The Epistle to the Colossians is a kind of link in the chain between the truth brought out in the Epistle to the Romans and that to the Ephesians. There are two positions in which man in the flesh may he looked at, viz., alive to sin, and dead to God. The Epistle to the Romans takes him up in the former view, and brings in the death of Christ: firstly, to justify him before a holy God, and secondly, to give him deliverance from the dominion of his old master, sin, and out of his state as a child of Adam, Christ risen and glorified being his new standing before God. The Epistle to the Ephesians takes him up in the latter view, not alive in sin and under responsibility to God in that condition, but dead in trespasses and sins. God, who is rich in mercy, having raised up the Christ and put Him in glory, by the power of the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, quickens him together with Christ, outside the dead condition of the world, and unites him with Christ in glory and with all the other members of Christ on earth. Thus the body of Christ was formed, and exists now in union with the Head, seated in heavenly places in Him.
The Epistle to the Colossians unites these two aspects of truth together in chapter 2:11-13. Vers. 11-12 take the former aspect, that of the Romans; ver. 13 the latter, that of the Ephesians, though it stops short of the position in heavenly places. In the former view, believers have put off the body of the flesh, or old man, in Christ’s death. We have been buried with Him in baptism in whom also we are risen together through the faith of the operation of God who hath raised Him from the dead. Thus far, though the Christian is brought into perfect liberty, standing in life in a risen Christ, and having the Holy Ghost as the power of life, he is not seen as baptized by the Holy Ghost into one body. In other words, he is not united to Christ in this corporate position. Baptism by water is thus the sign of identification with Christ in His death and burial; Christ coming up out of death giving him, the believer, a perfect standing in life. Ver. 13 carries us on into Ephesian truth—that is, we are not only raised together out of death in Christ, but quickened, or getting life, together with Him (see John 20:2222And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: (John 20:22)). God having forgiven us all trespasses.
The difference between the Epistle to the Ephesians and that of the Colossians is, that in the former epistle the body is seen seated in heavenly places in the Head, the body being the fullness of Him that filleth all in all. In the latter, the body is seen on earth, full of the life of the Head (see Col. 1:2929Whereunto I also labor, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily. (Colossians 1:29)), but in danger of letting go the Head. The whole truth consequently is to show that in the Son of God up in heaven dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and to press upon the believers at Colosse the necessity of holding the Head. The Son of God is the Head of the body; His Person consequently is largely dwelt on. In Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, in order that they might be guarded on the one hand from Gentile philosophy, and on the other hand from Judaizing Ritualism, the Rationalism and Ritualism of that day. Thus, whilst the unity of the body must remain under all circumstances, yet the responsibility of the members to hold the Head is clearly brought out. Every true assembly is thus exhibited as hanging on the Head, as dependently as an individual Christian is hanging every day upon Christ; not as independent Assemblies; either, of one another, but as belonging to, and witnessing to, the one Head. When this is the case, no man is seen but Christ only, and the body receives nourishment from the Head.
The Epistle
But now, as to the Epistle itself. It is a development of the will of God, now that the full Christian revelation has been made known. Epaphras, one of the Colossian saints, had been a true servant of God in their midst. He had been labouring in prayer unceasingly for them, that they might stand perfect and complete in all the will of God (ch. 4:12). This will, in its perfectness and completeness, the saints in Colosse and Laodicea did not fully understand, and so they were in danger of being led aside from the truth, by Gentile philosophy and Jewish ritualism, and tradition. This same servant of God had come to the apostle Paul at Rome, and no doubt had told him of their state, which had drawn forth the apostle’s own prayers on their behalf, that they might be filled with the knowledge of God’s will, and had also drawn forth the energy which put into pen the letter which he wrote to the Colossians, which no doubt was for the furtherance of Epaphras’s prayers, that they might stand perfect and complete in all the will of God.
The letter, then, is a concise development of God’s will as to the full Christian revelation, by an apostle who himself was such by the will of God. It begins by thanking God, after he had heard of their faith and love, for the hope which was laid up for them in heaven, thus at once a witness to them that their own personal hope in Christ’s second coming was waning, and at the same time witnessing of the faithfulness of God, which had laid it up in heaven for them in the Person of Christ, who was their hope. This would at once cut from under their feet all hope of moral progress on the earth, which Gentile philosophy might boast of, or of a Messiah coming to deliver the Jews temporally, and set up a powerful earthly kingdom. The Christian’s hope was a heavenly one, and was laid up in heaven. He prays, then, in connection with this, that they might be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, that they might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, etc., then developing the will of God in regard to their relationship with the Father and the Son, and their meetness for the heavenly inheritance, as well as to their present deliverance from the power of darkness, and their present translation into the heavenly kingdom of the Son, in whom they had redemption, the forgiveness of sins (ch. 1:12-14). The good pleasure of God’s will is then developed as to the glory of the Person of God’s Son, as the Center of this heavenly kingdom which would extend to all creation finally, for He was the first-born of all creation, for He was the Creator of all things. But He had also a second glory attached to Him in the midst of this, which is connected with the resurrection. He was the Head of His body the Assembly, who was was the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that in all things He might have the pre-eminence, for it was the good pleasure that in Him should all the fullness dwell (ver. 15-19). This good pleasure, or good will, of God is developed in the following verses.
The reconciliation of all things in the future is founded on the first glory of the Son of God, and on the work that He accomplished on the cross, but that would not be complete till after His return, but in the meantime, the heavenly saints, those connected with His second Headship, were already reconciled in the body of His flesh through death. On this two-fold ground, too, the apostle, who was as we have seen, the apostle by God’s will, had a double ministry: first, to every creature under heaven, for Christ was the first-born of all creation; and second, to the Assembly which was Christ’s body, for the administration of the mystery which had been hid in God, but which was now revealed, and which was Christ in the believers, the hope of glory. This mystery was to be displayed amongst the Gentiles (ch. 1:20-28). But the saints were not up to the full knowledge of the will of God in regard to this, and so the apostle was in great agony for them, and for the Laodiceans, that they might come to the full assurance of understanding, to the full knowledge of the mystery of God; and that they might all be presented to God perfect in Christ Jesus. In this mystery was hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (ch. 2:1-4).
In ch. 2, He takes up the double form of the opposing element, which was hindering their progress. On the one hand there was Gentile philosophy as displayed in the various schools of thought in Greece and Rome, which was trying to blend itself with Christianity, and on the other side Judaism, with its ritualism, and priestcraft and tradition, hence the “beware” (ch. 2:8). In Christ, in whom dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, they were complete, and His circumcision, viz., His death, had cut them off from all the rest. His resurrection had introduced them into a new creation. Jewish ordinances were nailed up to the cross, principalities and powers spoiled, and a complete triumph gained over them all by a victorious Christ. Let no man, therefore, judge them, ver. 16. They were dead with Christ to the whole thing, ver. 20, and risen again with Him, ch. 3:1. They were not to forget this, but to seek those things that were above, as a heavenly people connected with Christ at the right hand of God: to mortify their members still left on the earth, putting off whatever belonged to the old man, and putting on all the beauteous graces that belonged to the new man, ch. 3:5-17.
Then also to fulfill all the relationships of life to God’s glory, not forgetting to pray for the servants of God, and walking in wisdom towards the world without,—such in short summary is the development of God’s will in this blessed little Epistle. May my readers greatly profit by the reading of it further, as we go more leisurely through its details.