Colossians 1:1-2

¹ Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, ² To the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae: Grace to you and peace from God our Father.

Introduction

Since becoming the preaching pastor here in 2013, I’ve preached through the last 1/3 of the Gospel of Mark and all the way through 1 John, Titus, 1 Peter, Hosea, Ruth, Genesis, James, John’s Gospel, and Ecclesiastes.  

With each book, I’m a little embarrassed to say, I was genuinely caught off guard by the way God used it to work in our church.  I never doubted that God gives grace through the preaching of His Word or that careful exposition is usually the most faithful approach to preaching, but I continually underestimated the magnitude of what He would do among us and the consistency with which He would do so.  

What I also find interesting is that there were very few times in which He used individual sermons to bring about those changes (at least from what I could tell).  Rather, He seemed to do so through the cumulative effect of spending months (and sometimes years) in each book.  

For all those reasons, I’m truly excited for the chance to spend another significant chunk of time with you all in another book of the Bible.  And with that, welcome to Colossians and the expectation that God will continue to do great things in us, through this most remarkable letter on the preeminence of Jesus Christ!

The big idea of this sermon—which is the big idea of Colossians as a whole—is that the unlimited number of “Christ and” approaches to life are always eternally deadly, while the “Christ over all” approach is the only and certain path to eternal life.  The main takeaways are to do everything you can to take in all the messages on Colossians and to begin taking inventory of the “ands” in your life.  

Grace, I urge you not to make the same mistakes I’ve made over and over in allowing myself to be underwhelmed by Jesus (even for a moment) and in underestimating the sanctifying power of placing myself under God’s preached Word week after week after week.  I think you’ll find, as I’m about to pray, that God means Colossians to be an awesome remedy for both.   

The Background

Before I get into the background of Colossians, I want to say a few, brief words about the nature of the Bible by sharing a small portion of my experience with it.  And I mean to do so to help you see why understanding the background of Colossians is so important.  

When I first came to faith in Christ as a 19-year-old, I’d read a few out-of-context verses from the Bible and I’d heard many more read in different contexts, but I don’t think I’d ever read an entire chapter, much less an entire book.  I had a sense that the Bible was from God, but no concept of what that meant.  I’m sure I couldn’t have named 90% of the books of the Bible and I don’t know that I knew a single biblical author.  The main point that I’m trying to make is that for the first two decades of my life, I had no idea what the Bible was really, in no small measure because I didn’t really care what the Bible really was.  

I didn’t recognize any of that until I came to faith in Jesus.  Once I did, it all became quickly and painfully clear.  Through steady Bible reading on my part, the faithful teaching/preaching/discipleship of others, and the strong desire for understanding that the Spirit put in me, I’ve been growing to know and appreciate what the Bible is, what it teaches, and what that means ever since.  

All of that leads to one of the more important things I’ve learned about God’s Word over all the years; namely, that it consists of 66 separate books, all inspired by God and written by men with three critical aims: (1) Accomplishing some specific purpose among its first recipients, (2) Revealing more of God’s ultimate plan for the world, and (3) Equipping all of His people for all time with some of what we need to honor Him.  

The ultimate goal of Bible reading/study is the third aim (sufficient help to live as God intends), but the first two are essential means to that end.  We can’t know how a passage applies to us today if we don’t know it’s original intent or its place in the larger story.  And we can’t know the author’s original intent apart from a humble acknowledgement that every book of the Bible was written in a dramatically different context and culture from what we have today.  For instance, Colossians is a letter written nearly 2000 years ago, on another content, in another language, to a very different people, with a very different mindset, before cars, phones, electricity, and internet.  

Therefore, if we are to read Colossians (or any other book of the Bible) as we are meant to, we need to understand its background.  We’ll being with the author.  

The Author: Paul

Who wrote this letter and what do we know about him?  Helpfully, the author opens his letter by identifying himself, “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God.” So, who was Paul?  

Of himself he said (in Acts 22:3): “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in [Jerusalem], educated at the feet of Gamaliel [“a teacher of the law held in honor by all the people” (Acts 5:34)] according to the strict manner of the law of our fathers, being zealous for God as all of you are this day.

He was a well-educated, zealous Jewish leader and very proud of those things.  He elaborated on that idea in some of his other writings.  He referred to himself as (Philippians 3:5-6), “circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee… as to righteousness under the law, blameless.”  

In his Jewish zeal and blamelessness, he was adamant about silencing Jesus’ followers, believing them to be heretics.  To that end, he wrote of himself, (Philippians 3:6) “as to zeal, a persecutor of the church…”.   And (Acts 22:4), “I persecuted [Christians] to the death, binding and delivering to prison both men and women…”  

He continued in that until one day, on his way to persecute Christians in a town called Damascus, something entirely unexpected happened: the resurrected Jesus appeared to him. 

Describing this experience, Paul said, (Acts 22:6-8)…about noon a great light from heaven suddenly shone around me. ⁷ And I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ ⁸ And I answered, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ And he said to me, ‘I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting.’ 

From there, Paul told of being led to Damascus and what happened next…

(Acts 22:13-16)“And one Ananias… ¹³  came to me, and standing by me said to me…¹⁴ … ‘The God of our fathers appointed you to know his will, to see [Jesus] and to hear a voice from his mouth; ¹⁵ for you will be a witness for him to everyone of what you have seen and heard. ¹⁶ And now why do you wait? Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name.’ 

Though originally an avowed enemy of Jesus and His followers, Paul was miraculously saved by Jesus.  More than that, he was (as we just read and as he says at the beginning of Colossians), commissioned by God as an apostle of Jesus to be a missionary to the Gentiles throughout the whole world.  

Of this, in another place he wrote (Galatians 1:15-16), “But …[God] set me apart before I was born, and …called me by his grace, [He] was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles…”.

From that point on, Paul faithfully gave himself to this mission, at an unimaginably great cost to himself.  In fact, as we’ll see in a bit, Paul wrote Colossians, while imprisoned for obeying God.  

Rather than being deterred from his mission by his persecution, Paul only grew in resolve.  Far from longing for a comfortable life, his greatest desire was that he might (Philippians 3) “¹⁰  … know [Jesus] and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, ¹¹ that by any means possible [he might] attain the resurrection from the dead.”  

Indeed, he did share in Christ’s sufferings as he shared in Christ’s mission.  He describes them as consisting of nearly non-stop (2 Corinthians 11:23-28) hard work, imprisonments, near-death beatings, lashings, stoning, shipwrecks, dangers, sleeplessness, hunger and thirst, harsh weather, and stress.

From the time of his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus, the Apostle Paul gave his life to proclaiming the good news that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners (1 Timothy 1:15).  Doing so cost him nearly every earthly comfort.  Indeed, it is likely that Colossians was written when he was on house arrest in Rome; which would mean that he was near the end of his life.  

He went from being among the most educated, zealous, and powerful Jews, to writing lowly letters, to a lowly group of people, in a lowly town, from prison, near death.  Because of that, we might be tempted to feel sorry for Paul.  He would think us fools for doing so.  For, he rejoiced in his sufferings for the sake of the church (1:24) and was eager to fill “up what [was] lacking in Christ’s afflictions”.  His struggle was more than worth it since in Christ are “hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (2:3).  And, therefore, he counted “everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord,” acknowledging that it was for His “sake [that] I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I might gain Christ…” (Philippians 3:8).

Why take so much time considering the author’s background?  If we are to get out of Paul’s letter to the Colossians all that God has for us in this letter to the Colossians, it will mean keeping in mind both what Paul had been through also how he understood it.  

The Recipients: Colossian Christians

Reading Colossians well means having a grasp not only on its author, but also its recipients.  Who was this letter written to?  Again, helpfully, we find out right away (in v.2), “To the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae.”  This letter was written by Paul to a small group of Christians in the small city of Colossae.  Let’s briefly consider the city and the people.

1. The City (Colossae).  Colossae, a city in the bottom, western side of modern-day Turkey, was once very prominent.  For various reasons, however, it had been in steady decline for centuries leading up to the time of Paul’s letter.  It was at that time a relatively small Roman city that had just begun regaining some of its lost ground.  Of particular significance is the fact that it was filled with people from all kinds of economic, religious, and philosophical backgrounds.  Archeologists have found coins there, revealing worship “of such deities as the Artemies of Ephesus, Zeus, Men of Phrygia, Hygeia, Athena, Boule, Demeter, and Selene, in addition to the Egyptian gods Isis and Serapis” (Beale, BECNT, 9).  This is significant primarily in that it helps account for the letter’s message (more in a bit) and the challenges the church there faced.

Who, then, were the recipients.  That is, who were the Colossian Christians?

1. The People (Colossian Christians).  The Colossian church consisted primarily of Gentiles (1:12, 21, 27), but there were also a fair number of Jews as well.  Paul had never visited the church and it was not one of the churches he helped start.  It began as a result of the preaching of Epaphras (1:7), who was imprisoned along with Paul at the time of the writing of the letter.  

As I mentioned above, at the time this letter was written, Colossae was a kind of melting pot of people and ideas.  Despite a nearly unending buffet line of options, Paul was exceedingly confident in the fact that the Colossian church was filled with “saints and faithful brothers in Christ.”   This too, I’ll say more in in a minute.

All of that brings us to the message of the letter.  Why did he write it?  What was it really about?

The Message: Christ Over All

The message of the letter flows right out of the purpose for the letter.  The church, in the melting pot that was Colossae, was being presented with “plausible arguments” (2:4), worldly “philosophy and empty deceit” (2:8) regarding the nature of the gospel and the Christian life.  

Epaphras, having established the church in Colossae, was alarmed, uncertain, and underpowered.  In other words, he could tell that the things being taught to (and maybe by some in) the church were serious, but he was unsure of how to address them and, therefore, wanted the wisdom and authority of an apostle to settle the matter.  For those reasons, on behalf of the church, he traveled to visit Paul and seek his counsel.  

As a quick aside, how many times have you longed for such a thing?  How many times have you had a specific question (or set of questions) and wished you had an apostle, someone directly inspired by God to directly answer your questions?  I can’t even count the number of times I’ve longed for that.  Although appealing, God’s Word is plain that what we do have is entirely sufficient and genuinely (albeit mysteriously) better.  We have the completed Bible and an indwelling Spirit and those things are more than enough for all that God has for us.  

At the same time, it is good to be around people who can help you work through the meaning and implications of the Bible as you read it.  Come to Berea (that’s what it’s for), to DG (where you can ask questions and work together on application), and read your Bibles daily.

The occasion (the reason, the purpose, the heart) of this letter, then, is Paul’s answer to Epaphras’s question concerning the concerning teachings being spread throughout the church in Colossae.  

In one sense, the message of Colossians is found at the end of v.2: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father.”  In that way, the rest of the letter is largely an unpacking of the specific grace and source of peace they needed.  

In the remainder of this sermon, I’ll give a high-level overview of the four-part “grace and peace” message of Colossians: Paul’s God-given perspective on the status, problem, solution, and application for the Colossian church.  

The Status: Admirable Faithfulness

The Christians in Colossae were being confronted with serious questions (which we’ll come to in the next part).  They were in the minority, isolated, and vulnerable.  They’d sent Epaphras to get the answers they needed, but what was their status in the meantime?  

Paul was unwavering in his answer.  In fact, it’s hard to imagine what more effuse praise would sound like.  May these things be said of Grace Church by all who worship with us.

“We always thank God…when we pray for you” (1:3) because of “your faith in Christ Jesus and … the love you have for all the saints” (1:4) and because “the gospel…[has been] bearing fruit and increasing…since the day you heard it (1:6).  Therefore, as he wrote his letter, Paul was “rejoicing to see [their] good order and the firmness of [their] faith in Christ” (2:5).

They were holy ones.  They were children of God.  Their earthly home was Colossae, but their true citizenship had been graciously transferred by God to the kingdom of His beloved Son (1:13).  Their faith was in Jesus (1:4).  They were a people who loved one another (1:4).  They had hope laid up for them in heaven (1:5).  They understood the grace of God in truth (1:6).  They were, in most every way, a church worthy of imitating.  

This may have been a humble group, but they were truly exemplary in their response to the gospel when it came to them and in their faithful lives since then.

What was their status?  Admirable faithfulness. 

The Problem: Christ And Anything

Their admirable faithfulness did not mean that they were home free, however.  Their past and present trust in Jesus did not a guarantee future trust.  It is a mistake to believe that there were no temptations capable of derailing them.  

In that way, Grace, praise God for whatever past faithfulness He’s granted you, but remember that no one is saved by having believed in Jesus.  We are united to Him in salvation through believing in Him.  We must, therefore, continue to walk in Him (2:6).  We must see to it that no one takes us “captive by philosophy and empty deceit” (2:8).  And we must make sure that “no one disqualifies” us (2:18).  

Indeed, a temptation was being presented to the Colossian church that had Epaphras concerned enough to travel to Paul and Paul concerned enough to write them a letter and send it back at the cost of two of the few people he had to help him (Tychicus and Onesimus, for Epaphras had been put in prison with Paul).  That’s the primary occasion for this letter; something scholars have called “The Colossian Heresy.”  But what, exactly was this concern and who was teaching it?  

In preparation for preaching, I spent a good deal of time trying to follow along with the scholarly debates that have taken place over the years on that question.  Doing so was a bit amusing and a lot daunting.  The bottom line is that Paul never explicitly states the problem or its proponents.  He knows that his readers already know what and who he was talking about, so he only hints and them and spends most of his time on the solution.  In that way, what we know about the false doctrine and false teachers comes mostly from reading between the lines and playing Jeopardy (Paul gives the answer and we need to figure out the question).  

We’ll come to the answer in a minute.  First, though, let me highlight a few of the problem-hints Paul gives.

After expressing his gratitude for the faithfulness of the Colossians, declaring the preeminence of Jesus, and then describing the nature of his ministry, Paul began indirectly addressing the false teaching he wanted to help the Colossian believers avoid.  

In 2:4 he writes, “I say this [that Christ is the understanding and knowledge of God] in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments.”  Paul’s letter to the Colossians was written primarily to keep the church there from being deluded with plausible arguments.  He doesn’t really say what the arguments are, only that they’re present and deadly.

Likewise, in 2:8 we read, “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.”  Again, we’re not sure what philosophy, deceit, tradition, or spirits he has in mind, only that they are not in accord with the mind of Christ and are, therefore, of inestimable danger for the Colossians.

And again in 2:16 Paul warns, “Let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. ¹⁷ These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. ¹⁸ Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind…”.  It seems that a lot of things were being thrown at the Colossian Christians which were capable of turning their hearts aways from Jesus.  We get a bit more specificity here as to what they were (asceticism and angel worship, for instance), but it’s still not clear what the heart of the matter really is.

Paul’s letter to the Colossians was, once again, primarily intended to address some form of heresy.  But we’re still left with the question of what, exactly that heresy was.  What is the thread that binds together all the things we just read from chapter 2?  

The answer, I believe, was an ever-present temptation to various forms of syncretism.  The church was continually encouraged to add things to Jesus for salvation.  The “Colossian Heresy” was, what I call, a “Christ and” heresy.  

O, Grace, what a tragic and universal problem that is.  The specific forms it took for the Colossians are at least somewhat different than the forms it took during the Middle Ages and the time of the Reformation and even today.  But the form it takes is far less important than learning how destructive, evil, prevalent, and sneaky it is.  

The idea that we need to add anything to Jesus for salvation is from the pit of hell.  The idea that adding anything to Jesus is necessary for true satisfaction and complete joy is from the pit of hell.  The idea that we need to add anything to the mind of Christ to know how to experience the fullness of life He came to bring is from the pit of hell.

Paul knew all of this and was jealous and zealous to keep the Colossians, whom he loved, from falling to those hell-pits.  What, then, was Paul’s solution?  

The Solution: Christ Over All

If the problem was the temptation toward “Jesus and” theology, Paul’s solution was “Jesus only” theology.  And the reason for that is simple: Jesus is above all.  Jesus is the greatest treasure.  He is eternal life and satisfaction.  He is the fullness of the wisdom of God.  All of Him with nothing else is everything.  Everything else without Him is nothing.  He is over all!

Paul begins to unpack this idea in the middle of the first chapter.  In some of the most important and awesome words in all Scripture, Paul yells at the top of his lungs: “Christ is supreme!  He is above all!  He is preeminent in heaven and earth (1:15-23)!

¹⁵ He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. ¹⁶ For 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. ¹⁷ And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ¹⁸ And 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. ¹⁹ For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, ²⁰ and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. 

“Jesus and” thinking, the “Colossian Heresy,” is hell-doctrine.  The solution Paul offers is the Kingdom doctrine of “Jesus above all!”  

Throughout the rest of the letter, we see that Christ is over all in that there is salvation in Him alone (2:13-15).  In that He was crucified, buried, raised, and victories over every power, so that we might be made alive and victorious with Him forever (2:13-15).  In that, in Him, our old self of darkness and death is put to death and our new self of light and life is born (3:9-10).  In that Jesus alone transfers us from the kingdom of the evil one to His kingdom (1:13-14).  And in that He comes into us and fills us with hope of glory and treasures forevermore (1:27-2:10).

Rightly understood and truly experienced, then, Paul offers the Colossians power sufficient to completely eliminate every temptation to add anything to Jesus: An explanation of who Jesus really is and what He has done.  

Grace, my greatest hope and my most fervent prayer is we will move even one or two or three steps further along in believing and experiencing the supremacy of Jesus Christ over all through our time in this book!  And with that, that we, together, working in the power of the Spirit, might root out every remaining ounce of “and” left in us.

The Result: Christ in All

Finally, then, what does it look like to live lives that reject “Christ and” thinking and wholly embrace “Christ over all” thinking?  Much of the latter half of the letter is dedicated to answering that question.  

Throughout our time in this letter, we’ll see that it means (2:6-7) walking in Jesus, “rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, …[and] abounding in thanksgiving.”  We’ll se that it means being (2:12) “buried with him in baptism, in which [we are] also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.”  We’ll see that it means “Putting off every remanent of our old “Christ and” selves, and putting on every yet-missing aspect of our new “Christ over all” selves (3:1-17).  We’ll see that it means doing everything in the name of Jesus (3:17).  We’ll see that it means ordering our households according to God’s design (3:18-4:1).  And we’ll see that it means continuing steadfastly in prayerful recognition that Jesus is our hope and glory (4:2).

The result of putting away “Christ and” thinking is “Christ in and over everything” thinking.  It is seeing the goodness and rightness of living every moment of every day, in every relationship, and in every place for Christ, according to His design, in His power, for His glory.  

Conclusion

Like the Colossians 2000 years ago, we are continually confronted with the temptation to add to Jesus or to treat Jesus as merely one of the many things in our lives.  This mindset is not only mistaken, it is eternally deadly.  The remedy is not to try harder, do more, or be better.  The only remedy is growing in the grace of God that allows us to see that Jesus really is over all, in every way, for all time.  It is seeing Jesus for who He really is; preeminent, supreme, and infinitely glorious.  Letting go of the “ands” in our life feels like a scary loss, but that is only because of the conspiracy of sin to make things seem as they are not.  Paul pleads with the Colossians and I plead with you all to recognize that letting go of our “ands” (whatever they may be) to fully embrace Jesus, is like letting go of a glass shard in your eye for a vacation at the sea.  It’s like letting go of a mountain of credit card debt for an unlimited bank account.  It is like letting go of cancer for perfect health.  May the Lord be pleased to use our time in Colossians to make this ever-clearer and to transform us ever-more in light of it.  Let’s go!