Col 1:1-14; Piling on the Words/The Blessings

"Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, 2 To the saints and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ in Colossae: Grace to you and peace from God our Father. 3 In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 4 for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, 5 because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. You have heard of this hope before in the word of the truth, the gospel 6 that has come to you. Just as it is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world, so it has been bearing fruit among yourselves from the day you heard it and truly comprehended the grace of God. 7 This you learned from Epaphras, our beloved fellow-servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf, 8 and he has made known to us your love in the Spirit. 9 For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased prayng for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God. 11 May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. 13 He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins."

Introduction

I begin our treatment of Colossians with this helpful quotation by Andrew T. Lincoln, a former professor of mine in seminary:

"Colossians is a rich and yet enigmatic Pauline letter. It contains a magnificent hymnic passage about the cosmic scope of Christ's role, develops the notion of believers' union with Christ, and has extensive exhortations about the ethical implications of this relationship. There are also fascinating treatments of the theme of reconciliation, of the heavenly world with its cosmic powers and its relation to the earthly realm, and of the notions of growth, maturity, and fullness; and there is the first occcurrence in early Christian literature of the use of the "household code," the set of instructions for various groups within the household.." (The Letter to the Colossians, in The New Interpreter's Bible, vol. XI, p. 553).

My message today will focus on the "rich" in Prof. Lincoln's first sentence, but I want, by way of introduction, to bring you into the "enigmatic" part of it also. The "enigma" of Colossians emerges from the unusual language which fills it, language that might lose some of its strangeness by frequent repetition. Yet, we ought to pause and realize that we really don't know what system of belief or who stood behind the systems of thought against which the Apostle spoke in this letter. For example, we don't know if the wonderful Christ hymn in 1:15ff. is really formed in response to an alternative belief system, one which talked about the supremacy or co-supremacy of other powers (such as thrones or dominions--1:16) to Christ. We don't know whether the repeated references to "mystery" (1:27, 2:2, 3) are meant to counteract a sort of "Greek Mystery cult," prevalent in the 1st century, that claimed to have special insight into Christ. We don't know exactly what exercises of "self-abasement" are (2:18). We don't know what the worship of angels means (2:18). Thus, we really have no confidence that we know almost anything about the intellectual climate against which Colossians is speaking. What we do know, however, about this enigmatic world is that the proclaimers of these doctiens seemed to want to add something to the basic proclamation of faith in Christ. Paul's insistent message in Colossians is that "you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority" (2:10). In other words, Christ already provides you the the fullness that we need for salvation. No other sources are necessary.

With this in mind, then, we can turn to the flow of 1:1-14. My point will be that Paul's language is calculated to stress the point that I have just made--that all the riches of Christ are already possessed by the Colossian believers. This kind of message has a comforting dimension for us today, who live in a society plagued by feelings of spiritual and economic inadequacy--a culture that seems to equate the human condition with the lack of something. Let's hear the words of 1: 1-14.

All At Once

The message of 1:1-14 is that the Colossian Christians already have whatever they need in Christ. Paul, who has never visited this church (and this leads to the supposition by many scholars that Colossians is not a genuine epistle of Paul), speaks in more measured terms in Colossians. The white-hot heat of Galatians is missing. The tremendous attempts to justify self from II Cor. are absent. Sustained theological reflection, such as is present in Romans, is not here. Thus, Paul's "personality" recedes, and we are left with a calmer, less impassioned but, nevertheless, carefully written epistle. Though Paul in Colossians isn't quite as exciting from a psychological standpoint, he nevertheless speaks with power and grace.

We see in this passage Paul's rich language of greeting, in which he uses participles, relative clauses and the piling up of the genitive case (possessive case in Greek) to "pile on" a list of all the things possessed by the Colossian Christians in Christ. One of the techniques he uses is to connect the "faith-hope-love" triad in 1:4-5; "for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love you have for all the saints because of the hope laid up for you in heaven." It would be fruitful to read this passage in connection with Romans 5:1-5; I Cor. 13:13; Gal. 5:506 and I Thess. 1:3; 5:8.

Then there is the image of growth in 1:6, 10. More precisely, the text says that the Gospel message is "bearing fruit and growing" (1:6) and that he therefore hopes that the Colossian Christians can walk worthily of the Lord "bearing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God" (1:10). The rich image of a tree bearing fruit was also central to Jesus explanation of discipleship (John 15).

Then there is the use of the little Greek preposition "en," translated "in." In two places we are told that the Gospel is growing "in them" (1:6 twice). Paul is convinced that with the advent of the Gospel something is at work within us, transforming our lowly selves to be conformed to Christ's glorious self. So much of our growth in life is unseen. We wake up to face each day, but each day, though different, has so many similarities to what has gone before that we just think of nothing as having changed. But this is a mistake--for we are constantly being reformed, reshaped, renewed, and remolded into a more full human being or, in Paul's language, growing into the fulness of Christ.

Finally, I love the language of vv. 9-14, where in one furiously long sentence the Apostle is trying to put every verb of growth and progress and knowledge together so that he can assure the readers that they already have fullness in Christ. The language of fullness and knowledge overwhelms. In v. 9, he asks that they may be "filled." But the filling does not simply have a one-word object. It is filled with "knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding." Perhaps there were other teachers who had come into Colossae, claiming that they would give a "special dose" of spiritual wisdom through their teaching. We don't need it--it is already dispensed in Christ. We are to bear fruit and grow "in knowledge of God" (v. 10). My particular favorite, however, is in v. 11, where the Apostle wishes that they may be "empowered with all power." The word dynamis (power) from which we get our word "dynamite," is used consecutively in a noun and participial form.

Conclusion

The result? Joy. Joy is the concept that links v. 11 and 12. Joy because God has made us sufficient to receive, and understand, this great mystery of Christ. Joy because he has rescued us from dark powers (who can't believe that?). Joy because we have been redeemed--bought for a price. With this kind of beginning, life can't get much better.

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