestic behavior were a regular feature. In these the mutual duties of husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and slaves, and so forth were prescribed. The Byzantine anthologist Stobaeus has some very interesting quotations from ancient authors on these mutual duties.167 Similar summaries of domestic duties are found here and there in the NT; that in Col. 3:18-4:1 is the earliest extant instance of such a Christian summary. Its relation to summaries given elsewhere in the NT letters suggests that such instruction formed part of a fairly well-defined body of catechesis imparted to converts from early times.168
While many of the ethical emphases in these Christian summaries can be paralleled from Jewish and Stoic sources,169 to say that the addition of such a phrase as “in the Lord” (vv. 18, 20) “Christianizes them in the simplest possible way”170 is to say everything, for such an addition introduces a difference in kind and not merely in degree. Here is a new and powerful dynamic:
This is the famous stone
That turneth all to gold.171
If the Stoic disciple asked why he should behave in a particular way, his teacher would no doubt tell him that it was “fitting” because it was in conformity with nature.172 When a Christian convert asked the same question, he was told that such behavior was “fitting in the Lord”;173 members of the believing community should live thus for Christ’s sake. The added words, simple as they are, transform the whole approach to ethics.
The inclusion of such summaries of domestic responsibilities here and in Eph. 5:22-6:9, it has been said, shows “a sense of the values of ordinary family life.”174 That is an understatement. It is in the closest and most familiar relationships of daily living that the reality of one’s Christian profession will normally be manifest, if at all.
Luther referred to these domestic codes as the Haustafeln, and it has become customary to refer to them in English, in a literal (or over-literal) translation of the German, as the “house tables” or “household tables.” They are here divided into three correlative pairs.
(1) Wives and Husbands (3:18-19)
18 Wives, be subject to your husbands,175 as is fitting in the Lord.
19 Husbands, love your wives176 and do not treat them harshly.
The first of the three pairs deals with the mutual duties of wives and husbands.
18 The family was a long-established social unit, as the church was not. The church was God’s new creation, and provided a setting in which the principles of the new creation could be put into practice. In the church, therefore, women had equal status with men and slaves with free persons, just as Gentiles had with Jews. But the structure of the family was already in being, and it was no part of the business of early Christianity to destabilize society, which would have been the effect of radically changing the family structure. That structure, hierarchical as it was, was left unaltered, apart from the introduction of the new principle, “as is fitting in the Lord”—which indeed was to be more revolutionary in its effect than was generally foreseen in the first Christian century. The authority of the husband, father, and master continued to be exercised, but only “as was fitting in the Lord,” and it continued to be acknowledged by the wife, children, and household slaves—similarly, “as was fitting in the Lord.”
It is not suggested here or anywhere else in the NT that the woman is naturally or spiritually inferior to the man, or the wife to the husband.177 The phrase “as is fitting” has a thoroughly Stoic ring about it; but it ceases to be Stoic when it is baptized into Christ by the added words: “in the Lord.”178 When the relation between man and woman, husband and wife, is viewed in the context expressed by these words, the essential dignity of women in general and of wives in particular is placed on a firm foundation.
Paul believed that there was a hierarchical order in creation, and that in this order the man was the “head” of the woman (1 Cor. 11:3).179 But when he speaks his own language instead of reproducing Christian household codes, he shows himself to be ahead of his time in the liberality with which he insists on equal rights between husbands and wives, especially where their marital relationship is concerned (1 Cor. 7:3-4).
19 The wife’s subordination to her husband has as its counterpart the husband’s obligation to love his wife. This is not simply a matter of affectionate feeling or sexual attraction; it involves his active and unceasing care for her well-being.180 The accompanying clause, “and do not treat them harshly,”181 indicates the meaning of the positive injunction more precisely by prohibiting the opposite attitude and treatment. A husband’s legal authority over his wife was such that she had little hope of redress at law for harsh or unfeeling conduct on his part. But such a situation should not arise in a Christian household: the forbearance and forgiveness which are enjoined in the preceding section of the letter, together with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, forbid a Christian man to be harsh in his treatment of anyone, especially of his own wife.
(2) Children and Parents (3:20-21)
20 Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing in the Lord.182
21 Fathers, do not irritate183 your children, lest they be disheartened.
20 Then come the mutual duties of children and parents. Children are enjoined to render complete obedience to their parents, as something which is acceptable or delightful “in the Lord.” The RSV rendering, “for this pleases the Lord,” is based on a slightly different Greek reading.184 When obedience “in all things”185 is laid down, it is a Christian family that is in view: the situation is not contemplated here in which parental orders might be contrary to the law of Christ. In such a situation the law of Christ would have to take precedence even over parental orders, but in a spirit of love, not of defiance, since the law of Christ is the law of love. In the household codes, however, children and parents are bound together “in the Lord” as well as by the ties of natural kinship.
21 If children are exhorted to render obedience, parents, and specifically fathers,186 are urged not to irritate their children by being so unreasonable in their demands that the children lose heart and come to think that it is useless trying to please their parents. On this Sir Robert Anderson (head of the C.I.D. at Scotland Yard in his day) had some wise remarks to make in a little-known book:
The late Mr. Justice Wills, who combined the heart of a philanthropist with the brain of a lawyer, used to deplore the ill-advised legislation which so multiplies petty offences that high-spirited lads, without any criminal intention, are caught in the meshes of the criminal law. But the traps laid by modern bye-law legislation are few as compared with the “don’ts” which confront the children of many a home during all their waking hours. And against this it is that the Apostle’s “Don’t” is aimed: “You fathers, don’t irritate your children.”
For the children his only precept is “Obey your parents”; let parents see to it that they deserve obedience: and more than this, that they make obedience easy. The law, which for the Christian is summed up in the word “love,” is formulated in “thou shalt not” for the lawless and disobedient. And the “thou-shalt-not’s” of Sinai have their counterpart in the “don’ts” of the nursery. Grace teaches us to keep His commandments; law warns us not to break them. And it is on this latter principle that children are generally trained. “Don’t be naughty” is the nursery version of it. . . .
William Carey . . . wrote to his son: “Remember, a gentleman is the next best character to a Christian, and the Christian includes the gentleman.” And if a little of the effort used to teach the children not to be naughty were devoted to training them to be gentlemen and ladies, parents would come nearer to fulfilling the Apostolic precept!187
Stobaeus follows up a consideration of the duty of children with a collection of passages from ancient authors under the general heading: “How fathers ought to behave to their children.” He quotes many sayings to much the same effect as the present household code, including these two from Menander: “A father who is always threatening does not receive much reverence,” and “One should correct a child not by hurting him but by persuading him.”188 In the setting of this letter, however, these ethical observations, good as they were in their pagan expression, are given a Christian significance and emphasis, which are made the more explicit in Eph. 6:4 with the appending of the positive injunction: “but bring them up in the nurture and instruction of the Lord.”189
(3) Slaves and Masters (3:22-4:1)
22 Slaves, obey your earthly190 masters in all things,191 not with eyeservice,192 as men-pleasers, but in sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord.193
23 Whatever you do, do it heartily 194 as for the Lord195 and not for human beings.
24 You should know that it is from the Lord that you will receive the reward you have inherited;196 for197 the master whom you serve is Christ.
25 He who does wrong will be requited for his wrongdoing; there is no favoritism198 (with your heavenly master).
4:1 Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a master in heaven.
22-24 Christian slaves are next addressed. Within the context of a household code household slaves are primarily in view, and slaves in a Christian household at that. But the directions given would be applicable to slaves whose duties were not within the household (slaves employed in agriculture or industry, for example), and to slaves of pagan masters.
Both in this letter and in Ephesians the injunctions to slaves are more extended than those to masters, and are accompanied by special encouragement. This, it has been suggested, is “a reflection of the social structure of these churches”199 (the implication being that they contained more slaves than masters). That may well be so. On the other hand, it has been pointed out that “the content of the admonitions would certainly be more readily approved by owners than by slaves.”200
The companion letter to Philemon affords an illuminating commentary on the mutual responsibilities of slaves and masters within the Christian fellowship, and on the transforming effect of this fellowship on their relationship.201 The relationship belongs to this present world-order; it is “earthly” (lit., “according to the flesh”).202 In the higher and abiding relationship which is theirs in Christ, believing slaves and masters are brothers. The slave/master relationship might persist in the home and business life: within the church it was swallowed up in the new relationship (cf. Col. 3 : 11). Paul treats the distinction in status between the slave and the free person as irrelevant in the new order (which perhaps was easier for him than it would have been for one who was enslaved to an earthly master). He sees the advantages of being free rather than enslaved, and the slave who has an opportunity of gaining freedom is encouraged to make use of the opportunity; but if there is no such opportunity, “never mind. . . . For he who was called in the Lord as a slave is a freedman of the Lord; likewise he who was free when called is a slave of Christ” (1 Cor. 7:21-22).203 If a Christian slave came to be recognized as a leader in the church, he would be entitled to receive due deference from his Christian master.204 But the Christian slave would not presume on this new relationship or make it an excuse for serving his master less assiduously; on the contrary, he would serve him more faithfully because of this new relationship.
If a Christian slave had an unbelieving master, he would serve him more faithfully now because the reputation of Christ and Christianity was bound up with the quality of his service.205 Slaves in general might work hard when the master’s eye or the foreman’s eye was on them;206 they would slack off as soon as they could get away with it. And why not? They owed their masters nothing. Far more culpable is the attitude of modern “clockwatchers,” who have contracted to serve their employer and receive an agreed remuneration for their labor. But Christian slaves—or Christian employees today—have the highest of all motives for faithful and conscientious performance of duty; they are above all else servants of Christ, and will work first and foremost so as to please him.207 Not fear of an earthly master, but reverence for their heavenly Lord,208 should be the primary motive with them. This would encourage Christian servants to work eagerly and zestfully even for a master who was harsh, unconscionable, and ungrateful; for they would receive their thanks not from him but from Christ.209 A rich recompense is the assured heritage of all who work for Christ;210 and the Christian servant can work for Christ by serving an earthly master in such a way as to “adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in everything” (Tit. 2:10).
25 All believers, according to Paul, must “appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive good or evil, according to what he has done in the body” (2 Cor. 5:10).211 In the household codes of Colossians and Ephesians these words are applied especially to slaves, with requital for evil emphasized in Colossians and requital for good in Ephesians. It is uncertain why the emphasis here should be on requital for the wrongdoer. It has been suggested that there was unrest at the time among the slaves of Colossae, so that a warning was thought necessary; but there is no substantial evidence for this.212
The judgment on disobedience is as certain as the reward for faithfulness. While salvation in the Bible is according to grace, judgment is according to works, whether good or bad, for believers as for unbelievers. It is probably implied that, while the sowing is now, the reaping is hereafter—before the tribunal of Christ (as in 2 Cor. 5:10).213 It may be difficult to understand how one who by grace is blessed with God’s salvation in Christ will nevertheless be requited for wrongdoing before the divine tribunal, but it is in accordance with biblical teaching that judgment should “begin with the household of God” (1 Pet. 4:17),214 and even if the tribunal is a domestic one, for members of the family of God, it is by no means to be contemplated lightly.
Whereas here the statement that there is no favoritism215 is attached to the admonition to slaves, in Eph. 6:9 it is attached to the admonition to masters. God arbitrates with impartial fairness toward both masters and servants. So in the OT legislation impartiality was prescribed in lawsuits between rich and poor: “you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor” (Lev. 19:15).
COLOSSIANS 4
1 If slaves like Onesimus have their duties, so do masters like Philemon; they must treat their slaves fairly and justly. They are masters on earth, but they themselves have a Master in heaven: let them treat their servants with the same consideration as they themselves hope to receive at the hands of their heavenly Master. Such consideration is the opposite of the threatening or overbearing attitude which is forbidden in Eph. 6:9. No command is given for the manumission of slaves. Paul does give Philemon a broad hint of what is expected of him with regard to Onesimus, but at the same time he makes it clear that the virtue of such an act lies in its being done voluntarily (Philem. 12-14).
The household codes do not give detailed advice for the complexities of modern industrialism. For that matter, they do not even give detailed advice for critical situations which might arise in the first century between master and slave, when one or both belonged to the Christian fellowship. Had such detailed advice been given, in place of the more general exhortations which are found in the codes, readers of other days would derive less help from them than they do. They embody basic and abiding Christian principles, which can be applied in changing social structures from time to time and from place to place.1
The household codes did not set out to abolish or reshape existing social structures, but to christianize them. As far as slavery was concerned, it took a long time for the essential incompatibility of the institution with the ethic of the gospel, or indeed with the biblical doctrine of creation, to be properly assimilated by the general Christian consciousness.2
4. “WATCH AND PRAY” (4:2-6)
2 Persevere3 in prayer; keep alert in it with thanksgiving.4
3 At the same time, pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the message, so as to utter5 the mystery of Christ,6 on account of which7 I am a prisoner,
4 in order that I may make it known, as I ought to utter it.
5 Conduct yourselves in wisdom toward those who are outside, buying up the present opportunity.
6 Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how to answer each one.
2 As was evident in the introductory prayer (Col. 1:3), prayer and thanksgiving can never be dissociated from each other in the Christian life. The remembrance of former mercies not only produces spontaneous praise and worship; it is also a powerful incentive to renewed believing prayer. Our Lord’s words to his disciples, “Keep awake, and pray not to fail in the test” (Mark 14:38 par.), had special relevance to the trial of faith which faced them in the immediate future, but they have a message for his people at all times. He taught his hearers that they “ought always to pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1).8 Men and women of persistent prayer are those who are constantly on the alert,9 alive to the will of God and the need of the world, and ready to give an account of themselves and their stewardship.
3-4 As in the parallel passage in Eph. 6:18, the exhortation to general prayer leads into a specific request for prayer for Paul and his associates. The plural pronoun in “pray also for us” refers primarily to Paul and Timothy (cf. Col. 1:1), but no doubt it includes friends and companions who are mentioned later in this chapter. But Paul is conscious of his special need of spiritual strength and wisdom.10 His commission to make known among the Gentiles the Lord who had been revealed to him on the Damascus road remained unfinished so long as earthly life lasted; and his present restrictions, far from hindering the prosecution of this commission, gave him unforeseen opportunities of discharging it. The “mystery of Christ” which he has to declare is identical with the gospel which he received at his conversion “through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal. 1:12); indeed, in the light of Col. 2:2, we might treat “of Christ” as a genitive of definition and identify the mystery with Christ, the Son of God, whom the Father “was pleased to reveal” to him on that occasion (Gal. 1:16). For Paul, to preach the gospel was to preach Christ, and so to make known the “hidden wisdom” of God, which was “decreed before the ages” for his people’s glory (1 Cor. 2:7).11
The Colossians are asked to pray, then, that a “door” may be opened for the message. The figure of a door being opened for the gospel message (and for the messenger) is found elsewhere in the NT; we may compare 1 Cor. 16:9 (where Paul says that at Ephesus “a wide door for effective work has opened”) and 2 Cor. 2:12 (where at Troas, he says, “a door was opened for me in the Lord”).12 Deissmann thought that Paul might have found the expression current in general speech;13 this may very well be so, as similar phrases are known from contemporary idiom. That an open door was indeed set before Paul in Rome is evident from the closing words of Acts and from his own account in Phil. 1:12-18 (“what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel”).14 The opportunities were great, but the situation called for special wisdom, whether Paul was “preaching the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ” to those who frequented the lodgings where he lived under house arrest (Acts 28:30-31), or looking forward to his appearance before the imperial tribunal when his appeal came up for hearing. He would have to answer the charges brought against him, but he desired to do so in such a way that the content and nature of his apostolic preaching would be made plain to all who heard. He was in Rome, under official custody,15on account of Christ and the gospel; it was of the highest importance that the interests of Christ and the gospel should be promoted by the way in which he made his defense before the supreme court. For this he prayed himself, and asked his friends to pray too.
5 Reverting from his personal circumstances to the general principles of Christian conduct, he bids his readers behave themselves wisely in their dealings with non-Christians.16 Distorted accounts of Christian conduct and belief were in circulation; it was important that Christians should give no color to these calumnies, but should rather give the lie to them by their regular manner of life. It remains true that the reputation of the gospel is bound up with the behavior of those who claim to have experienced its saving power. People who do not read the Bible for themselves or listen to the preaching of the word of God can see the lives of those who do, and can form their judgment accordingly. Let Christians make full use, then, of the present season of opportunity. Here the injunction to “redeem the time”17 (as the older English versions render the phrase) seems to have special application to their duty to unbelieving neighbors (its reference in Eph. 5:15-16 is more general). Paul wishes to emphasize that, while he has an exceptional opportunity of witness-bearing at the heart of the empire, each Christian has a special opportunity for witness and should make the most of it while it lasts.
6 The grace and wisdom that Paul desires for his own utterance are enjoined upon his readers too. They never know when they may be called on to give an answer with regard to their faith, whether in private conversation or more publicly. Jesus promised his disciples that, when occasion for such a defense arose in a court of law, he himself would give them “a mouth and wisdom” (Luke 21:15),18 and the narrative of Acts repeatedly illustrates the fulfilment of this promise. Those who debated with Stephen, for example, “could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he spoke” (Acts 6:10).
If Christians practice grace of speech, it will not desert them when they find themselves suddenly confronted by the necessity of defending their belief. Nor will their speech be acceptable if it is insipid.19 Those who are the salt of the earth20 may reasonably be expected to have some savor about their language.21 In pagan usage “salt” in such a context means “wit”;22 here perhaps it is rather the saving grace of common sense. The replies of some of the early martyrs to their interrogators may illustrate what is meant; there is no lack of this kind of “salt,” for example, in the narrative of the trial of Justin Martyr and his companions. “No right-thinking person,” says Justin, “turns away from true belief to false.” “Do what you will,” say his companions, “for we are Christians, and Christians do not sacrifice to idols.”23
Moreover, the conversation of Christians must not only be “opportune as regards the time; it must also be appropriate as regards the person.”24 The importance attached in the primitive church to the proper answering of questions about the faith is attested by various passages in the Gospels,25 as also by the exhortation in 1 Pet. 3:15, “Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence.”
VI. PERSONAL NOTES (4:7-17)
1. PAUL’S MESSENGERS (4:7-9)
7 As for my affairs, you will learn everything from Tychicus, our dear brother and a trusty servant and fellow-slave in the Lord.
8 I am sending him26 to you for this very purpose, that you may learn our news27 and that he may encourage your hearts.
9 He is accompanied by Onesimus, our trusty and dear brother, who is one of yourselves. They will tell you all that is going on here.28
7 The reference to Tychicus is almost word for word identical with Eph. 6:21-22. He was evidently the bearer of the letter to the Ephesians as well as of this one, and possibly of a letter to Laodicea as well (see v. 16). He was himself a native of the province of Asia, as we learn from Acts 20:4, where he is named in the list of Paul’s fellow-travelers on his last journey to Jerusalem. The evidence of Paul’s letters indicates that those fellow-travelers were delegates from Gentile churches, bearing those churches’ gifts for their brethren in Jerusalem; Tychicus was therefore, in all probability, commissioned on that occasion to carry the contributions from one or more of the churches of Asia. He is also mentioned on two occasions in the Pastoral Letters as a messenger of Paul (2 Tim. 4:12; Tit. 3:12). Paul speaks of him here as a faithful colleague of his and a trusty servant of Christ, in fact his own “fellow-slave” in the Lord, using the same term as was used of Epaphras earlier (Col. 1:7).29
8 Tychicus, it appears, had paid Paul and Timothy a visit in Rome, and was now on his way back to his native province. It was convenient, then, to entrust him with this and other letters intended for recipients in that province. He would be able to give the recipients further information about Paul and his companions. Moreover, if the variant reading were to be followed,30 he would be able to find out the present state of affairs in the Colossian church, and no doubt find means of sending a message to Paul to give him the latest news. But more important than that: a visit from Tychicus would be helpful to the church; he could impart stability and encouragement.
9 Onesimus, unlike Tychicus, is not mentioned in the letter to the Ephesians; he was bound for Colossae in circumstances of which further information is supplied in the letter to Philemon.31 Onesimus was a member of the household of Philemon, a Colossian Christian, and therefore the Colossian church would feel some responsibility for him. During his absence from Colossae Onesimus came somehow into touch with Paul in his place of custody and through his ministry became a believer. He quickly proved himself a devoted attendant and friend to the apostle while he remained with him, but when Tychicus’s journey to Asia provided a suitable opportunity, Paul sent Onesimus along with him so that he might return to Philemon on a new footing.32 It was necessary that the difference which had parted two men who were now fellow-Christians should be resolved in reconciliation.
But Onesimus was now in good standing as a church member; he was probably attached to one of the house-churches in Rome. He would therefore naturally receive from the Colossian church the same welcome as would be given to any other visiting Christian, especially one armed with a letter of commendation from Paul. But his welcome would be the warmer since the Colossian church already knew him as Philemon’s slave. Since Philemon had been wronged personally, it was necessary in addition that a personal letter should be sent to him, inviting him to forgive Onesimus and welcome him back home. But Onesimus’s welcome by the whole church of Colossae, on Paul’s commendation, would be a powerful lever for Philemon’s acceptance of him too.
2. GREETINGS FROM PAUL∈S COMPANIONS (4:10-14)
10 Aristarchus my fellow-prisoner sends his greetings; so do Mark, Barnabas’s cousin (you have received orders concerning him: if he comes to you, give him a welcome),
11 and Jesus called Justus. So far as members of the circumcision are concerned, these only are my fellow-workers for the kingdom of God; they have been a comfort to me.
12 Epaphras, who is one of yourselves, a slave of Christ Jesus,33 sends his greetings. He constantly strives for you in his prayers, that you may be established34 mature and complete35 in all God’s will.
13 I testify on his behalf that he toils hard36 for you and for those in Laodicea and Hierapolis.
14 Luke, my dear physician,37 sends you his greetings; so does Demas.
10 Greetings are now sent to the Colossian church from six of Paul’s friends who are in his company while this letter is being written: three of Jewish birth (Aristarchus, Mark, and Jesus Justus) and three of Gentile birth (Epaphras, Luke, and Demas).
Aristarchus sends his greetings simultaneously to Philemon (Philem. 24); otherwise he is not mentioned in the Pauline corpus. In the narrative of Acts he appears as a native of Thessalonica, who was with Paul at Ephesus and was exposed to personal danger during the riotous assembly in the Ephesian theater (Acts 19:29). Later he accompanied Paul on his last voyage to Judaea (Acts 20:4), presumably as one of two delegates from the Thessalonian church (the other being Secundus), and again when he set sail from Caesarea for Italy (Acts 27:2). It is not said explicitly that he went all the way to Rome with Paul, and some have thought that he accompanied him only as far as Myra, where they trans-shipped (Acts 27:5-6), and then went home to Thessalonica.38 But we are more probably intended to understand that he accompanied him to Rome39—that he remained one of the company designated by the pronoun “we” as far as Acts 28:16 (“and when we came into Rome . . .”). At any rate, he was with Paul and Timothy when this letter was on the point of being dispatched, and is described by Paul as his “fellow-prisoner”—literally, his fellow-prisoner-of-war.40 Ramsay suggested that Aristarchus shared Paul’s captivity voluntarily, perhaps passing as his servant.41 One who looked on himself as a soldier of Jesus Christ, as Paul did,42 would not unnaturally think of himself during his captivity as a prisoner-of-war.
Greetings are sent also from Mark, another of Paul’s companions at the time. It is from this reference alone that we learn that Mark was Barnabas’s cousin43—a piece of information which throws light on the special consideration which Barnabas gives to Mark in the narrative of Acts. Between twelve and fourteen years previously Mark had disgraced himself in Paul’s eyes by deserting him and Barnabas at Perga instead of going up-country with them to evangelize the cities of South Galatia.44 By this time, however (no doubt in great measure owing to the kindly tutelage of Barnabas, the “son of encouragement,” as the Jerusalem apostles called him),45 he had redeemed his reputation.46 In what circumstances he had come to Rome we do not know. Possibly he had already begun to accompany Peter as that apostle’s interpreter or aide-de-camp when he embarked on a more extended ministry, but it is unlikely that Peter himself was in Rome during Paul’s captivity there; otherwise some reference to him, however oblique, might have been expected.47
The fact that Paul identifies Mark here in terms of his relationship to Barnabas implies that Barnabas was known to the Colossian Christians by name, even if they had never met him personally.48 There is no record of any visit by Barnabas to proconsular Asia, but then there is no certain record of any of his movements after he went to Cyprus with Mark about A.D. 48 (Acts 15:39). The joint-founder of churches in Galatic Phrygia (those of Pisidian Antioch and Iconium) would be known by repute at least in the later-founded churches of Asian Phrygia.
The Colossian Christians had already received some communication with regard to Mark. It is best, with Lightfoot, to suppose that the “orders” came from Paul himself, and that the words “if he comes to you, give him a welcome” sum up their substance. No one else was in a position to give “orders” to a church in Paul’s mission field—no one, certainly, whose orders Paul would endorse as he does here. There is no way of knowing if Mark did make his way to Colossae; we have no further information, indeed, of a visit paid by him to the province of Asia (unless an uncertain inference may be drawn from 2 Tim. 4:11).49
11 Jesus, surnamed Justus, also sends his greetings. All that is known about him is that he was a Jewish Christian, who was with Paul as these words were being dictated. He is not mentioned elsewhere, not even in the letter to Philemon, where the five other companions of Paul mentioned here send their greetings again. Jesus is the Greek/Latin form of Joshua or Jeshua; Justus was a common Latin cognomen.50
These three men—Aristarchus, Mark, and Jesus Justus—were the only Christians of Jewish birth51 who were actively cooperating with Paul in his gospel witness at this time: “my fellow-workers for the kingdom of God,” he calls them. When Paul speaks of the kingdom of God, he usually has its future consummation in mind,52 and this may be so here: his wording may mean “fellow-workers with a view to the kingdom of God.” But a present reference is more probable, as in Rom. 14:17, where he says that “the kingdom of God is . . . righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” We recall again how Paul is said in Acts 28:30-31 to have spent two years in Rome “preaching the kingdom of God”; in this work he had these men of Jewish birth to assist him at this particular point in the course of those years, and he found great comfort53 in their presence and help.54
12-13 Paul had fellow-Christians of Gentile birth with him also, and they too sent their greetings. First among these comes Epaphras, the Colossians’ own evangelist and friend, whose name has appeared earlier in this letter (Col. 1:7). Epaphras is described as a true bondman55 of Christ, devoted to him and to his people, and especially solicitous for the welfare of his own beloved converts and friends in the Lycus valley. Now that he was far distant from them, they were never out of his mind: he was continuously engaged in intense intercession to God on their behalf, praying for their perfect establishment in all the will of God. Praying is working; and by such fervent prayer Epaphras toiled effectively on behalf of the churches of Colossae, Laodicea, and Hierapolis.56
14 The two other Gentile Christians who sent their greetings to Colossae were Luke and Demas. It is from the present reference to Luke that we know what his profession was: “my dear physician,” Paul calls him. Since the second century at least he has been identified in tradition with the author of the Third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. At one time it was argued that the vocabulary of Luke-Acts showed the author to have been a physician.57 The lexical evidence adduced lacks demonstrative force, but it retains considerable illustrative value. That the author of Luke-Acts accompanied Paul to Rome is the most natural inference from the last of the “we” sections of Acts. It is from this reference, too, that we may most surely conclude that Luke was a Gentile by birth—as the author of Luke-Acts appears to have been, to judge by some internal evidence.58
Of Demas very little is known.59 He is mentioned along with Luke as a sender of greetings in Philem. 24 and later in 2 Tim. 4:10-11. In the latter place he is said to have left Paul and gone to Thessalonica, out of love for “this present world”60—which may imply that some temporal interest took him off at a time when the imprisoned apostle would have valued his continued presence. Luke alone remained with him—inevitably serving him (inter alia) as his amanuensis.61
3. MESSAGES FOR VARIOUS FRIENDS (4:15-17)
15 Greet the brethren in Laodicea, and Nympha and the church in her62house.
16 When the letter has been read among you, see to it that it is read also in the church of the Laodiceans, and that you in your turn read the letter from Laodicea.
17 Say to Archippus, “Look to the ministry which you have received in the Lord: see that you fulfil it.”
15 The Colossian Christians are now asked to convey greetings from Paul and Timothy to their fellow-Christians in the neighboring city of Laodicea, which lay about ten miles to the northwest and (like Colossae itself) on the south bank of the Lycus. One member of the Laodicean church is mentioned in particular—Nympha (for the name is most probably feminine)63—perhaps because it was in her house that the local church, or an important part of it, met.64 Such house-churches are frequently referred to in the NT. Sometimes the whole church in one city might be small enough to be accommodated in the home of one of its members; but in other places the local church was quite large, and there was no building in which all the members could conveniently meet together. This was certainly true of the Jerusalem church. There we find one group meeting in the house of Mary, the mother of Mark (Acts 12:12); and although Luke does not specifically call that group the church in her house, it could very well have been described thus. Priscilla and Aquila were accustomed to extend the hospitality of their home to such groups in the successive cities where they lived—in Ephesus, for example (1 Cor. 16:19), and in Rome (Rom. 16:5). The presence of other house-churches in Rome is probably implied in the greetings of Rom. 16:3-16. At Colossae itself Philemon’s house served such a purpose. We may compare Lydia’s house in Philippi (Acts 16:15, 40) and Gaius’s in Corinth (Rom. 16:23), as well, probably, as Phoebe’s in Cenchreae, if that is what is meant by her being a “patroness”65 to many (Rom. 16:1-2). Such house-churches were apparently smaller circles of fellowship within the larger fellowship of the city ekklēsia.66
16 The Colossians are then told to pass on this letter, when it has been read to them at a meeting of the church, to the Laodicean church, in order that it may be read there too. It is likely that the Laodicean Christians were exposed to the same disquieting influences as their brethren in Colossae, and the teaching given in this letter would be helpful to both churches. At the same time the Colossians are told to procure a certain letter from Laodicea and have it read in their own church. Much discussion has been devoted to this “letter from Laodicea,” but to very little purpose. It was presumably a letter sent by Paul or one of his co-workers (possibly by the hand of Tychicus), but if so it may have been lost at an early date—too early for it to be salvaged and included in the Pauline corpus at the beginning of the second century.67
One view identifies it with the letter to the Ephesians68 (perhaps rightly, if the Laodicean church was the nearest community to Colossae to receive a copy of Ephesians). In Marcion’s canon the letter to the Ephesians was entitled “To the Laodiceans”;69 but Marcion probably knew Ephesians in a form which lacked the words “at Ephesus” in the prescript, and found what seemed to be a pointer to its destination in Col. 4:16.70 This is more likely than the suggestion that he deliberately suppressed the reference to Ephesus in Eph. 1:171—whether because the Ephesian church had refused his doctrine or for any other reason.
Yet another suggestion about the “letter from Laodicea” is Edgar J. Goodspeed’s: he wished to identify it with the letter to Philemon.72 But if Onesimus is commended to the Colossian Christians as “one of yourselves” (v. 9), it is more natural to think of Philemon, to whose household Onesimus belonged, as a member of the church at Colossae.
We must, in short, remain in doubt about this Laodicean letter. It may be that the Laodicean church required a letter on similar lines to the letter to the Colossians; yet the two were sufficiently different for directions to be given that either letter should be read in the other church.73
This reference to a letter not included (or not obviously included) in the NT canon gave rise at a later date to the fabrication of a spurious “Letter of Paul to the Laodiceans”74 (just as the OT references to the book of Jashar and other “lost books” have stimulated the composition of works bearing their titles).
17 A special message is sent to one Archippus, who appears from Philem. 2 to have been a member of Philemon’s household, perhaps his son. But why should a message to him be so closely linked with references to the Laodicean church? Lightfoot suggested that, while Archippus’s parents were Colossians, he himself lived at Laodicea and had pastoral responsibility for the church there.75 The precise nature of the ministry with which he had been entrusted cannot be determined. It is unlikely that it had to do with the reception or manumission of Onesimus.76 Whatever it was, it had to be discharged in a spirit of Christian faithfulness. Presumably he would be present when the letter was read, either in the Colossian church or, later, when it had been sent on to Laodicea. This was perhaps calculated to impress him the more with the solemnity of his responsibility to carry out his service. Might it not have been an embarrassment to him to have this personal commission given such publicity? We may be sure that Paul took this into consideration, and knew very well how to make his charge most effective.
VII. FINAL GREETING AND BENEDICTION (4:18)
18 The greeting of me Paul with my own hand. Remember my chains. Grace be with you.77
18 Paul regularly dictated his letters, but wrote the last sentence or two with his own hand to confirm their genuineness.78 It was his autograph rather than his signature that provided this confirmation. It was not usual in ancient letter-writing for the writer to sign his name at the end; it was sufficient that his name should appear in the prescript. But it was not uncommon, if the letter as a whole was dictated to an amanuensis, for the sender to write the last few sentences himself for the sake of authentication.79 Paul appends his signature here, as in 1 Cor. 16:21 and 2 Thess. 3:17.80 Where a colleague played some part in the composition of the letter, like Silvanus in 2 Thessalonians and Timothy in Colossians, Paul’s signature would stamp the whole with his apostolic authority.
The plea, “Don’t forget that I am in chains” or “Remember that the hand that writes this is a chained hand” (a fact of which Paul would be acutely aware as he took up the pen himself), is essentially a request for their continued prayers on his behalf.
The brief benediction “Grace be with you”81 brings the letter to an end.