Theopedia

Epistle to the Colossians

For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.

— Colossians 2:9

Overview

Colossians is a letter of the apostle Paul to the church at Colossae, written to counter false teachers who were supplementing faith in Christ with ascetic practices and speculation about angelic powers.1 Paul answers them by setting forth the supremacy of Christ’s person, in whom “the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Col. 2:9), against any teaching that would treat him as one mediator among others.

Author and Date

The letter names Paul as its author, writing as a prisoner (Col. 4:3, 4:10, 4:18). It belongs with Ephesians and Philemon among Paul’s Prison Epistles: all three were carried by the same courier, Tychicus, who traveled with Onesimus, the runaway slave Paul was sending back to his master, Philemon of Colossae, and all three share salutations from the same companions, Aristarchus, Mark, Epaphras, Luke, and Demas.2 Scholars have long debated whether Paul wrote during his imprisonment at Caesarea or at Rome; the traditional view places the letter in Rome, around AD 61.2

Historical and Literary Context

Colossae lay in the Lycus valley of Phrygia, in Asia Minor, near Laodicea and Hierapolis (Col. 4:13, 16). Paul had not visited the city himself when he wrote (Col. 2:1); the church there had been founded through the ministry of Epaphras, a Colossian native who was with Paul in Rome at the time of writing.3 Paul wrote because Epaphras had brought word that false teachers were troubling the congregation. These teachers were Jewish, to judge by their insistence on food laws, festivals, and Sabbaths (Col. 2:16, 20-21), but their error was not straightforward Judaizing of the kind Paul answers in Galatians. They combined Jewish ceremonial practice with an ascetic “severity to the body” (Col. 2:23) and speculation about orders of angels, apparently regarded as mediators between God and man.4 This mixture is sometimes called the Colossian heresy; Strong cites Lightfoot’s commentary as tracing a connection between it and the later Gnostic systems, and beyond that to the still earlier teaching of the Essenes.5 Paul meets it not by arguing point by point against angel veneration or dietary rules but by setting the greatness of Christ’s own person against them: if “the whole fullness of deity dwells” in Christ “bodily” (Col. 2:9), no lesser mediator is needed or fitting.

Structure

  • Introduction and thanksgiving for the Colossians’ faith (1:1-14)
  • The supremacy and sufficiency of Christ (1:15-2:23)
    • Christ’s supremacy over creation and the church (1:15-23)
    • Paul’s ministry of the mystery of Christ (1:24-2:5)
    • Warning against the false philosophy (2:6-23)
  • The new life in Christ (3:1-4:6)
    • Put off the old self, put on the new (3:1-17)
    • Household duties: wives and husbands, children and parents, servants and masters (3:18-4:1)
    • Closing exhortations (4:2-6)
  • Personal greetings and closing (4:7-18)

Major Themes

Christ’s supremacy over creation. Colossians 1:15-20 sets Christ forth as “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation,” through whom, and for whom, “all things were created,” and in whom “all things hold together” (Col. 1:15-17). Duby reads Paul here as drawing on the wisdom theology of Proverbs 8 to describe the Son’s place in creation: “the term ‘firstborn’ here does not mean that Christ is some great creature but rather that creation was brought into being in, through, and for him.”6 The same passage joins this creating and sustaining role to Christ’s saving work: he is also “the firstborn from the dead,” who reconciles all things to himself through the blood of his cross (Col. 1:18-20), uniting his agency in creation and providence to his agency in redemption.7

The fullness of deity dwelling in Christ bodily. Against the Colossian teachers’ angel speculation, Paul states plainly that “in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Col. 2:9). Bavinck cites this verse, alongside Romans 9:5 and Colossians 1:15-17, as Scripture’s own testimony that Christ possessed a personal divine existence before his incarnation, not merely a divinity acquired by degree or by moral union with God, the very error he traces to Nestorius.8 Duby likewise reads Colossians 2:9 as teaching that the incarnate Son, in his own body, discloses to believers the divine fullness that as the eternal Word he already shares with the Father.9

Union with Christ. Paul grounds the Colossians’ new life in their union with Christ’s own death and resurrection: they were “buried with him in baptism, in which” they “were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead” (Col. 2:12), and, because they “have been raised with Christ,” their life “is hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:1, 3). Parkison reads Colossians 3:1-4 as the ground, not merely the motive, for the moral exhortation that follows in verses 5-11: because believers are united to Christ and hidden with him, “what is earthly among the believer… is not indicative of his truest state,” so that putting sin to death is no longer a kind of self-destruction but the working out of a new identity already secured in Christ.10

Warning against false philosophy and legalistic asceticism. Paul warns the Colossians directly: “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ” (Col. 2:8). He treats the false teachers’ rules of diet and observance, and their “asceticism and severity to the body,” as possessing “an appearance of wisdom” while lacking “any value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh” (Col. 2:20-23), because they address outward conduct without reference to the believer’s actual union with the Christ who alone can deal with sin.

Related Doctrines

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Further Reading

References

  1. Elijah Porter Barrows, Companion to the Bible (New York: American Tract Society, 1867), 464. ↩

  2. Barrows, Companion to the Bible, 462. ↩ ↩2

  3. Barrows, Companion to the Bible, 463-464. ↩

  4. Barrows, Companion to the Bible, 463: “They seem rather to have been Christian Jews of an ascetic turn of mind, and imbued with the semi-oriental philosophy of that day, which contained in itself the seeds of the later Gnostic systems… they sought to supplement the Christian system by their ascetic practices and their speculations concerning the orders of angels, whom they seem to have regarded as mediators between God and men.” ↩

  5. Augustus H. Strong, Systematic Theology, vol. 2 (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1907), 82, citing J. B. Lightfoot’s commentary on Colossians for a traced connection between the Gnostic doctrine, the earlier Colossian heresy, and the still earlier teaching of the Essenes. ↩

  6. Steven J. Duby, God in Himself: Scripture, Metaphysics, and the Task of Christian Theology, Studies in Christian Doctrine and Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2019), chap. 3, “Incarnation in Context,” 168. ↩

  7. Duby, God in Himself, 169. ↩

  8. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 14, “The Only Begotten Son of the Father.” ↩

  9. Duby, God in Himself, 131-186. ↩

  10. Samuel G. Parkison, To Gaze upon God: The Beatific Vision in Doctrine, Tradition, and Practice (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2024), chap. 6, “The Beatific Vision and the Christian Life,” 198: “What is earthly among the believer, then, is not indicative of his truest state. His truest state is his union with Christ in heaven, which will be finally and fully consummated upon his return in glory.” ↩