Colossians 1

Further Resources

Greeting

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

²To the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father.

Thanksgiving and Prayer

³We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, ⁴since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, ⁵because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, ⁶which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing—as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth, ⁷just as you learned it from Epaphras our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf ⁸and has made known to us your love in the Spirit.

⁹And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, ¹⁰so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; ¹¹being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy; ¹²giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. ¹³He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, ¹⁴in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

The Preeminence of Christ

¹⁵He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. ¹⁶For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. ¹⁷And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ¹⁸And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. ¹⁹For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, ²⁰and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

²¹And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, ²²he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, ²³if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.

Paul’s Ministry to the Church

²⁴Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church, ²⁵of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, ²⁶the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints. ²⁷To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. ²⁸Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. ²⁹For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.

Soli Deo Gloria!

The gospel,
which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world
it is bearing fruit and growing–
as it also does among you… (Col. 1:6)

This Sunday I am preaching at Kenwood Baptist Church in South Louisville. I am tremendously excited about the opportunity and about the chance to proclaim the message of the gospel which is “is bearing fruit and growing” all over the world. In a day when economic forecasts are anything but prosperous and increasing, the hope that is found in heaven (Col. 1:5) promises to bear fruit in the lives of all those who believe. Moreover, the proclamation of the gospel always accomplishes its fruit-producing task (cf. Mark 4), it never returns void (cf. Isa. 55:10-11).

Meditating on the truths of Colossians 1:1-8, I came across this succinct statement by New Testament scholar, Douglas Moo, in his recent commentary on Paul’s Christocentric epistle. Consider the redemptive historical unity of his comments on Colossians 1:6 and ask how the gospel is bearing fruit in your life and all over the world.

The language bearing fruit and growing is reminiscent of the Genesis creation story, where God commands human beings to “be fruitful and increase in number” (Gen. 1:28; see also 1:22). After the Flood the mandate is reiterated (Gen. 8:17; 9:1, 7), and the same language is later used in God’s promises to Abraham and the patriarchs that he would ‘increase’ their number and ‘multiply’ their seed (e.g., Gen. 17:20; 28:3; 35;11). The nation Israel attains this blessing in Egypt (Gen. 48:4; Exod. 1:7) but then, of course, suffers judgment and disperal. So the formula appears again in God’s promises to regather his people after the exile (Jer. 3:16; 23:3). Paul may , then, be deliberately echoing a biblical-theological motif according to which God’s orignal mandate to humans finds preliminary fulfillment in the nation Israel but ultimate fulfillment ini the worldwide transformation of people into the image of God by means of their incorporation into Christ, the “image of God.” Colossians 3:10 echoes the same idea, referring to the ‘new self’ (the new people of God in Christ) as ‘renewed in knowledge of the image of its Creator’ (see also v. 10 and cf. 1:15) (Douglas Moo, The Letter to the Colossians and to Philemon in the PNTC [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008], 88).

May the God of all life-giving grace bear fruit in our lives and may his glorious kingdom increase until it covers the earth!

Sola Deo Gloria, dss